Life In Japan: Passion For Reading

Does anyone in the U.S. read anymore?  I mean read something longer than a tweet, or a comment on Facebook.  Do people have time to read a book?

Recent statistics tell us that literary reading in the U.S. is in steady decline, despite the fact that the number of people with bachelor degrees or higher has almost doubled since 1982.

To the chagrin of those who think the revolutionary introduction of digital books — ebooks — may make these numbers skewed, these stats include ebooks.

What are people reading?  The ingredients labels on their protein bars?

I can also report that, much to the detriment of the forests in the world, printing on paper is very alive and well here in Japan.  Japanese love their books, magazines, travel guides, self-help owners manuals, printed and hand-held.  People regularly pack bookstores the way Americans flock to Walmart for Black Friday — on a regular basis!

I’m not sure what any of this definitively says about Japanese culture vs. Western culture.

I do know, as a person who used to never go anywhere without a book, and used every spare moment waiting in line, between this something-or-other and that something-or-other, on a coffee or lunch break, traveling, during awkward silences in a conversation, to read, I feel right at home here.

Everyone’s different.  If you feel good about carrying a soccer ball everywhere . . . just do it!