The best books to read if you’re going to visit Japan

All of Higashino’s books are great, but this is one of the best, and it happens to be the first novel in the Detective Galileo series, where a physics professor helps a detective solve crimes. Imagine Sherlock Holmes, except set on the streets of Tokyo. We follow Detective Kusanagi of the Tokyo Police as he tries to piece together the mysterious events surrounding a murder where we, the reader, already know who committed the crime.

The format is so very different from your normal crime novel, and that is one of the truly interesting things about this book. It’s still a marvel to me that Higashino keeps you wondering the whole time, even as you already know key parts of the outcome. If you want to understand the Japanese mind in advance of a trip (or move) to Japan, this is a great place to start!

Haruki Murakami is probably the most famous Japanese author in the world and the father of Japanese magical realism. I have read a large portion of his work, and I have enjoyed many of his books (even with his weird ear fetish).

This one, however, is one of my favorites. It’s two stories in one, and although others sometimes criticize it for not being a good blend between the two stories, it is that separation that actually makes this book a gem for me. It captures your imagination as you follow a human computer down into a psychological miasma of perception and thought.

If that seems confusing, I’m sorry, but I don’t want to spoil for you one of my all-time favorite Murakami books. Also, if you want to know what I mean by human-computer, I guess you’ll just have to pick up the book.

This book is a bit of a departure from the first two. It also falls into the realm of magical realism but of a very different type. It’s a short, heartwarming novel broken into four chapters or stories, each highlighting a different aspect of the character and teaching a lesson about how we connect to books.

It manages to be easy to read yet meaningful in content. It is a love letter to books from all of us who truly love books. Also, it will give you some interesting insights into the culture and dynamics in Japanese high schools and the hikikomori culture. I particularly love it because it expresses exactly this concept that I’m trying to convey with this list. To understand a culture, a people, you need to read their books! Love it!

This is a quiet, subtle novel that gives you insight into the dynamics of Japanese culture, family, and community. Also, the main character is bordering on what the Japanese call a day-old Christmas cake. I particularly resonate with her perspective, and I bet a lot of other women do, too.

In Japan, they have a term for any woman who is over the age of twenty-five and not married, and this is… you guessed it, a day-old Christmas cake! When I lived there, I had already shown up in the country as a day-old Christmas cake, and that’s one of the reasons I love this novel and its tackling, albeit softly, of these types of issues.

Sadly, I think this book is, in my opinion, underrated by readers. It’s a novel with scenes always starting at 1 am, and it follows interconnected characters through their nights working and living in Tokyo. The reader not only gets a really interesting peek into life for graveyard workers, but the setting is evocative.

I particularly love how the mundanity of working the night shift as a cab driver, a social assistance hotline worker, or a procurer for movie sets, etc., are really captured in a very quintessential Japanese way that many American readers may overlook. Read this one to learn more about honor and obligation in modern Japan as told through interesting characters!