Pack your bags. It’s summer, and it’s the longest day, when your thoughts may turn not only to where you will vacation but also to what you will read. Personally, I love books that whisk me away to exotic places without having to shell out the airfare. (My own novel, Gina in the Floating World, is set in 1981 Japan.) Whether or not you plan to travel anywhere, these five sense-filled novels, all published in 2019 (presented in order of publication date), will transport you ac

Nara, Japan, is known for its magnificent cherry trees, which blossom between late March and early April. In my 20s, I was fortunate enough to be in Nara at this time, prior to heading to Tokyo, where I became a bar hostess. This slightly paraphrased excerpt from the diary I kept focuses more on the people I met and the food I ate than on the cherry blossoms. “After arriving in Nara from Kyoto by train, we walked through Nara-koen Park to be greeted by tame deer covered in pi

As I prepared for my interview with Mr. K, the club owner, I worried about my lack of glamour. I had all the wrong clothes and the wrong look. My skirts were too short and my hair, too long. I wasn't blond enough or foreign enough. I bought some makeup, washed my hair, and dressed as well as I could after ten months of living out of a backpack. I tried not to think what my feminist friends would say, nor to listen to my own feminist conscience. At the appointed hour, I met Mr

The rain poured down in opaque sheets outside the American Express office in Tokyo, where I collected my mail, and considered my alternatives for the afternoon. For eight months in the mid 1970s, I’d been traveling over large stretches of Asia, much of it alone. Once more a natural phenomenon would determine my fate. Had it not been for an earthquake in Darwin, Australia and the subsequent purchase of a cheap "bucket shop" plane ticket that allowed me multiple stops on the wa