The Bells of Old Tokyo: Travels in Japanese Time

by Anna Sherman

For over 300 years, Japan closed itself to outsiders, developing a remarkable and unique culture. During its period of isolation, the inhabitants of the city of Edo, later known as Tokyo, relied on its public bells to tell the time.

In her remarkable book, Anna Sherman tells of her search for the bells of Edo, exploring the city of Tokyo and its inhabitants and the individual and particular relationship of Japanese culture - and the Japanese language - to time, tradition, memory, impermanence and history.

Through Sherman’s journeys around the city, The Bells of Old Tokyo presents a series of hauntingly memorable voices in the labyrinth of the Japanese capital: An aristocrat plays in the sea of ashes left by the Allied firebombing of 1945. A scientist builds the most accurate clock in the world, a clock that will not lose a second in five billion years. A sculptor eats his father’s ashes while the head of the house of Tokugawa reflects on the destruction of his grandfather’s city.

Genres: Japan, Nonfiction, Travel, History, Asia, Memoir, Historical

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2019

Reviews

[Jill S · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to love this book. I ordered it from the UK before it was even published in Canada because I couldn't wait to read it. But I think it might be my biggest let down of the year.

This book is (supposedly) an examination of the cultural changes of Japan framed through the author's journey to visit all the sites of Japan's "Bells of Time", which for hundreds of years were rung all over the city to signal important moments of the day. This book isn't that, though. What it is is a hot mess. This structure is completely abandoned without any apparent rhyme or reason, casually and apparently just at the whim of the author. There is no cohesion, no semblance of a narrative to tie it all together. It's a wild, bumpy ride throughout a staccato history of Japan.

I think I could forgive this narrative whiplash were it not for the author's complete lack of regard for her reader. She rarely if ever gives context, explanations, or even definitions for very, very critical pieces of information to understand what she's talking about. For anyone interested in learning more about Japan but doesn't have even a basic understanding of its history, this book is not for you. I spent more time googling basic words, like shogun (which is essential to understanding anything in this text) and which would've taken the author one sentence of context to help me out.

I was so excited to learn more about the history of Japan, and was so disappointed to find this book so disorganized and inaccessible.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Until 1854 Japan was a closed society. Outsiders were not permitted to land and the residents of the country were not allowed to travel to other places. Whilst this introspection for most countries would be unhealthy, in Japan, it helped form a culture unlike any other in the world. The shoguns had tight control over the city of Edo’s inhabitants and they kept daily time using bells. The city was to become Tokyo and Sherman was in the country to search for those great bells.

When it was Edo, there were only three bells in the city, One was in Nihonbashi, the prison at the heart of the city, one near the north-eastern temple and the third in Ueno near the Demon Gate. As the city grew a further eight bells were needed. The bells define when to rise, when to eat, when to work and the time to sleep.

Besides the metal plaque was a map showing the sound range of each bell, a series of circles overlapping each other like raindrops in a still pool. Raindrops frozen at the moment they strike water.

The composer Yoshimura Hiroshi had written a book called Edo’s Bells of Time, in this he travelled far and wide across the city listening for the sounds that would have been present 500 years ago. Mostly they are now swamped by the noises of our modern world, but they are still there if you know where to go and how to listen. Inspired by this Sherman decides that she wants to see these places where the bells once tolled.

Her hotel room is opposite a huge glass building, so she asks to move to another room. That room is overlooking the Hibiya and the canals that ring the imperial palace, the city had vanished. She heads to where the first Bell of Time used to be. Now not a prison, it is a sterile playground now but the bell still hangs in a tower, guarded by a dragon and is now silent apart for once a year when it is rung. The groundsman shows her where the prisoners used to be executed and then goes back to brushing the ground.

This is the first of her steps back in time to discover more about these bells, and she does get to see and hear some of them too, including one bell that was first cast in 698. She sees all these things as an outsider, someone who has not had a Japanese upbringing and therefore is not aware of the subtle customs that form part of the fairly rigid society in the past and the nuances that still are present in the modern city of Tokyo.

One constant is her travels around the city is the coffee bar of Diabo Katsuji. It was not a place that you would discover by accident, you had to know it was at the top of the narrow stairs. In a city that was constantly changing minute by minute, this was a place of stasis. He was a legendary coffee maker who roasted his coffee each morning while reading a paperback. She didn’t realise just how famous he was until later on.

One Tokyo was going to sleep while the other was waking up. The two cities share the same space, but never meet.

