"Nerding Out About Japanese Popular Culture covers the wonderfully nerdy world of Japanese popular culture: from anime to J-Pop. This 45th Parallel hi-lo series includes considerate vocabulary and high-interest content"-- Provided by publisher.

A little girl describes the city of Tokyo in which she lives by the passage of the months and seasons of the year.

For the traditional Japanese celebration of Girls' Day, Yoko receives a special gift from her grandparents in Japan: a doll named Miki that has been passed down through her family for generations. Yoko is so excited to share Miki with the class that she disobeys her mother, who tells her, "Miki is too delicate to take to school."

In 1955, two young people admire the rich, material culture of the United States while struggling in the poverty of their life and surviving on love and hope.

"Yoshiharu Tsuge is one of the most celebrated and influential comics artists, but his work has been almost entirely unavailable to English-speaking audiences. The Man Without Talent, his first book to be translated into English, is an unforgiving self-portrait of frustration. Swearing off cartooning as a profession, Tsuge takes on a series of unconventional jobs--used-camera salesman, ferryman, stone collector--hoping to find success among the hucksters,...