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What I found in Asia’s bookstores that I never found online
Unexpected books, thoughtful curations, and a reminder that what’s “foreign” depends on where you’re standing
Travel brings about a great opportunity: to visit local bookstores. On a trip to Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Shanghai, my family and I had the privilege of visiting these bookstores: Daikanyama T-Site (my favorite in the world and default recommendation to anyone visiting Tokyo), Ginza Tsutaya, Foreign Language Bookstore in Shanghai, Duoyun Bookstore, Shanghai Book City, eslite spectrum. (There are many others that I noticed — a beautiful Tsutaya outpost tucked under a highway tunnel in Tokyo, for example — that I didn’t have a chance to pop into.)
It’s rewarding to explore and see, first and foremost, many books in Japanese and Chinese. It’s a refreshing reminder that the world is very big. Because I’m not literate in either of those languages (yet!), I am drawn to the foreign book section where these stores organize their inventory of English books. (I’m always glad to remember that what people define as “foreign” depends on where they live.)
Most of the time, there are the usual suspects — bestsellers, very popular books, and classics. Harry Potter is almost always around.
