"Koko wa hon o kariru dake janai toshokan" (This Library Is Not Just for Borrowing Books) — the first edition, third printing — is almost out of stock. At this timing, we're planning to reissue it with the content largely unchanged but with different typeface and sizes. We've set ruby (furigana) throughout, but because some readers find the ruby visually noisy, we're reducing the number of lines per page and the number of characters per line so that full ruby is easier to read. We tried a gothic (sans-serif) font. I thought a UD font might be good, but I heard gothic can be easier to read, so I'm trying gothic this time. Because the number of characters per page has decreased, the total page count has increased by about 20 pages compared with the first edition. As pages increase, production costs go up a little, so we're changing the paper for the main text. The higher production cost itself isn't a huge problem; I'm more worried that the thicker spine and added weight will increase shipping costs when sending copies to bookstores, for example. With the first edition I could send five copies in one Click Post, but with the increased thickness and weight I may only be able to send four or three copies per Click Post. That said, sales are no longer high enough to justify bulk shipments, so maybe it's not something to worry about too much. Even if the page count and production costs rise somewhat, I will not change the current selling price of 2000 yen, and I don't plan to change the terms for selling to bookstores. Formally it will become a second edition and its appearance will change, but we won't know what it will look like until it's produced, so I ordered just three printed-and-bound copies this time. They should arrive in a little over a week, and after seeing them I'll place the main order. Professor Noguchi from Aoyama Gakuin University will visit the shop on August 1 for a talk event, and I'd like to unveil it then — but I wonder if it'll be ready in time.

From Saturday yesterday until Monday tomorrow I'm off. Yesterday I attended a lecture at the Moriyama Lifelong Learning Center given by a local historian who helped me when I was working at the library. Back when I was at Shidami Library I hadn't done much with local history, but after I also became director of Moriyama Library I built more connections with the members of the local history study groups, and I finally began to feel the history of Moriyama Ward as something close to me. At the lecture I was happy not only to meet the local historian again after a long time but also to see an "adopted disciple," a first-year junior high student, so I'm glad I got up early to attend. He is scheduled to be the instructor for a class at Shidami Library in August, so I plan to attend that as well. I had intended to relax at home all Sunday morning, but because the ZINE creator 染よだか, who will be the instructor for the events planned in August and September, and I finalized the event title at a recent meeting, I designed an SNS flyer in Canva today so we could start announcing it and registered the event on Zindies. After all, the August event will be held on the 4th, so there is less than a month left. We need to start announcing early. The August 4 event is titled "染よだか　おやつもぐもぐうたかい," a gathering where everyone eats snacks while reading tanka and chatting. The September event will be held on Saturday the 19th under the title "染よだか　詩を読む会," where 染さん will read her poems aloud. Shortly after the August tanka gathering was opened to the public, one person signed up, which was great.

A gathering where 染よだか reads their own poems aloud and chats.

Would you like to chat about tanka with 染よだか while munching on snacks? If you'd like to participate, please compose one tanka and send it to our shop's X account @NBC_horiebldg or by email to [email protected] by August 3.

This is a diary I can now write on Zindies, but I'm still weak on the parts that actually get printed. When using convenience-store printing, it's convenient to lay things out on A4 and print double-sided, so I was working on it at my desk while wrestling with an AI. If you cut it top and bottom and then fold each piece once more, you get an A6 booklet. Still, the more I think about it the more ideas and tweaks come up—like wanting a proper cover or guards to make sure the printed pages are assembled in the correct order. That said, today I managed to get it to a point I'm satisfied with for now. The problem is that the nearby convenience store closed, so I'd have to go to a more distant one to try it out. It's a good chance to get some exercise, so I'll go take a short trip. Thanks for your hard work!

