Yesterday (Monday) was a day off. Today I started by processing the recent arrivals of books and ZINEs that came in yesterday and today. Yesterday, Ruko, the author of the very popular ZINE 『労働厨^_^♪』, came by to deliver additional copies. Unfortunately I couldn't meet them, but it was a great help because our stock was nearly sold out. For items already registered in our system, the stocking process is simply entering the quantity. For items we're stocking for the first time, we register the genre, product name, retail price, purchase price, the ISBN number if there is one, and the arrival quantity. When there are many items, it takes a fair amount of time. Today an editor from 風媒社 delivered new and additional backlist titles, so I registered those as well. The new release is "Waiting Outside the Wall" (塀の外で待つ) by Miyuki Haga. The author is a reporter for the Chunichi Shimbun and has researched "prison radio" at Nagoya University. She is involved in efforts to connect people who have committed crimes with society. This book grew out of her interactions with a single person she met through that work. Also restocked was "The Birth of the Poet Noriko Ibaraki: The Story of a Girl from Nishio" (詩人茨木のり子の誕生　西尾の少女の物語), which was praised in a review in the Asahi Shimbun; orders from bookstores nationwide have increased and the publisher's stock seems to be running low. As for ZINEs, besides 『労働厨^_^♪』 we received "Chita Peninsula: The Monster Picture Scroll" (知多半島　化け物絵巻), a stab-bound book that collects folktales from around the Chita Peninsula. It has furigana throughout so it's easy to read. This edition comes with a bonus illustration called "Chita Peninsula Old Tales Map" (知多半島むかし話ちず). As a former librarian, I think this ZINE is a wonderful piece of local-history material. There are two more newly arrived ZINEs: "What Is Work? — Career Consultant" (はたらくってなに?キャリアコンサルタント) and "What Is Work?" (はたらくってなに?). The editor of the career-consultant volume compiled memoirs and interviews with career consultants active around the country and with people who moved for work. From my perspective they are a "young" generation, and it's a very interesting ZINE about how they think about "working." Today's customers, besides those who delivered ZINEs and new books, included two women friends who found our shop online and came by. They liked the shop very much and bought several ZINEs. I'm grateful. After that, a regular customer who is a librarian came by in the evening because their shift ended early. We talked about the progress of events I'd been advising on and about work. We had a long chat over tea at Kissaten River, and before I knew it there was only an hour until closing. I hurried to schedule the rescheduled first session of "Beginner's Introduction to the Yūkaku" (which had been canceled due to a typhoon), and set the date for the second session as well. I registered both on Zindies' events, made a QR code, pasted it into Canva, created flyers, and began promoting on our X and other platforms. It was a busy day despite the modest sales. At closing, just as I was about to leave, the staff at Kissaten River were doing a bit of life counseling while waiting for the owner who had gone out to buy ingredients, so I joined the conversation until the owner came back. Given that there was a 40-year age gap, I'm not sure how helpful my advice was, though. A little while ago I checked and both the first and second sessions of the newly registered "Beginner's Introduction to the Yūkaku" already have multiple sign-ups! As expected, it's a very popular course. It's listed on our events page, so please check it out!

An exhibition and sales event for zines and craft works. It will be held on December 19, 2026, from 11:00–16:00 at G Messe Gunma Main Hall A. The event expects around 80 exhibitors, and information is provided regarding exhibitor rules, operational cooperation, and the possibility of photography and publication.

Every Monday the store is open, but it's my day off. A Zindies project member let me know that Zindies and refeel can be linked, so I thought I'd write a short diary entry. Today the author Ruko brought additional copies of "労働厨(^_^)♪" to the shop. That was helpful because there were only two copies left in the store. An additional shipment of "詩人茨木のり子の誕生" from Fubaisha is also expected to arrive. It was highly praised in the Asahi Shimbun's Saturday book review column the other day, so I'm looking forward to how well it will sell. Today I also did the important "work" of submitting a tanka to the Asahi Shimbun's "Tokai Kadan" column. I only submit when the selector is Professor Ogihara. I'm not particularly talented at tanka or creative writing in general, so managing to submit once every two months is the best I can do. Still, I've been selected and published in the paper several times, so I'm very happy about that. Not directly related to my job, but I received the proof of the novel "戦争と五人の女" (tentative title), scheduled to be published by Kawade Shobo in July. When I read it, it truly moved me. I was interested partly because the author Ran Domon is from the same hometown (born in Kure, Hiroshima), but I felt it was a masterpiece that doesn't seem like a debut novel. I'm not good at reading novels, so I don't have the ability to judge, but I hope many people will read this work. I'd like to make an opportunity to talk with the author. I'm looking forward to the July releases. I secretly hope it will be nominated for next year's Booksellers Award.

