The Easy Life in Kamusari
I picked up this book at some point during some cheap Amazon sale, probably because I’ve read other Japanese authors during this time (Red Bean, Before the Coffee Gets Cold, among others), and this must have popped up as a recommended book.
This is yet another slice of life book, this time focusing on the more rural communities in Japan. We have the protagonist who was unceremoniously sent out of Tokyo after graduating High School, his parents and school counselor having found him work as a forester in the underpopulated areas of Japan where logging was still going on.
He arrives in the community to find a life vastly different from what he’s been used to, and the rest of the book goes through his adventures of getting used to his job, his community, and his new-life.
Its quite interesting as slice-of-lives books goes as it goes into the spiritual, physical, and metaphysical of such rural communities. There’s a bit of supernaturality that goes on in these places, and the book captures all of it quite well.
This is worth reading if you’re looking for a bit of a slow paced book to follow. The protagonist is very relatable, his job should be interesting to anyone not already in the logging industry, and the travails he goes through navigating his community is probably funny to most everyone not already living in a rural community. There’s a second book, which I’ll probably pick up once I’ve exhausted the rest of my reading list.
Reommended if you’re into slower paced slice-of-live novels.