Books and Magazines

I saw manga all over the place … you could find some at any convenience store, lots more at the book store, and probably even more at the manga-only store across from the hotel. But, I still don't know how to think about manga. Are they comics, or magazines? Do you read just one or two, or try all kinds of different ones?

The thing that was even stranger was that some of the magazine-type manga also contained a few pictures of girls in swimsuits. I don't think we have any analogue of that combination over here.

Since I don't know many kanji (yet?), there aren't many things I can actually read. In fact, children's books are just about the only thing—they're written in hiragana, so I can at least read and pronounce the words, even if I don't understand them. My favorite from the trip was soramame-kun no beddo. The “-kun” is another suffix like “-san”, in this case for little boys. So, the story is about young master Soramame, a bean. Early on, young master Edamame comes by … that was funny to me because I only knew the word “edamame” from restaurants, where it's an appetizer of soybeans.