This guide to the Japanese zodiac gives a complete explanation of all 12 animal years. Like people of the West, Eastern people have a zodiac. Unlike that of the West, however, the Eastern system has a cycle of twelve years instead of months. Each year of the cycle has its own particular animal symbol whose roots of meaning, origin, and influence stretch back to ancient India and China. One of the traditional Japanese stories pertaining to this zodiacal system and how it started runs as follows. On a certain New Year's Day, ages ago, Buddha called all the animals of the world to him. He promised that those who came to pay him homage would receive a gift for their fealty. As a mark of honor, they would be given a year which would thereafter be named for them. Of all the animals in the world, only these twelve came, and they came in this order: the rat and the ox, the tiger and the rabbit, the dragon, the snake, and the horse, the sheep and the monkey, the rooster, the dog, and the boar.

"Keiko's method can help people to make their dreams a reality." --Marie Kondo Summon the energy of the universe to make your dreams come true with this bestselling guide to a powerful manifestation method by Japan's leading astrologer. A million-copy bestselling author in Japan, Keiko is now sharing her secrets with the world. The Moon, according to Keiko, is "Earth's helpdesk," a liaison between Earth and the other planets, delivering our wishes to the universe. With Keiko's Power Wish Method, you will learn to speak the language of the Moon and the stars--specifically, how to . . . wish upon the New Moon and the Full Moon--the phases when the Moon is available to help you; make your wishes using words of high vibration that have the greatest cosmic resonance and fortune-boosting potential; get the universe in the mood to help by embracing gratitude and positivity; time your wishes to harness the particular strengths of all twelve zodiac signs, such as the speed of Aries, the financial expertise of Taurus, and the transformative power of Scorpio. With Keiko as your astrological coach, you don't merely wait for the universe to fulfill your dreams; you become actively involved in charting a path for your life--and in finding the love, happiness, and success you've always desired. "Astrology is not fortune telling, but rather the skill to read the energy of the stars." --Keiko A PENGUIN LIFE TITLE

For three hundred years, a stolen relic passes from one fortune-seeker to the next, indelibly altering the lives of those who possess it. In modern-day Tokyo, Robin Swann’s life has sputtered to a stop. She’s stuck in a dead-end job testing antiquities for an auction house, but her true love is poetry, not pottery. Her stalled dissertation sits on her laptop, unopened in months, and she has no one to confide in but her goldfish. On the other side of town, Nori Okuda sells rice bowls and tea cups to Tokyo restaurants, as her family has done for generations. But with her grandmother in the hospital, the family business is foundering. Nori knows if her luck doesn’t change soon, she’ll lose what little she has left. With nothing in common, Nori and Robin suddenly find their futures inextricably linked to an ancient, elusive tea bowl. Glimpses of the past set the stage as they hunt for the lost masterpiece, uncovering long-buried secrets in their wake. As they get closer to the truth—and the tea bowl—the women must choose between seizing their dreams or righting the terrible wrong that has poisoned its legacy for centuries.

Mine Okubo was one of 110,000 people of Japanese descent--nearly two-thirds of them American citizens -- who were rounded up into "protective custody" shortly after Pearl Harbor. Citizen 13660, her memoir of life in relocation centers in California and Utah, was first published in 1946, then reissued by University of Washington Press in 1983 with a new Preface by the author. With 197 pen-and-ink illustrations, and poignantly written text, the book has been a perennial bestseller, and is used in college and university courses across the country. "[Mine Okubo] took her months of life in the concentration camp and made it the material for this amusing, heart-breaking book. . . . The moral is never expressed, but the wry pictures and the scanty words make the reader laugh -- and if he is an American too -- blush." -- Pearl Buck Read more about Mine Okubo in the 2008 UW Press book, Mine Okubo: Following Her Own Road, edited by Greg Robinson and Elena Tajima Creef. http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/search/books/ROBMIN.html