Super Sushi Ramen Express: One Family's Journey Through the Belly of Japan by Michael Booth

When I first came across Super Sushi Ramen Express I was genuinely excited. I was looking for an interesting expose of food across the Japan. While I got a hint of that, it was a bit too superficial a journey.

There are some aspects that were great - the visit to the kaiseki restaurant in Kyoto, konbu harvesting in Hokkaido, and the creation of healthy salt.

The Little Exile by Jeanette Arakawa

I’ve always known the broad story of Japanese internment during the Second World War, both at home in Canada and next door in the United States.

The Little Exile by Jeanette Arakawa brings this tragic time to life through a unique novel that carries a lot of reality in its pages.

The Little Exile traces aftermath of this shift from normal child to prisoner through various camps and ultimately a return to freedom. It’s an illuminating glimpse inside a stolen life.

Tokyo: A View of the City by Donald Richie

It's common to get nostalgic. It seems there are entire industries based on looking back 50 years, and lamenting the damage progress has done in consuming what made the past a golden age.

Donald Richie's Tokyo: A View of the City is just this kind of look back from circa 1999 - a look at the culture and every day life that built the core neighbourhoods of Tokyo, what had gone, what had come, and what was just ahead.

Finding Japan: Early Canadian Encounters with Asia by Anne Shannon

Finding Japan is a huge - and pleasant - surprise. Many readers will be just like me having never realized that the connections between Canada and Japan were so rich, varied, and deep.

Finding Japan: Early Canadian Encounters with Asia looks at this long history. It starts even before U.S. gunboats opened a closed island Japan to the world -- with the story of the Canadian son of an HBC trader who marooned himself in Japan, and ended up teaching English to the man who would translate for the Americans when the arrived in their black ships.

Message to Adolf by Osamu Tezuka

The best literature serves to open your eyes to something new, to reveal something you haven’t seen before. Books that meet this test are few and far between — and Message to Adolf by manga master Osamu Tezuka is firmly one of them. 

It’s all the more surprising through Western eyes because we just don’t expect to come across idea shaking literature in graphic form — manga, comic, or graphic novel. Message to Adolf shows we probably should.

Rice, Noodle, Fish: Deep Travels Through Japan's Food Culture by Matt Goulding

Rice, Fish, Noodle is the Japanese food travel book that I have been searching for. I also suspect it could be the food travel book the world has been waiting for. 

So many books of this genre scrape the surface. They revisit the same old things. They offer up yet another tired old description of the long traditions and wacky (to Westerners) food of Japan. Sushi. Ramen. Kaiseki. 

The Very Small Home by Azby Brown

Tiny houses seem to be all the rage these days. I’ve seen them profiled on talk shows, on news programs, and online. If you want to go back to the start, a great place is The Very Small Home: Japanese Ideas for Living Well in Limited Space by Azby Brown.

First published in Japan in 2005 and in English in 2012, the book profiles 18 very small homes in Japan - their layout, the features that make the space seem larger, and their techniques for packing a full life into a small home. The brilliant designs for storage are fascinating. 

Whisky Japan: The Essential Guide to the World's Most Exotic Whisky by Dominic Roskrow

Whisky Japan: The Essential Guide to the World's Most Exotic Whisky is a sad book.

Don't get me wrong - it's an amazing book. But it's sad because it is also clear that so much of the amazing stuff described is going or gone. Specific age single malts from Nikka are gone. Bottles are investments not tasting delights. The future - at least how it will play out for whiskies - remains to be determined.