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The Land of the Rising Sun is shining brightly across the American cultural landscape. Recent films such as Lost in Translation and Memoirs of a Geisha seem to have made everyone an expert on Japan, even if they've never been there. But the only way for a Westerner to get to know the real Japan is to become a part of it. Kate T. Williamson did just that, spending a year experiencing, studying, and reflecting on her adopted home. She brings her keen observations to us in A Year in Japan, a dramatically different look at a delightfully different way of life. Avoiding the usual clichés -- Japan's polite society, its unusual fashion trends, its crowded subways -- Williamson focuses on some lesser-known aspects of the country and culture. In stunning watercolors and piquant texts, she explains the terms used to order various amounts of tofu, the electric rugs found in many Japanese homes, and how to distinguish a maiko from a geisha. She observes sumo wrestlers in traditional garb as they use ATMs, the wonders of "Santaful World" at a Kyoto department store, and the temple carpenters who spend each Sunday dancing to rockabilly. A Year in Japan is a colorful journey to the beauty, poetry, and quirkiness of modern Japan -- a book not just to look at but to experience.
(1)The holiday-makers' favourite guidebook series (The Sunday Times Travel Magazine )
Eyewitness wins hands down (The Mail on Sunday )
Eyewitness wins hands down (The Mail on Sunday )
San Francisco has long been one of America's most attractive cities, "a gleaming jewel of the West Coast surrounded on three sides by water." Its hilly streets provide gorgeous glimpses of San Francisco Bay and The Golden Gate Bridge and its neighborhoods reveals a mosaic of a city whose residents are an anthology of the world. Whether he's photographing the street life of bustling Chinatown or gays of the Castro, the gentrifying Mission or faux-Bohemian North Beach, aerial views or interior settings, this third generation San Franciscan renowned for his photographic essays captures it all in this superb collection of photographs of the city he loves.
