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  • Location: Tokyo

The Nakano Thrift Shop

The Nakano Thrift Shop

Why a Booktrail?

2000s: “From the ordinary the extraordinary grows”

  • ISBN: 978-1846276002
  • Translator: Allison Markin Powell
  • Genre: Fiction

What you need to know before your trail

Hitomi takes a job on the cash register of a neighbourhood thrift store, she finds herself drawn into a very strange and unusual community.

Mr Nakano for example is an enigmatic ladies’ man with several ex-wives; Masayo, Mr Nakano’s sister, is an artist who has never married; and her fellow employee Takeo, a shy but charming young man.

Every day, customers from the neighbourhood come in to the store, each with a story of their own. When Hitomi and Takeo begin to fall for one another, they find themselves in the centre of their own drama – and on the edges of many others.

Travel Guide

Imagine a thrift store like this one:

“With its second hand goods (not antiques), Mr Nakano’s shop was literally filled to overflowing. Japanese -style dining tables to old electric fans , from air conditioners to tableware, the shop was crammed with the kind of items found in a typical household from the 1960s and later.

In the mornings, Mr Nakano would raise the shops’s shutter and, with a cigarette between his lips, he’s arrange the goods intended to tempt customers outside the front of the store

Bowls and plates that had any kind of fancy pattern, arty task lamps, onyx-like paperweights shaped like turtles or rabbits, old-school typewriters an the like…”

Booktrail Boarding Pass Information:  The Nakano Thrift Shop

Author/Guide: Hiromi Kawakami Destination: Tokyo  Departure Time: 2000s

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