This is a wonderful book and I found her prose sublime. Sherman is fascinated by almost every part of the city and the people there, from the ritual of the coffee being made, the way that Tokyo felt almost like a living pulsating being at times and a few pages later she is away from the mass of humanity, visiting an island of old clocks, or observing the rituals to enter a sanctuary, a silent place in the centre of a city that never sleeps. But this is about the bells and the stories of the people that struck the bells thrice, twelve times a day. It might not be for everyone, but I have found that reading four books on one country from very different perspectives has given me a range of insights and perspectives on the place and I would love to visit it one day.

[Thebooktrail · Rating 4 out of 5]

Visit the locations in the novel

A very interesting concept for a book and a guide book to Tokyo. It’s not a novel , guide book or any one of these things, but a mix of many and that’s what so appealing. We travel and discover the land and its people with Anna, who as an outsider, has an interesting view of this fascinating country and city.

I loved the idea of the bells and the concept of time. Something we take for granted now, but which started off very differently in other countries is something which always fascinates me. Time seems so set now, but it’s actually one of the most changeable and fleeting concepts. I am still amazed when they change the clocks for daylight saving time and the idea of time zones, but that’s another story.

The language is lyrical and fascinating. The author manages to blend the ideas she has and places she comes across in the most lyrical of ways:

“I would take not the elevated expressway routes, or the Yamanote Line railway that rings the heart of Tokyo, but trace areas in which the bells could be heard, the pattern that on a map looked like raindrops striking water. Winds could carry the ringing notes far out into Tokyo Bay; or the rain silence them as if they had never existed.

A circle has an infinite number of beginnings. The direction I walked would change, just as the circles on the map could change.

There were boundaries, but they were not fixed.”

Sherman’s Tokyo is a compelling one at that. If I could afford to, I would fly there right now, this book in hand, and use it as the most unique guides and insights I could ever hope to find. It’s essentially a travelogue mapped out by the city’s bells through time. If this book were a clock, the hour hand would be the one showcasing the main ideas and areas of the city, with the second hand whirling around with interesting facts. Anna takes us with us on the journey and we visit the bells that still exist. I found this to be a very enticing way of introducing someone to a city or even guiding them around one you might know. It’s an extremely clever way of travelling around a city and getting to know it in so many interesting ways.

[K.J. Charles]

Extremely loosely structured and poetically written book covering some aspects of Japanese histpry, a bit of a travelogue of Tokyo, and some thoughts about time. It hangs, very roughly, off trips to see old Edo's various bells that were used to makr the time, but that isn't really an organising principle. There's a lot about a coffee shop for no discernable reason.

I'll be honest, I got annoyed. Which isn't really fair as the subtitle says meditations, and that's what you get. If you like books with 'meditations' in the title, you will doubtless find this much more to your taste.

[Joy D · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anna Sherman has investigated the bells of Edo (now Tokyo). She searched for the eight bells that kept time for residents before the introduction of clocks as timekeeping devices. It is part history and part memoir. I think this book will appeal to those who do not require much structure. As stated in its subtitle, it is partially a meditation on time. As such, it meanders…a lot. For example, she spends time documenting the details of how to make a “perfect” cup of coffee. The coffee shop, owned by her friend Daibo, serves as a hub from which she ventures out for her investigations and returns to discuss her findings.

The reader will learn about the 1923 earthquake, much destruction during WWII, and suicides and killings of many people. The author obviously loves Japan and the Japanese culture. It felt like following a friend around a city, and since I have never been to Tokyo, I enjoyed accompanying the author on her journey. The downside, for me, is that it seemed like stitching together a hodgepodge of historical episodes without a great deal of context or flow. I liked it and am glad I read it but personally I prefer a bit more organization in my non-fiction.

[Barb in Maryland · Rating 4 out of 5]

A basic description of the book (ex-pat woman uses a search for the time bells of old Tokyo to explore the modern city) fails to convey its charm.
The prose is clear and thoughtful; the history 'lessons' range over events dating from the earliest days of the city to the earthquake of 2011. The people the author meets (from the man who runs a coffee shop to temple monks and on to those who run small museums) are each interesting in their own way.
I was quietly enchanted by the book; the author gives the reader a lot to ponder in a short page count. I found the chapter notes to be almost as enjoyable as the text.

I have only an outsider's knowledge of Tokyo, bolstered somewhat by my father's stories of his trips there in the late 1950s-mid 1960s. I would hazard a guess that anyone familiar with Tokyo would have a deeper reaction to the book than I did.

[Katja · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ufff, reading this was like wading through tar. I almost dropped it but then I noticed there's almost hundred pages of notes and source material listing, so I thought to skim through a few dozen pages I had left.
I wanted to like this, little images of Japanese history sounded interesting. But it was too fragmented, tried sometimes too hard to be poetic and I just didn't find the overall style enjoyable to read at all. Shame, because there are fascinating historical tidbits and experiences here and there and the author has interviewed some interesting people but it's just presented as a jumble. And I can see the coffee house chapters were important to the author but certainly don't help with the already jumpy structure.
So, nope, I can't recommend this.

