Thread

Japan's book scene is moving from bookstores to libraries

241 points · 113 comments · herbertl

ChickeNES · 1789601362 · focus · HN ↗
> Are you a book lover?
> If you are, I suspect you already do this: when you travel abroad, you find yourself walking into a local bookstore.
> I do it everywhere, not only in Japan but also abroad. My shelves hold some Chinese and Russian books even though I cannot read a word of them. A bookstore is one of the best places to understand the local culture: what people there are curious about, what they worry about, what they love.
This sounds more like a fetish for physical books to me? I find it bizarre myself, books are just knowledge containers, if you can't read them...what's the point?
1. rtpg · 1789607050 · focus · HN ↗
  Book covers, seeing what kinda stuff is being talked about, the general vibe of the space itself.
  Lots of fun to be had wandering about, and unless you're looking at a thing where the script is really indecipherable you can kinda figure out what the topic du jour is even in foreign languages.
  It's fun to look at book covers and imagine what's in the contents too.

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.