It's not all hard work

It is not all hard work being a bookseller. In March, Paul sent me to Japan for a book fair. It was a scary and wonderful experience. I was terrified that I didn’t speak any Japanese and the fact that I was going alone, but Japan is a breath-takingly beautiful, superbly run and filled with some very lovely and helpful people.


The book fair itself was well organised, hosting some of the oldest and most prestigious book firms in the world, showing astonishing illustrated Japanese books and scrolls; an eye opening experience.

My most memorable moment was when Josh Carey from Bondi Books took me along to dinner with his Japanese book seller friends. Bondi Books is located in Tokyo, but Josh is originally from Australia and use to live around the corner from the Cornstalk Bookshop. He is a young bookseller, as were his friends; a nice change. One of the booksellers knew about an exclusive restaurant and leading us into the back streets of Tokyo, seeming to get us lost.

We make our way through the back door of a large building and squeeze into a rickety elevator. When the doors open we file through into a small space with a large heavy metal door. Someone knocks, and just like in a movie a metal window slides open. They have a quick discussion and then we are let in. The interior is dark and atmospheric and smells delightful.

Through a haze of smoke, we ate Teppanyaki and drank beer and chatted. I discovered through broken English and the kind translation of Josh that I was amongst an 8th and 13th generation book sellers. They spoke about their experiences during big earthquakes, fires that ravaged the city and epic wars. They told of books lost forever and those treasures hidden away from these perils. They boasted about big sales and their most precious books. But their proudest moments, the things that made them happiest of all, were their children and their wives or husbands. And in this technologically advanced era, they did not pull out folded photographs out of their wallets they pulled out their phones.