Yay! Preparedness survival skills - great to have you on the crew 
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our tie breaker has arrived 
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Just one book today, but new rather than secondhand:
I had failed to find this in the last bookoff I was in, plus having spent half an hour wandering around what seems to be the only bookshop in Kakunodate I didn’t want to leave without buying anything. (The other contender was あの子とQ | L30?? which I spotted in their “new out in paperback” section. But I’m hopeful that I might find that in a bookoff in the next few weeks.)
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One of the bookoff stores in Hirosaki turned out to have a very strong “120 yen” section(*), and possibly I bought more than I should have at this point in my trip:
Mostly authors from my “I know these” list, but the kitsune-in-a-bookshop book was an impulse purchase spotted since it was displayed on the shelf cover-outwards.
I did avoid being tempted by the lucky dip “buy a book for 220 yen without knowing what it is” thing they’re currently running.
(*) I remember back when this was the 100 yen section and the tax was only 5 yen…
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Ummm … I’m gonna need to add this to my wishlist.
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I added my haul to Natively; that one is 稲荷書店きつね堂 | L30?? . (And I just realised that I do know the author, because they also wrote 幻想古書店で珈琲を | L32 which I read a while back, having again picked it up at random based on the cover…)
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THANK YOU! Omg, ALL the covers in this series are so good. 
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More 132 yen Hirosaki bookoff finds:
One “next book in a series I’m reading” (the 陰陽師 one), two books picked up after seeing something by that author in a new-books bookshop, and the 日本語 one is random impulse purchase nonfiction. (It’s a series of short essays on oddities of various Japanese words and phrases. Hopefully it doesn’t have too much nihonjinron in it…)
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todays haul…realize I missed one between this and the previous post (but probably for the best 
)
a couple not quite books
can’t even describe how beautiful these are - can’t even photo them well cuz so shiny… amazing!!!
and the books
with a little sparkle
had tagged these previously but put off buying them until someone else did and then finally ordered them cuz why not… the cover art is amazing!!!
but then I realized that I might have gotten in too deep…these are big heavy almost 
squashing NOVELS!!! not light novels…
and apparently there is chinese in here not just japanese… (handwritten)
Was surprised to see the japanese seems readable though (so maybe this will become a 2026 goal)
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All in the 120 yen section of a bookoff in Hakodate.
I was in the literature museum in Hakodate yesterday, and noted down the names of a few authors with local connections whose work seemed like something I might like. This is a historical novel by an author born in Hakodate; her debut novel came out in 1995.
nth book in a series I’m reading already:
I forget where I heard about this, but it’s been lurking on my wishlist for a while because I wasn’t sure if I wanted to read it or not, but 120 yen plus tax is cheap enough to take a punt. The author was a literary novelist and poet in the Meiji/Taisho/early Showa period, and this is part 1 of one of his late works, from the early 1930s, about the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate:
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I still don’t understand Bookoff’s shelving policy, incidentally. ライト文芸 is apparently different from ライトノベル, though I’m not clear what the distinction is (or for that matter what キャラクター小説 which I’ve seen in a new book store is). Some subgenres but not all get their own section, not always clearly labelled (時代劇 being one obvious one). Some parts are sorted by author only, and others by publisher first, except that not all the 集英社オレンジ文庫 seemed to actually be together…
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Therefore I just asked some person sorting in new books where the book was that I wanted.
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It’s been a while since I bought them, but here’s what I’ve managed to restrict myself to so far. Plus 透明な螺旋 (文春文庫 ひ 13-14) | L32 which I’ve already packed away. Only the one about the gods is from bookoff, the others I bought new. 
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I don’t think there is one. I recall finding the same book in three different places in one store and just deciding they were putting books in whatever category had space at the time and vaguely fit 
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new idea…
bookoff bingo cards for 2026? hehe
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Oh how is this series? I randomly bought book 6 like a year ago (I don’t even remember why) but it’s been sitting on my shelf for ages haha
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キャラクター小説 == ライト文芸. ライト文芸 are light novels for adults. Generally there’s a lot less webnovel slop published as ライト文芸, so I find it a useful label.
… but yeah, navigating Japanese bookstores in general is incredibly difficult. Who cares about the publisher - just sort by genre!
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You’re probably already aware, but these are Japanese translations of Chinese webnovels (of the xianxia genre here specifically I believe, though I haven’t read erha yet myself), so in addition to the two-row pages, you’re likely going to see a lot of loanwords and extremely genre-specific words, which is likely the biggest things that will add to the difficulty. Prime example: just straight-up leaving the title in Chinese.
Technically I don’t think these are written to be difficult to read, as they’re webnovels and want the largest possible readership, but the difficulty in translation ratchets up due to the jargon and loanwords, I’ve found.
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yeah… I know 
I was surprised though just looking at the sentences…like omg I can actually read this - not a huge wall of unknown!!!
But then I still have a bingo card and specific plans as well as way too many books to work off first (as tempting as this is to try to start now)…
my library is uhhhh ~ 977 books sitting unread - most of these are physical hehe (not counting the family friendly 
dojins and things I cannot add to natively - cdjapan but not amazon)
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I wrote a review of book one: 御宿かわせみ | L40
The short summary is that it’s not “amazing, I would recommend this to anybody”, but it’s decently enjoyable in its genre (short stories set in Edo featuring a regular cast of characters) and it has some original plot ideas as well as the usual genre cliches.
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