NABC Store Manager's Diary — October 11, 2026 (Sun)

Today and tomorrow are holidays, but because the gallery is holding a photo exhibition by red-light-district photographer Beniko, the bookstore section is open as well. It's short hours, though — we opened to match the exhibition schedule, from 12:00 to 19:00. Even so, my shift ended up being a bit longer than usual. This morning, before the exhibition opened, there was a walking tour around the site of the Nakamura Yūkaku, and after that Beniko and the others came to the shop so we opened just in time at noon. It wasn't as crowded as yesterday, but customers kept coming in all the way through the evening aiming for the exhibition. There were a lot of female fans who said things like "I'm so glad you held the show in Nagoya!" Many people met Beniko and left with happy faces. One customer even asked me directly, "How did it come about that the exhibition is held at this shop?" — I'm glad local fans in Nagoya were so pleased. Not only fans from Nagoya and Aichi, but two different customers came from Chiba Prefecture. One couldn't make it to the Tokyo exhibition, and the other is such a devoted fan that they'll go anywhere in the country if there's an exhibition, whether in Tokyo or Nagoya. There were also visitors from Shizuoka and northern Gifu. Since Cafe Kissa River was closed today, the bookselling floor was relatively quiet, but sales were fairly good. One customer bought all four of Ritsuko's zines (she's appearing at the talk event on the 17th), and others bought books related to the yūkaku and the west side of the station — and as a kind of souvenir? they also bought our shop's can badges. Around 3:00 pm, Chikura, a Zindies member and developer, dropped by. He was hard to pull away from the register, so we couldn't talk at length, but we discussed ideas to make the shop more appealing to use and to increase the number of shop registrations. By the way, a picture book that rarely sells usually has been selling — one yesterday and one today (one is on hold). The title was The Elephant Train Arrived. It was really surprising to sell two copies of the same picture book in a row; that's very rare in our store. This book was introduced in the Chunichi Shimbun not long ago, so perhaps someone who read that article bought it. I'm glad we had stocked two copies. I had thought it might take a year to sell. A young woman who visited the other day came back. Last time I invited her to a Keigo Higashino reading group, and she bought the first volume of the assigned book The Swan and the Bat; today she said she'd finished the first volume and came to buy the second. I'm grateful. She also got to see the gallery exhibition. I'd be happy if she joined the Higashino reading group. A regular customer who works at the local library and is interested in yūkaku research also visited. She highly recommended and purchased a copy of Dr. Akiko Fujita's new book Warm Words Change the World that we had just stocked yesterday. I hope we can arrange some kind of event with the author's local library. While talking with a customer who came from Gifu for the exhibition, I learned that Jun Ikeido is also from Gifu. I had no idea! According to the customer, he may be from Yaotsu Town in Kamo District. I immediately ordered the talked-about book — I wonder if it will sell. I hope it does. Since the number of visitors to the second floor was many times the usual today, I'll clean the stairs after closing when I have time and then head home.