refeel and Zindies use the same diary format: a simple structure with a date, an optional title, and the entry body. That said, refeel is clearly easier to enter text with. It's specialized for diaries, and its underlying program differs from Zindies, so it runs more lightweight. With that in mind, I thought it might be a good idea to let refeel handle the diary part of Zindies, and I made integration possible. Usage is simple. First, sign up at https://refeel.day/ using your Google account. Then tap your name at the top of the screen. There you will find a button to link with Zindies—tap it. On the Zindies side, just choose which creator/store diary you want to link. After that, the apps coordinate and the data is reflected in each service. Diaries written in refeel are immediately reflected in Zindies, so afterwards you can write new entries in refeel, add past entries, or edit them. They also appear in refeel's "today's diary" and "yesterday's diary" sections, so you can show diaries to people who don't use Zindies. Zindies is currently trying to do many things within its own service, but if you let external services provide necessary features like this, you may be able to offer a more user-friendly product. Integration does add a small extra step, so some people might find it bothersome, but Zindies already allows anyone to create external services, so if you're interested, please try building one yourself.

A few days ago the weather forecast warned that two typhoons would approach Nagoya, so we decided and announced on Thursday afternoon that we would cancel the first session of the event 'Introduction to the Yūkaku for Beginners' scheduled for today. As soon as we began announcing it, applications flooded in and exceeded capacity — the course was so popular that we even changed the venue and increased the capacity (even though it was the first time holding the course) — so cancelling was truly a regrettable decision. However, since participants might have come from outside Nagoya or even from outside Aichi Prefecture, we put safety first and cancelled. Then, as it turned out, this afternoon the weather calmed down after the typhoon passed. Well, that's how it goes. On Thursday afternoon we posted the cancellation on Peatix, sent a mass email to participants, and posted daily on the shop's SNS, the instructor's SNS, and my SNS (I have more followers than the shop's X), but one person who had signed up still came to the store and apologized profusely. Fortunately, they said it was their first visit and exclaimed, 'I didn't expect such a lovely shop!' Thank you. We have decided to hold the event again, and next week we plan to announce both the rescheduled first session and the newly scheduled second session at the same time. Although the forecast predicted a typhoon today, a fair number of customers came to Café River. The bookstore also had a few customers from inside and outside the prefecture. We are truly grateful despite the typhoon. Among them, a young couple — a woman from Osaka and a man from Tokyo who met up in Nagoya — came to our shop. They took their time browsing the shelves they were interested in and each bought a few books. We were grateful. Also today, zine horror author Iyo visited. She delivered additional copies of the popular zine 'Unknown', which had sold out, and a new work titled 'Grandparents' House'. The cover of 'Grandparents' House' is a floor plan of a house, like something by Ameana-san! It's a story about a house with a sad history. Iyo is really talented.

ZINE Fest Sendai is a ZINE event held on October 24, 2026 from 11:00–16:00 at the AeL 5th Floor Multipurpose Hall (Sendai City Small and Medium Enterprise Revitalization Center) in front of Sendai Station. Admission is 500 yen. Information for exhibitors includes booth specifications and participation plans (e.g. 1 person, 2 people), participation fees, move-in/operation cooperation and prohibited items/rules, and photos taken on the day may be posted on social media.

Recently, after enabling 'creative diaries' and 'shop diaries', I realized that diaries and ZINEs probably go very well together. It's fine to keep them just within Zindies, but since it seemed like a good opportunity I tried extracting this part and turning it into a service — modern AI is amazing. I had it up and running in less than half a day. The new service is called refeel. The name is a coinage formed by adding 're' to 'feel', with a sense of 'feeling again'. We also came up with the copy "Refeel the days." I'll watch how it grows. It's hard to paste URLs in diary entries, but the site is https://refeel.day/. Thank you very much.

A record book of eating your way around Japan to sample the lightly sweet and delicious Taiwanese dessert 'douhua' (豆花)! We compiled more than 100 douhua spots from Hokkaido to Kyushu into a single volume. Every page is packed with douhua!

An anthology focused on "girls who work at maid cafés and concept cafés," written collectively by people who actually work at or frequent those establishments.

We are a circle that handles books of criticism/informational works, literary creations, and essays. Our main genres include “douhua” (豆花), maid cafés and concept cafés, railway-themed curry, and crime nonfiction books, among others. Xid：＠Calico_j

Last night we had a server trouble. It's not a service that suddenly gets a huge surge of traffic, so I suspected there might be a bug and checked how it was behaving. No matter how many times I accessed it, it was definitely slow. The data hadn't suddenly increased, and I couldn't find the cause anywhere. In the end, the problem was with the service that manages the server, not something we had caused. I posted an update on X asking people to try accessing it around tomorrow in a fairly relaxed tone, but inside I was worried about what would happen if the issue wasn't resolved. There was nothing to do but wait, so I gave up and went to sleep. When I woke up the trouble had been resolved. It seemed to have lasted about an hour. I checked the site and there were no data inconsistencies. I hadn't received any messages from users. Good. I didn't get much development done today because of other tasks, but I was playing with the part of the site that lets you download the diary as a PDF — it's interesting, so I tried extracting just that portion as a separate service from Zindies. Ideas keep coming, and using AI you can build things really quickly. But if we leave users behind it's counterproductive, so I want to proceed carefully. The rain and wind are picking up and letting up intermittently; you can tell a typhoon is approaching. More worrisome is a slightly odd earthquake I felt, but worrying won't help. For now I'll probably spend the weekend relaxing at home.

