"One rainy night, Kazu sees a strange figure in a white kimono sneak out of his house--was he dreaming? Did he see a ghost? The next day at school, the very same person is sitting in his class--and all his friends are convinced that the ghost-girl Akari has been their friend for years. If that isn't weird enough, Kazu learns that his house is in the exact location of an ancient temple called KimyM, which, legend has it, could bring the dead back to...

As five-year-old Keiko and her eighty-five year old Obi, or grandmother, excitedly prepare to celebrate the Star Festival, Tanabata Matsuri, Obi tells the story of Tanabata. Includes information about the festival and how it is celebrated.

When the Imperial Household Council refuses to approve the marriage of her parents, eighteen-year-old Izumi decides to become the perfect princess to help win the council's consent, but will she sacrifice her own heart in order to secure her parents' happiness?

When Suki the salamander--the new foreign exchange student--is being stalked by ninja frogs, Danny, Wendell the iguana, and Suki travel to Great-grandfather Dragonbreath's home in mythical Japan to find a solution for the problem.

Caught in Japan and separated from their father when World War II begins, Italian sisters Simona, thirteen, and Carolina, ten, embark on a trying journey hoping to reach safety. Includes historical notes.

"There's a catfish under Japan, and when it rolls the land rises and falls. At least that's what Sora was told after she lost her mother to an earthquake so powerful that it cracked time itself. Sora and her father are some of the few who still live near one of these "zones"--the places where time has been irrevocably sped up or slowed down. Sora's father leads a research team studying the zones, and even as his colleagues begin to fall ill, he refuses...

After many years of retirement, an old Kamishibai man--a Japanese street performer who tells stories and sells candies--decides to make his rounds once more even though such entertainment declined after the advent of television.

"Ren Scarborough has been collecting souls in the London streets for centuries...When her failure to control her Shinigami abilities drives Ren out of London, she flees to Japan to seek the acceptance she's never gotten from her fellow Reapers. Accompanied by her younger brother, the only being on earth to care for her, Ren enters the Japanese underworld to serve the Goddess of Death, only to learn that here, too, she must prove herself worthy"--

Told in two voices, seventeen-year-old kamikaze pilot Taro and fifteen-year-old war worker Hana meet in 1945 Japan, he with no future and she, haunted by the past. Includes historical notes and glossary.

When a tiny wizard whisks seven-year-old Patricia and her crutches from her home in Australia to Japan, she encounters his family, an evil ghoul, and the hope of a magic cure for her physical handicap.