it can’t all be about manga…

In Japan, that is, and the answer is of course I did!  I have to say it’s kind of torture for a manga fan to walk around a bookstore surrounded by manga that’s not only in another language, but wrapped so you can’t even flip through the books!   And I’m not exaggerating when I say surrounded.  :(  Other than some requested souvenirs, I didn’t buy a lot of books for myself, though - I’ve trained myself not to buy manga when I can only look at the pictures.  I did get Fruits Basket 23 and a fan book, an xxxHolic fan book (for the pretty pretty colour pictures), Kamichama Karen Chu 1 (yeah, I probably spelled that wrong…), Junjo Romantica 4 (because I love and adore both the story and art in that series), a random Peach-Pit manga about zombies (it made sense at the time) and volumes 4-6 of Yotsuba&!  I found out when I got back that ADV will finally be releasing volumes 4 and 5 of that last one fairly soon, but I’m still glad I picked them up.

Out of all the books that I bought, the Yotsuba&! ones are the best to look at if you can’t read the language.  The stories are all simple enough to be told through the art and I found most of the humour comes from Yotsuba herself, and that’s universal.  There was one particular sequence in volume 5 that had me doubled over in giggles.

Here are a few of the pages.  I’d do the whole thing, but that’d be too many images.  It’s easy enough to get the gist of it from these.  :)  It opens with some dude coming over while Yotsuba’s dad is gone to the store…

But it’s okay!  Dad comes home and knows the guy.  I have no idea who he is, but he’s now been invited in for some ramen and onigiri…

Hee hee hee! 

If you haven’t already gone out and bought Yotsuba&! do yourself a favour and do it now.