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Using Japan’s Free Papers — 6 Comments

  1. Yes!! This is one of my favorite things about going to Japan. My trip last winter, I saw them everywhere and didn’t really grab any. At the last moment, I grabbed a fashion catalogue for one friend and a music catalogue (this was given to me actually when I was shopping) for another friend, and they really liked them. I don’t recall grabbing anything for myself that time.

    This summer when I went back to Japan, I had my mind set on grabbing these papers. I grabbed a free manga (牧場物語のまわりコッミク), a magazine which actually has articles (あるく), a brochure for places to go in Kooriyama and Aizu, and a Hula Girl brochure and poster. I ended up throwing away a lot of brochures from the places I went before I came home to America, but I still read them before I threw them away. Even for souvenirs, I grabbed a map for a little boy interested in Japan, the information for a pokemon game for the girl I’m teaching Japanese, and a poster of Abraham Lincoln Zombie Slayer for my dad and they loved what they got. Free papers can be made into good free souvenirs with the proper thought behind the interests of the person. And these free papers are great to lay around the house for easy reading.

    Another hint for those who can’t go to Japan yet, I managed to get a travel magazine at a Japanese spring festival in my area in America. So keep your eyes out, you never know.

  2. This sounds like something that I would love to try but I do not live in Japan. I can say that I have felt like this before. I got a new Japanese book and about a week later I got bored of it. The book is really good and has lots of vocab words and example sentences but as you said it does not keep my attention span.
    Have any advice for someone that does not live in Japan and has a low Japanese level?

    • Look and see if you have a large Asian market in your area. I know I had to drive two hours to get to my closest big one…but it had a Kinokuniya, so it had J-Books too. If driving isn’t an option, why not start signing up for random junk mail and get an email address dedicated to it. Just go to all of the most sketchy places and enter your email address wherever you can!

    • And for anyone who lives in the South of England, there is a shop called JPbooks right near Picadilly Circus tube station, London that has a shelf of free papers under the counter. There are also a few Japan Centres in England but I haven’t been yet so I don’t know if they have free papers. (Yes even though it’s right near JPbooks in London – I had to go home, okay)

      • Often Japanese markets/stores in big cities have free Japanese local papers. In New York City there is a large abundance of them.

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