Giles Murray

I've had this book for at least 20 years, I bought it in Japan at a time I was attempting to learn Japanese. I was never very good at it though, so in the end I thought I'd just read the short stories in English and not worry about the translations. It's actually very well laid out with parallel text, full kanji pronunciation guide, and a comprehensive glossary. Anyway my Japanese is close to non-existent these days, so I just read through the stories, 4 strange short dreams by Natsume show more Soseki, and 3 short stories by Akutagawa Ryunosuke. These include Rashomon, and also In A Grove, the story the Rashomon film is actually based on. They are all weird creepy tales and I'm glad I finally got around to reading them. show less

Tokyo Fragments is an extremely appropriate name for this collection - each of the five stories feels like it's a fragment broken off of something else, not necessarily in the best place. They're all meandering stories that have little sense of purpose and stop rather than end, and while this isn't automatically a bad thing, most of these don't carry it off well.

Fruits of Shinjuku - A college dropout falls for a foreign prostitute, with predictable B-movie results.

Yumeko - A group of old bar show more friends discuss neighborhoods and the attitudes of those within them, particularly with regard to a certain newcomer in theirs. This was my favorite of the stories - it lacked resolution and was almost more of a Platonic dialogue than a story at times, but here it felt appropriate, and I really enjoyed the atmosphere and the musings about the heart of a neighborhood.

One Year Later - A status-seeking husband-hunter worries about her relationship with her temporary boyfriend. She learns a lesson, or maybe not. I couldn't tell.

The Yellow Tent on the Roof - A suddenly homeless businessman starts camping out in a tent on the roof of his building. Pleasant but unexceptional.

The Housewife and the Police Box - a housewife and her daughter both start obsessing over police boxes. The characters were charming enough, but this one seemed to suffer the most from the feeling that it was taken out of a larger work and not meant as a standalone piece.

As an attempt to convey a sense of Tokyo, the stories do well enough, but as actual stories, they come up lacking. Not terrible, but not really recommended. show less

Invaluable material for N2 students

It is a compilation of some simply strategies that can be used when trying to speak the japanese language.
Divided in "13 secrets"! The name is a bit funny since they are not so secret at all and a kind of common sense for any language student.
The book is interesting owever as a means of reviewing, specially if what you are looking for is mainly to be able to speak some japanese and cause some impression on your audience.
I would not qualify it as a serious study about the japanese language show more and I don't recomend it if what you are looking forward is a serious study of the japanese grammar. You will not find it here.
If you already have some knowledge of the language and want to learn a few strategies to go a step foward then it may be of some interest. show less