NABC Store Manager's Diary — September 17, 2026 (Thu)

Today the sun came out for the first time in a while, and it didn’t rain all day. It’s probably the third day since the start of September that it hasn’t rained in Nagoya. Still, the humidity was high, so it was very muggy. Customer numbers are as low as ever, but today a couple of tanka poets stopped by. One was Satsuki Suzuki, the editor of the Tokai Tanka Anthology "Seeds of Song." Ms. Suzuki will be hosting a tanka event on October 2, the "Nagoya Station West Tanka Reading Group — Shuta Fujii’s poetry collection 'Perspective'," so we talked about that. Now that the reading group is officially confirmed, I called the publisher of Perspective, Gendai Tanka-sha. Because they’re based in Kyoto, getting copies through our distributor wouldn’t have made it in time for October 2, so I placed a phone order. The other poet was Kei, who dropped by for the first time in a while. She was on her way to get a passport. Lucky her. Today’s arrivals included a Futaba Bunko paperback: Yasuko Higashiyama, a writer from Seto City, has a new book titled "Where Is the Ideal Home?" — a linked short-story collection about an architect that explores themes of home and life. It looks interesting. We’ve been indebted to Higashiyama before when she gave a talk about her previous book "Even Cats Wander into Great Authors." Apparently Higashiyama will be giving a talk at Seto City Library this coming Sunday the 20th. http://www.lib.seto.aichi.jp/news/YasukoHigashiyama-talkevent.html This isn’t work-related, but I’m scheduled to give a talk at the library in Kameyama City, Mie Prefecture on Tuesday, November 3 (a national holiday), so I consulted with an AI to decide the theme. The theme is: "Libraries begin with someone's 'trouble' — connecting books and people, and connecting communities through libraries." In past talks about libraries I’ve tended to spend the time listing and reporting on things we’ve done, so I’m thinking of changing that approach a bit for this one. I’ll let you know once the official announcement is ready.