My shifts are every Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday from 13:00 to 19:00, so today I watched the World Cup match Japan vs Sweden at home in the morning before going out. I returned a book to the library, borrowed a picture book I had reserved, read it inside the library and returned it immediately (since it was raining and taking it home might make it wet), then went to work. The rain kept switching between light and heavy today, which is unfortunate for a street-level bookstore. Kissa River (喫茶リバー) also had few customers. There were no additional deliveries, so I printed this month’s book sales list and checked the inventory on the shelves. For items that have inventory data, there should be stock somewhere, so I searched around. There isn’t an obvious storage place, so some copies were hidden at the back of the shelves. I hid them myself, but that was a long time ago so my memory is fuzzy. Looking at the sales data, I found sales I had missed at the time, and I reconsidered whether to reorder them in bulk. I’d like to reorder everything that sold, but that would lead to excess inventory, so I’m cautious. Our shop set up a returns arrangement with Nippan last year, so in principle we can make returns, but the owner has never returned anything, and we’ve managed without returns so far — probably we won’t return items until we close the shop, I guess? ZINEs are almost all bought out, so inventory is increasing, and I’m a little worried about what to do next. In the evening, regular customer Chiharu came by. Chiharu plans to open a shopless bookstore in the near future, and today she brought a used comic she’d picked up as a gift. It was a manga anthology by Ako Mutsu, whose work I’ve been a fan of since my student days. Thanks! Next time I’m hoping for Yumiko Tabuchi. Chiharu was a baby when I was in university, so our conversations about favorite manga don’t really line up at all. Well, it’s almost closing time. The register was quiet again today, so I ended up buying one of the books I had been holding back.

An event that was scheduled to be held at NAgoya BOOK CENTER on Saturday was canceled due to the typhoon forecast. Come to think of it, I realized we hadn't made it possible to cancel events. We could delete it, which wouldn't be impossible, but if people had signed up I thought we'd need to contact them by email, so I handled that as well. Also, I changed the event listing page so that entries remain faintly visible for a while so people aren't surprised by them suddenly disappearing. The typhoon looks like it'll sweep across Japan over the weekend. I hope there won't be major damage.

This is a tanka gathering for beginners. The host is Chiharu Itō, supported by Satsuki Suzuki. If you would like to participate, please compose one tanka on the theme 'Nagoya' in advance (it's OK whether or not you explicitly include 'Nagoya' in the poem) and email it to [email protected] ⇨ Please send your email to the Ekinishi Small Tanka Gathering (by July 10).

Last night, since a typhoon looked likely to hit Nagoya this weekend, I coordinated with the lecturer via SNS about whether to hold the 'Nakamura Yūkaku' lecture scheduled for Saturday night. It's a very popular lecture with many attendees, so we wanted to go ahead, but with two typhoons (one of them maybe a tropical depression) approaching the Tokai region almost simultaneously, I felt it would be irresponsible to force it, so we decided to cancel. We can send a mass cancellation through the reservation site, but many people might not check it right away, so I sent the cancellation notice this afternoon as soon as possible. By the way, we are planning to hold the lecture again, so please look forward to it. It was raining from the time I came to work today, and there were fewer customers. A woman who had come on a day trip from Tokyo bought 'Bookstore Girl ②'! I thought she might be a bookstore worker, but she didn't seem to be. Still, she was a much-appreciated customer before the typhoon. Please take care on your way home. In the evening, our regular Chiharu stopped by. She said she had read the previous business report and complained, 'You didn't write that I came to the shop.' So today I'll make sure to write it down. Chiharu is going to hold a utakai (poetry gathering) at a bookstore in Motoyama soon. By the way, she will also hold a utakai at our place on July 18, so please join our utakai. For details, see the event page: https://peatix.com/event/4885883 https://zindies.co/events/273?locale=ja Because the register was quiet today, I decided to buy a book I'd been keeping aside for myself for times like this and take it home.

