Japan: A Traveler's Literary Companion ed. by Jeffrey Angles (2006)

This anthology of prose pieces put together by our Japanese language professor was a delight. I have known that Japan is a large country, but never thought about how different all the regions might be. (Just looked it up, Japan is over 1800 miles long, the same distance as from Bangor, ME to Key West, FL.) I liked the idea of reading stories from the different parts of Japan, with a map (I love maps) to guide me. All were 20th century writers, many still alive today. Some of the stories were fictional, some not, but each was a gem. The mountains were an important part of many of the stories, for some, so was the ocean. Though each reflected the personal of experiences of the people mentioned, each gave a flavor of the history and place, whether it was excavating a mass grave from the war, or the reality of earthquakes.