Maruzen foreign books sale will be held at the 4th floor of the Nihonbashi store from January 10th to 14th. It's held twice a year (July and January), the selection is huge and the prices quite cheap.

I was in the Roppongi branch of "Tokyo Random Walk" (foreign bookshop) at the weekend, and found they had a load of bargain books in English on shelves outside the shop, boxes around the entrance, and the whole of the upper floor. Huge amounts of paperback fiction for Y500 (everything from thrillers to Harry Potter to Shakespeare), and quite a good selection of children's books: graded early readers for Y300, some paperbacks and story tapes (Roald Dahl etc) for Y500, good quality hardback picture books for Y800 and Y1000, and so on. The staff were very friendly, and we bought so much that they gave us some free baby board books...

The Roppongi Branch also seems to be known as "Striped House", and is at Roppongi 5-10-33, Minato-ku, Tel 03-3478-5016. It's on the road heading down the side of Almond towards Azabu-juban, just before the junction by Roppongi Hills.

There's a map at:
http://www.bookshop.co.jp/stores/map.html

There are other branches at Akasaka and Jimbocho. The Jimbocho branch (used to be called Tuttles, but changed to Random Walk a while back) always used to have a selection of bargain books, but hasn't seemed to have so much recently.

Kinokuniya in Shinjuku is advertising a "foreign books mega sale" later this week: February 26 to March 1, 10am-8pm, held not in the Kinokuniya building but on the 10th floor of the neighbouring Takashimaya department store, in the Exhibition Center.

They say the sale will include fiction and non-fiction paperbacks and hardbacks, children's books, art, reference, computer, travel etc, plus some French and German books. I went to a previous smaller-scale sale of theirs and found some interesting and very cheap children's books, and a lot of good paperbacks for about Y400.

I'm thinking of moving this conversation over to the pre-exisiting conversation at:
http://www.tokyowithkids.com/discussions/messages/42/779.html
under "Consumer Reports". Can I please get some feed back on which location is more intuitive for this subject?

I thought the consumer reports area was more for critical reports/personal experiences, rather than just information on where to get stuff? So reports on Amazon service definitely make sense there, but info about a bookshop to me feels more at home here.

Special sales are a bit different again, but there doesn't seem to be an obvious place to post that kind of information. One idea would be to set up a new thread somewhere for people to post time-sensitive notices of sales, markets, fairs and other events - I think they often aren't noticed when they are put on the main boards.

Do you think it would work to add an "upcoming sales/events" section to classifieds, as I think that is the area people check most regularly?

I am looking for Nigella Lawson's "How to be a Domestic Goddess" - not that I am not already one! - because the selection of recipes are just the kind of foods that I need, the narrative is practical and economical, and it has pictures of at least 1/3 of the dishes. I could go to Amazon but I also like to browse at bookshops so if anyone has seen it, pls let me know!

Lynette - I am sure I have seen this at the big Kinokuniya store in Shinjuku, in the annex of the Takashimaya building. You could also try Tower Records.

I have Nigella's latest Feast and Forever Summer cookbooks if you need any recipes urgently from either of those, just let me know...

Feast seems to have a lot of obscure ingredients so a lot of substitutions are required but it is still really nice food :)

I've recently switched to ordering Ebooks as it's less of a hassle buying English books via instant download, rather than having to ship certain titles which are difficult to find here.

Started out shopping with Fictionwise.com, which has attractive prices for members, but lately have started to switch to a new store Ebookcrescent.com, as I am getting more comfortable with the Mobipocket Reader, which can also import all my other reading formats like PDF and Word. I may be getting a new ILiad for my birthday so I've started to switch over to Mobipocket format, which is really a breeze to use!

Susan, I've never ordered e-books yet (for one thing, I don't want to print them out, but I do like to read on the train...).
I'm really curious, do you sit and read the books on your computer? I suppose we'll end up reading some paper books and some e-books depending on venue & price. But I have no clue what an Iliad is other than a reference to a famous Greek book... But the way you use it, it sounds like some sort of machine? Enlighten me please!

These are children's books, but I hope this information might be useful....
First off, let me honestly say that I am the Principal of Sesame International Preschool. It is not in any way my intention to blatantly "sell" or "promote" my school. Instead, I sincerely hope to extend an invitation and share a recent "community outreach" program, we have recently launched. Being an expat myself, thirteen years in July, I am very aware of the challenges one faces when raising children over-seas. It is with that in mind that I have recently opened an English Library and Story Time , that we have open to the public and hope to share with the community.�@Here in Japan, finding books in English can not only be challenging, in and of itself, but also quite expensive. Because reading is such an integral part of life, I hope to encourage a love of reading to one and all! As I mentioned, these services are free (there is a small registration fee to cover lost and damaged books however) and more details are available on our website as well. http://sesame.jap.co.jp We at Sesame sincerely hope to encourage and support families living in Japan and help children make the most of their experiences to reach for the stars in the future!