Description:

A fantastic book for learning about Japan’s history, art, culture, and so much more. This is perhaps my (Ty) favorite book because it allows me to learn a ton about Japan while also learning a lot of Japanese that I can use to express myself in more difficult or obscure conversations.

This is a great way to learn tons of fun facts, and generally become more 詳しい about Japan overall.

This is designed to be read at the pace of one page a day, and there are 7 overarching topics:

  1. 自然
  2. 歴史
  3. 文学
  4. 科学・技術
  5. 芸術
  6. 伝統・文化
  7. 哲学・思想

I’ve shown this book to natives before and they said they didn’t know a lot of things in it, so you can very realistically surprise people with the random Japan-focused knowledge you have. Very fun ^^

Since every page is a completely different topic, there is a high difficulty curve getting into this book. However, since many topics are tangentially related, it gets easier and easier the more you keep reading.

Don’t give up!