Bookstores in Japan
Although for a daily tourist, there doesn't seem to be anything particular about the bookstores in Japan, I think those places have a quite a bit of interesting atmosphere.
Not only a common Japanese bookstore offer a very throughout look to any kind of books from paperbacks to a history and schoolbooks and back to comics, but there are also English books available. Not to mention the wide series of bilingual books.
There are many kinds of bookstores, even ones that only sell English books. Those can be a real discoveries for English speaking tourists who want to take an inside look to Japanese literature. Also there are so called "mini-series" available, which are small pocket books of such novels as Murakami's "Wild Sheep Chase".
Interesting detail is that the customer can get a paper wrapping for the book. This wrapping protects the dustcover of the book.
