After a long absence from this blog, here is a new entry to celebrate another year of this blog’s life! As in the previous years, there will be a table of books that I read during this year, preceded by some introductory remarks. So, what happened in the months since my last blog post?

It is fair to say that a lot happened. For example, I finished my bachelor’s thesis this year and am currently in the Master’s program of Computational Linguistics. Meanwhile, I also now have two publications to show, one by way of my research assistant job at my institute (which unfortunately has ended recently) and the second by compressing my bachelor’s thesis and submitting it to a conference workshop (details will follow soon).

Additionally, I am a web developer and database administrator for a research project at my Japanese alma mater, 上智大学 Sophia University, since last October. Taking up the attendance of a conference in the Netherlands last year (see here), I participated in a couple of workshops relating to Digital Humanities, mostly in Frankfurt (because we work with the Institute for Japanese Studies there).

Furthermore, – for this job as well some other job – I was in Japan twice. Last year in October, I went there for a research trip for three weeks by way of a job as a web developer at the Heidelberg Institute for Japanese Studies (which will be continued soon) and this year in spring I went there mostly in private, although I also met with my colleagues at Sophia University.

Travel was again an important aspect of both visits, though. Worth mentioning are the trip to 大阪 Ōsaka and 神戸 Kōbe last year, and a longer journey through the Midwest of the country – from 伊勢 Ise via 和歌山 Wakayama to 四国 Shikoku and then to 京都 Kyōto and 彦根 Hikone – as well as a multi-day stay in Seoul, Korea and surrounding areas. Maybe I’ll soon be able to write about these trips in more detail, especially since I had my camera with me.

Speaking of which: I have started a (somewhat de-personalized) Instagram account, which shows (Japanese) house entrances under the mantle of 玄関物語 genkan monogatari, aka Tale of Genkan. I also try to upload the photographs to a dedicated Flickr account, which is visible in the sidebar to the right, in a timely fashion (see Flickr).

So much on that. As you can see, though, these were and are all quite time-consuming things, which is why I halted the activities on this blog and which is why I wasn’t able to read as much. However, I read two books more than last year, which, considering that I had to read a ton of papers for university, even surprises me. Anyway, in conclusion, what follows is the list of read books for the blog year of 2016/2017. Enjoy!

Mumon