[Special Peer Review Meeting] We have organized a peer-review session for submissions to the literary contest "Kotonoha Nagoya" ✨ Open to residents of the Tokai region 🉑 The Inukai Creative Workshop produced last year's prize winners 🙌 Recommended for people like this: ✅ You feel uncertain or have questions when writing alone ✅ You want to boost your motivation toward the deadline ✅ You want to experience a peer review session ✅ You want to meet fellow creators ✅ You're a first-timer but want to apply! Let's all enjoy the midsummer special peer review session ✨✨ Peer review sessions will be held on August 1 and 15 (two days). Because we value careful revision, it's preferable to attend both days if possible, but one-day participation is also fine. 📩 [email protected] For contest submissions, please check the application guidelines on the official website. Kotonoha Nagoya official site ⬇️ https://kotonoha.nagoya-bungei.com

A well-received literary creative writing class since 2025. While the group critique-style workshop continues, the 1-DAY, 45-minute private lessons that started in May have scheduled dates in July 🙌 We’ve received positive feedback from students who have used the lessons so far 🥰 The location is LBIO, the bookstore in Kita-ku, Nagoya that has been supporting us. Dates are set for July 7 and July 18. ✅ Have you written something but aren’t sure if it’s good? ✅ Prefer a private lesson to a group critique? ✅ Want quick advice in a short time? ✅ Want to use it as motivation to meet a deadline? ✅ Want consultation about contests, zine production, or publishing? These lessons are for you. No restrictions on literary genre 💡 Repeat participants who previously attended the workshop are very welcome 💡 💎 No prior manuscript submission is required, but if your manuscript is 10 pages or more we will need time to pre-read it, so please consult in advance. (Pre-reading is available for an additional fee.) 💎 Private lessons take place during the shared bookstore’s opening hours, so there will be people coming and going. Please understand. 💎 Payment on the day by cash or PayPay. 🖋️ For inquiries and applications, please DM Inukai on Instagram or email [email protected] with your preferred date(s) and the genre of your manuscript.

This literary creative writing workshop, popular since 2025, continues its critique-style classes, and starting in May we began 1‑DAY, 45-minute private lessons. The July dates have been decided 🙌 We've received lovely feedback from students who've used the lessons so far 🥰 The location is the bookstore LBIO in Kita Ward, Nagoya, where we are always grateful for their support. Sessions are scheduled for July 7 and July 18. ✅ I wrote something — is this okay? ✅ I prefer a private lesson rather than the group critique ✅ I want quick advice in a short time ✅ I want to use it as motivation for a deadline ✅ I want consultation about submissions, zine production, or publishing These are the kind of people this is for. Any literary genre is welcome 💡 Repeat participants who previously joined the workshop are also very welcome 💡 💎 You do not need to submit your manuscript in advance, but if your manuscript is more than 10 sheets of genkō yōshi (manuscript paper), we will need time for pre-reading, so please consult in advance. (Pre-reading is available for an additional fee.) 💎 Private lessons take place during the shared bookstore's opening hours, so there will be people coming and going. Please be aware. 💎 Payment by cash or PayPay on the day. 🖋️ For inquiries and applications, please DM Inukai on Instagram or email [email protected] with your preferred date and the genre of your manuscript.

I'm grateful that so many people find it interesting that I can now write a diary. So I took the opportunity to make it possible to generate PDFs today. You can create Japanese and Traditional Chinese in vertical writing, and English and Hangul in horizontal writing. The generated PDFs are in a format that can be submitted to various printing services and include crop marks and such, but since there's no cover, they aren't really complete yet. Sorry. When I look at the PDF formatted in vertical writing, it looks like a proper 'piece' — different from how it appears on the screen — so the vertical-writing effect is surprisingly powerful. (laughs) However, the underlying process is heavy and it inevitably takes some time. I don't think it takes as long as five minutes, but five minutes on the web can feel almost like an eternity. Therefore, I've set it to send an email when creation is finished. I'd like to work a bit harder to make that faster. I'll keep improving it little by little.

Yesterday the USB that stored my PC data died. The data inside still seemed okay, so although it looked like a USB on the outside, it had a microSD card inside — a bizarre construction — so I was saved. I confirmed that last night. I went to ask if it could be salvaged as-is, but I was shouted at. They said, "This is a knockoff, it's already impossible," and insulted me. It was a hassle, so I went to another shop. There was a kind of consultation counter, so I told them the whole story. Can it be salvaged? They said maybe it could, but it would cost ¥6,000 just to produce an estimate, and if they could salvage it, it would be from ¥60,000. So I tried to think of the next proactive option. I explained the situation to a young staff member and asked about stock of HDDs and SSDs. Then I went to another store. It was an OUTLET, but I bought a 2TB HDD for ¥15,000 — the box was only sun-faded. The man who listened to my story was a good guy. I rescheduled today's plans and spent the whole day on data salvage after salvage after salvage. I did get yelled at by a man earlier, but the last older gentleman who served me was the kindest.