Evening Clouds is an incredible book that should be read slowly. This is not the kind of book to stay up all night with; the tranquility and closeness of the Oura family should be enjoyed over a week or two. Once reconciled to the idea that nothing "exciting" is going to happen, the reader can sit back and savor the beauty that may or may not exist in his own life. A person leading a particularly stressful existence would benefit from a few weeks mentally on top of a windy mountain in Tokyo with a loving wife, three adorable children and ample time to work in the garden. The only threats to peace are that developers are encroaching on the surrounding hillside and the children are growing up; this hint of sadness in an otherwise happy novel makes it a perfect reading experience.

Nothing can be said or written about life but this book certainly comes close. Not only it captured the reader realization of the subtle life we might experience, this book will make you think about what important to one's life.

This is a great supplement for those studying Japanese language and culture. Don't expect to pick this up as a first Japanese book, however! In the introduction, the author admits that "Basic Japanese Through Comics" may be a little misleading. It is basic Japanese, but the book assumes that you have studied a year or more in a classroom environment.

With that aside, this is the best resource I have seen for transforming "classroom" Japanese into "natural" Japanese. The book uses popular Japanese manga to smooth out some common errors for Japanese learners. For example, there are two chapters discussing the many uses of "Hai" and one chapter on how to naturally say "anno..."

The manga used is very fun and gives a good cultural insight into daily Japan. No giant robots or magical girls, it is mainly office humor in the same line as "Dilbert." The office humor demonstrates varying levels of polite language, and Mangajin is kind enough to offer a "politeness scale" to show how polite anyone is being in a given setting. This is very useful, as politeness levels is where many English speakers find themselves in trouble in Japan!

This book (there are at least a couple volumes) is great! It's refreshing to find an approach complimentary to the basics one would learn in class, and we find that, just as in every other language, day-to-day speaking is often quite a bit different from the stuff you're taught in the early learning stage. And hey! You're reading comics! How bad can that be?