Foreign Book Sale at Kinokuniya!

On Thursday, I accidentally stumbled into the first day of Kinokuniya’s summer foreign book sale.

The Takashimaya Times Square branch of Kinokuniya in Shinjuku is a long-time favorite of mine for getting foreign books. Living out in Chiba and usually having a pretty fully schedule means I don’t tend to get there that often, however. While I was dimly aware that they had a summer sale, I hadn’t kept track of the specifics and it certainly wasn’t something I’d planned for. The whole thing was quite a pleasant surprise!

While I was mostly oblivious, however, quite a lot of people were clearly not, and the place was unusually crowded around the piles of books that were on sale. A broad range of books across multiple genres, fiction and non-fiction, and both classics and recent releases were marked down. While children’s picture books aren’t part of the sale, a separate bunch of chapter books for young adults and children were also discounted. 

Squeezing in to peruse the books without hitting anyone was no small feat, but it was worth the effort. I was able to get 3 books, one of which had been on my wishlist for quite awhile, all of which were discounted. Two of them were marked down to 1600 yen, while the third was marked down to 880 yen. All in all, it was a pretty good deal for new foreign books in Japan!

The Takashimaya Kinokuniya book sale will run until July 15th, and numerous signs told me that they will add new books to the discounted collection each day. If you’re in the greater Tokyo area and looking for some summer reading, it might be worth stopping by!