Lately, this book caught my attention:

Kuhaku & Other Accounts from Japan

Here’s the synopsis from the book’s page:

When we set out to find stories for Kuhaku & Other Accounts from Japan, we knew what we wanted: candid tales of life in Japan that weren’t trying to slice and dice the country and the culture into digestable nuggets. We weren’t looking for Ph.D. dissertations, just smartly told tales from the street.

Having lived in Japan for a long time, we realized these stories were everywhere. We tracked the writers down, asked permission to publish their tales, or more often, prodded them to put that story they had told us down on paper. Just about everybody responded favorably.

The stories in Kuhaku come from everywhere: tall tales told over beers in a pub, stories of corporate drudgery related during the lunch hour, doodlings on napkins at the local Starbucks and professional pieces produced on deadline for far-away readers.

I gotta get me a copy! Maybe you should too!