I was walking through the kid’s section of the bookstore the other day when this beauty caught my eye:
How absolutely awesome, I thought. It’s a picture book about paradise, or Buddhist heaven.
Hey, wait. If they have a book about gokuraku“-極楽, they surely must have a book about…
And they did!
Hell!!
There it is. A picture book about Buddhist jigoku-地獄.
So cool. So cool.
But the fun doesn’t stop there. It wasn’t two days later when I was browsing the library that this lovely piece of work stopped me in my tracks.
BUTTS!
An entire picture book on animal butts. And if my guess is correct, will probably end with a nice pink human one!
(No, really. I need to go back and thumb through that one. Just for curiosity’s sake.)
Okay, okay, but really, it doesn’t end there (or maybe it *does* end there).
Alas, no Japanese bookstore or library is complete without a book about…
Hold on. It’s better than that. It’s not a book about poop. It’s an entire set of (karuta) cards on the subject.
I’ll let that haunt your thoughts for awhile…
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