Today the wind was cool, but the clinging humidity made my steps heavy even when I walked outside. To beat the heat I bought a watermelon at the nearby supermarket, but I got carried away and bought a whole one, so it was heavy to carry home. Serves me right. Over at Zindies I heard from Fujisaka: "I don't have any business cards, so please add some!" Although my stack of business cards shows no sign of shrinking, I'm grateful that people are handing them out in so many places. As for refeel, which I released last week, it's beginning to take the form of a paperback, and, bit by bit, the diary entries are increasing. If we can create something that resembles an actual paperback book rather than something made at a convenience store, it could reach a wider audience. Please look forward to the refeel paperback.

I felt down before going to work today. I'm not sure whether it's because of Roki Sasaki's pitching, because this month's sales aren't good, or because I'm dieting and low on energy, but there's an event tonight that I'm looking forward to, so I need to prepare for it. In the afternoon I went to work. This week the area west of the station has been very quiet. Since the typhoon, people's movements seem a bit stalled. Today Kotomi, a zine creator who has recently been working hard on tanka as well, came by the shop. I handed her the reprint of the poetry collection we made together. Since she seemed to have time, we chatted over tea at Cafe River. It's been a while since we had a long conversation. We talked about the shared shelf. Kotomi rents a shelf at LbIo in Kita Ward and apparently does quite well. My home bookshelf is full, so I was thinking about selling some books through online used-bookstores, but becoming a shelf owner at LbIo sounds fun and might give me hints for managing our shared shelf (not that I'm the one running it), so I'll ask Kotomi to put me on the waiting list. After all, what sells on a shared shelf probably changes depending on the shelf owner and the shopkeeper's atmosphere. In the evening there was a talk event by Hibi Yoshitaka, author of The Bookstores of the Empire and a professor at Nagoya University's graduate school. He spoke last November, and this time I invited him again to mark his double win this fiscal year of the Watsuji Tetsurō Cultural Prize and the Japan Publishing Society Award. The Bookstores of the Empire is a major work tracing the footsteps of Japanese who crossed the sea from Japan to open bookstores in places occupied by the Japanese military—such as the Korean Peninsula, Manchuria, Taiwan, Southeast Asia, the Chinese mainland, and North America. It's 400 pages and priced at 5,400 yen, so it's not an easy sell, but it's not only very readable—it is genuinely fascinating. You can almost hear the breathing of the booksellers who crossed the sea. I'd love to see NHK adapt it into a drama. I especially recommend it to people involved in bookstores and publishing. By the way, the Nagoya City Library has only one copy, at Tsurumai. Branch libraries rarely purchase books priced over 5,000 yen unless there's a compelling reason. There are 2.35 million residents and 21 libraries in the city, though. It's a shame.

　Fable5 has been re-released. Maybe because of that, Claude as a whole feels slower. If it were only slow that would be one thing, but amusingly there seems to be one AI that returns clearly nonsensical answers. (Well, that's a problem since the tasks I'm asking it to solve are serious.) I don't know whether computers give weird answers when under load, but would people call that something like "feeling unwell"? 　Zindies itself can't move forward smoothly without AI, so it's taking a short break. Meanwhile various messages have come in, and one of them might lead to a somewhat interesting update. 　

[Exhibitors Wanted!!] I was thinking there hasn't been a ZINE festival in Oita〜 and it turned into a plan to hold it as an "Adult Culture Festival"! Application guidelines We are looking for people engaged in activities such as the following: ・ZINEs, illustrations, photographs, and artworks ・Handmade items ・Food (items with no on-site cooking; if approved, submission of required documents such as a business license will be required) ・Fortune-telling, readings, and portrait sketches ・Hand massages, etc. ・Others who express their "likes" or particular passions Please apply via the link! 💫

　NAgoya BOOK CENTER, where Mr. Fujisaka—also a member of Zindies—serves as manager. I'm grateful that they post lots of event information. 　Yesterday there was a registration for an event called "Introduction to the Yūkaku for Beginners" (two sessions in September and November), and the registrations for each session exceeded 10 people in no time. Amazing! 　Thanks to Mr. Fujisaka, we've become clearer on how to promote events on the site, and it's improved considerably. 　If you create an event page, you can accept registrations immediately, so please give it a try.

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