Various full color attractive veg cooking books are
displayed in B2S. In Thailand basically there is the well know “Jay” which is
Buddhist food without any animal ingredient just like vegan food, and also some
specific herbs like garlic are not used for health reasons (related to traditional Chinese medicine),
and the lesser popular “Mangsawirat”, which means lacto ovo vegetarian and has
no connection with a religion.
The book in the middle is Mangsawirat. It looks trendy and
goes with the modern “eat less meat” trend. Great job!
The book at the right, look at that! My fav!! A Jay food recipe book with great tasty vegan recipes and attractive full color photos. The yellow Jay sign cleverly is not in the usual
old fashioned Chinese style but a modern
Thai style font. The sub title reads “Vegan Food”. That’s right! It is vegan
food; no animal ingredients for ethical reasons just like us western
vegans.
My next pleasant surprise in the book shop is when I see
this children’s book about sharks.
“When sharks attack it is by mistake.”
“Sharks are
threatened by excessive fishing.”
The author of this precious and gentle
educational book is a certain mr. Tatsu Nagata of the Tokyo Research Center. That
should be a mild kick in the head to some western vegan bigots out there. :-)
"Good kids salute the national flag."
One of my favorite things that I like to do is reading.
When I was a child I used to browse through the public libraries shelves and
just read book after book after book, just any topic would be fine, except
books about “sports” or “cars” and other similar exciting books.
Anyway. Tokyo was absolutely fabulous and that is an
understatement. Bookshops with 6 or 7 or more large floors filled withbooks
books books and …more books, are common in Tokyo, and full with customers.
Japanese people love to read.
Any of these mega book shops always has a great selection
of books in the English language. Besides the Foreign Language section I
always would walk around and look at what’s new, the Japanese books, the
magazines, the latest veg cooking book by a Japanese author…
All of these great mega bookshops also sold my
self-published bilingual Japan Vegan Restaurant Pocketguide quiet
successfully. Pat pat on my back.
Thailand is a tat different when it comes to the noble art
of reading a book. I will keep it at that.
In Bangkok there are two branches of my favorite Japanese
book shop Kinokuniya. These Bangkok book shops have a great selection,
including a selection of Chinese, Japanese, and English books. Their customers
are largely Japanese ex pats, western ex pats, and Thai people from Chinese
descendants. Few regular Thai people.
In a regular Thai book shop like B2S (still didn’t figure
out what it stands for, I mean, I know BS but why the 2 in the middle..?) the
most prominent books displayed with a flashy full color cover are books about
making money, to become successful in business, “self improvement”, books about
how to use Face Book on your mobile telephone, and books about how to use all
kind of computer programs.
Today I was pleasantly surprised though to see a whole
selection of veg cooking books prominently displayed. Some staff must be a
vegetarian is my guess. J
Thumbs up.
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