Showing results by narrator "Kenichiro Thomson" in All Categories

'What are you looking for?' asks Tokyo's most enigmatic librarian, Sayuri Komachi. She is no ordinary librarian. Naturally, she has read every book on her shelf, but she also has the unique ability to read the souls of anyone who walks through her door. Sensing exactly what they're looking for in life, she provides just the book recommendation they never knew they needed to help them find it.

Nestling at the bottom of a five-storey apartment block in the community of Advance Hill is the children's playground, Hinode Park, where you will find a very special hippo ride. According to urban legend, if you touch it with the area of your body that needs comfort, you will see swift signs of recovery.

Hidden away in a corner of the Ginza neighbourhood is a venerable stationery shop. To venture inside is to find everything your stationery-loving heart desires, from the most delicate paper to fountain pens that fit exactly to the shape of your hand to gorgeously coloured inks. The shop owner intuits your every need, inviting you to take a seat at a small wooden table on the top floor, where you'll find the words flowing, helping you unlock repressed memories, secret longings and your own mysteries.

A charming book of linked stories with a sprinkling of cosy fantasy and a fable-like touch... The Amberglow Candy Store in the Night Alley introduces the listener to half-fox shopkeeper Kogetsu, whose magical wagashi sweets from his shop on Gloaming Lane promise to change his customers' lives for the better. We follow an array of characters from various walks of life through their encounters with Kogetsu, who himself learns some major life lessons along the way, and reveals his own backstory in the process.

Tokyo, 1960. As the first rays of morning light hit the rails at Kamata Station, a man's body is found on the tracks: blood-stained, disfigured and unrecognisable. With only two leads - a distinctive accent and a single word, "kameda" - senior inspector Imanishi Eitaro is called in to solve the puzzle. Accompanied by junior detective Yoshimura, he crosses Japan in search of answers, determined to uncover the secrets of this gruesome crime.

Onizuka Kumako is a fierce woman: tall, beautiful, and not afraid to speak her mind. In Tokyo bars, she seduces customers and commits petty crime, using her connections to the local yakuza to get by. When she meets Shirakawa Fukutaro, a rich widower desperate for companionship and unaware of her shady past, the two hit it off and are soon married. But their newlywed bliss is suddenly cut short: one rainy July evening, their car veers off course, plunges into the harbour and Fukutaro is pulled beneath the waves.

When Hirase, a young woman from Tokyo, arranges an appointment with the Go-Between, she doesn't expect a teenager to show up. Dressed preppy-style in a duffel coat and carrying a notebook, he invites the dead back into the real world - at least, this is what Hirase has pieced together from his website page. Ushered into a luxury hotel to await her meeting, the Go-Between lays down the ground-rules: the reunion lasts one evening under a full moon; the dead person cannot be called back by anyone else, and may refuse to meet.

Ayumi is a young man with special powers to bring back the dead to meet the living. A gift passed down in his family, he is able to arrange meetings according to strict rules and always under a full moon. After years in this role, he begins to question its meaning, and how his powers affect his own desires in the real world. Find out how Ayumi and his clients learn to lose their regrets, open up to the unexpected, and cherish what they already have in this profound and moving novel by Japan's leading storyteller.

Every night, Kawashima Masayuki creeps from his bed and watches over his baby girl's crib while his wife sleeps. Deciding to confront his demons, Kawashima sets into motion a chain of events seeming to lead inexorably to murder.

It's just before New Year, and Frank, an overweight American tourist, has hired Kenji to take him on a guided tour of Tokyo's red light district. As Frank's behaviour becomes increasingly unsettling, Kenji begins to entertain a horrible suspicion: his client may in fact have murderous intentions. Although Kenji is far from innocent himself, he unwillingly descends into the troubling waters of Frank's mind, from which only his sixteen-year-old girlfriend, Jun, can possibly save him.

Since the death of his wife seven years ago, documentary maker Aoyama has not dated anyone else. Now even his teenage son, Shige, thinks that he should remarry and his best friend Yoshikawa comes up with a plan: to hold fake film auditions from which, he can choose a new bride. Of the thousands who apply, it is a beautiful ballerina, Yamasaki Asami, who captivates Aoyama. Infatuated by her fragile nature and nervous smile, he ignores his increasing sense of unease, putting aside his doubts about his new love, until it may be too late...

On the peaceful Japanese island of Teshima there is Shinzo¯-on no A¯kaibu, a library of heartbeats, a place where the heartbeats of visitors from all around the world are collected. In this small, isolated building, the heartbeats of people who are still alive or have already passed away continue to echo. Several miles away, in the ancient city of Kamakura, two lonely souls meet: Shuichi, a forty-year-old illustrator, who returns to his home-town to fix up the house of his recently deceased mother, and eight-year-old Kenta, a child who wanders like a shadow around Shuichi's house.

A super-criminal - as deadly as she is beautiful - wagers all in an epic battle with a master detective, Akechi Kogoro. No trick is too elaborate, no disguise too fantastic as the two perfectly matched antagonists take turns to outwit each other.

A reclusive writer of detective stories, Oe Shundei, has gone missing, leaving behind a suspicious trail of blackmailing letters to a former lover. Another detective novelist, his rival, is the only one who can find him. A sequence of macabre and appalling events follows.

It has been half a year since Akiyama Daijiro became a samurai; half a year since he left his father Kohei – once the most skilled swordsman in the land – to set up his own blade school by the cool of the river. Ever since, amid the swaying bamboo groves, he waits patiently for his first disciple. But his serenity is soon disrupted by the visit of a mysterious samurai with an unhonourable offer: in exchange for a vast sum of gold, he must attack and injure the daughter of the Shogun’s most senior counsellor.

Hidden away in Tokyo's Ginza district lies Shihodo, a hidden gem known only to insiders, with an abundant selection of fine stationery. Behind its counter stands Ken Takarada, the enigmatic shop owner whose warm presence draws those seeking more than just beautiful paper and colourful inks. To this shop come more customers with worries weighing on their hearts: a young girl being bullied by her classmates, a salary man facing the lonely prospect of retirement.

When Japanese-American teenager, Adam, discovers a diary in his attic, he is enthralled by its account of a young Japanese woman’s life. A hundred years separate them yet she, like Adam, is caught between cultures, relationships and heartbreak. She also writes of the ghosts that have begun to seek her out, which Adam dismisses as fantasy – until he too, begins to be haunted. It leads him to Nagasaki, trying to solve the mystery of the diary, and his own identity.

Tokyo, 1940. While Japan's war against China escalates, young Yuji Takano clings to his cocooned life: his beloved evenings of French conversation at Monsieur Feneon's, visits to the bathhouse with friends, his books, his poetry. But conscription looms and the mood turns against foreigners, just when Yuji gets entangled with Feneon's daughter. As the nation heads towards conflict with the Allies, Yuji must decide where his duty - and his heart - lies.