What can I say, you got to love how Japanese do certain things in daily life. The way they eat, the way they talk, their mannerisms etc etc. It didn’t take me long to find something different in a bookstore yesterday. I took a trip to one of the local bookstores yesterday, not to find books to read (since I can’t read Japanese), but to see just what sort of books they have. Apart from the usual magazines, and books that you would expect to find in a bookstore, I found this:
Looks like comic books at first. But this is contradictory to the title at the top, indicating “Learning History”. A quick browse through them, I can recognise some familiar Japanese cartoon characters like Doraemon:
As well as the naughty “Crayon Kid”:
Hmm.. was this a mistake? It turns out, all of these books are about Japanese history, or certain aspects of Japanese history. The difference is, it is done “Manga” style or cartoon style if you are not familiar with manga!
Just flipping through some of these pages, these famous Japanese characters are busy exploring ancient Japan, while explaining history along the way, all in a fun and interesting manner. NO doubt, it is a lot more interesting reading comics about history, than reading boring textbooks instead!
I know Manga is a huge part of Japanese culture here. But this is certainly an ingenious way to keep kids interested in learning a boring topic! Good thing is, you can also get manga-style history books on other countries and history on certain topics like sports, cars and whatever subjects you are interested in.
Finding yourself bored and falling asleep in history class? Well, ask for a cartoon-style history comic book!! It certainly kept me interested and reading for at least half an hour in that bookstore!! 🙂