[Manu · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know if I (sub)consciously avoided travelogues since 2020 because I would miss travel even more. But irrespective of that, there was something very poignant about the title itself, so I just had to pick it up. The good news is that it lived up to its promise. Anna Sherman does in this book what my favourite books about places do - let me travel in time and space.
The second part of the title - Meditations on Time and a City - gives a very good idea of the book's focus. It talks about both the changes in Edo (before it came to be called Tokyo) with time, as well as its changing relationship with time itself. Like many other concepts, the Japanese have many words for time according to the context. Before its citizens started using manufactured devices to tell time, Edo's time was told by the ringing of bells. At first, there were three, but by 1720, as the population touched a million, six more were added. And these bells are what the narrative follows.
With each, there are stories attached. Origin stories of the locality and the bell, and its journey through times good and bad - victories, wars, earthquakes, fires and so on. Nihonbashi - the Zero Point has its prison stories (prisoners let out during a fire would voluntarily return because they'd be found and killed otherwise). Asakusa has its beauty and murder story. Akasaka has the smallest bell, and love-hotel rooms which cater to any and all fetishes, with protocols that outsiders will find difficult to understand. Mejiro is home to the stone that honours the rebel samurai Chūya Marubashi. Nezu has a fascinating tale of clockmaking and how time shifted from personal to shared, and 'the idea of time became mechanical.' Ueno, where the battle in 1868 marked the end of the Tokugawa shogunate. A few months later, Edo would start making way for Tokyo. Where the bell-ringer knows he is probably the last of his kind. Kitasuna, where more than 700,000 bombs landed on 9-10 March 1945, and caused the deaths of more people than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The book did a fantastic job of transporting me to the time and place. The words somehow gave me a visceral feeling of the place, the emotions of the different people who lived there, their daily existence, the events they have gone through, and sometimes I tended to see the place as a person too - changing, shifting, sometimes slowly and sometimes suddenly. It was like walking through the lanes. The one thing that I wish the book also had was maps so I could also get a better directional sense of where these places are.
I think, after this book, when I do visit Tokyo (Edo), I will see it through new eyes and old stories.

[Drew · Rating 4 out of 5]

After living in Japan for about three years and working in a library in Tokyo for two of them, I've read a number of gaijin memoirs. This is the first one that thoughtfully engaged with Tokyo and really represented how it feels to be here. It was poetic, it was research-heavy without being overbearing, it was nuanced, and, most importantly, there was no ego. If you are the kind of person who likes to walk around neighborhoods, then please read this.

[Phee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was really interesting.
Not only a history of how time has been told and measure in Japan, but history of different areas of Tokyo as well. There was plenty in here that was new information and I’ve learned quite a bit. It was also really nice to read at a slow pace and chip my way through it slowly.

It’s my hope that I’m going to keep a non fiction book going all the time. Even if I don’t necessarily pick it up every day, even if it takes me weeks to read something. Slowly does it. I don’t want to do a set number of nonfiction books in the year. I just want to read and see what happens.

[Jack Wrighton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This had an almost hypnotic effect on me. The subject is fascinating, and Sherman does an amazing job of tracking her physical (and cerebral) journey through the city. The language is sharp too, there’s not a wasted word in the entire book. Whether you know the city or not I’d highly recommend it.

[Ivana · Rating 2 out of 5]

mislim da ova likuša nije imala Jednu koherentnu misao dok je pisala knjigu. dve zvezdice samo zbog gospodina daiboa

[Theresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Should I visit Tokyo, this book is going into my bag! It's the perfect one to pull you off the tried and true tourist path and bring you to Tokyo neighborhoods you would never visit and a deeper understanding of Japanese history and culture. That's how I like to travel. I give this a solid 4.5 stars bumped up to 5.

The term 'meditations' in the subtitle is key here. This is a collection of essays, clearly written over an extended period of time in the 2000, that all share the author's interest in time as a concept and by her quest to locate where in Tokyo were all the Edo Bells of Time used to keep and announce the time when Tokyo was Edo and before western time keeping was adopted in the late 19th Century - or had been as many are now gone. These bells, hung in temples, were huge and often elaborately carved with caligraphy and/or images, with a rich lingering tone that could be heard for some distance. There is a rough order to them that is not time linear necessarily, but geographic, that of a spiral moving out from the center of Edo - the Imperial Palace, moving counterclockwise - which happens to mirror the layout of Edo, now the heart of Tokyo. This leads to a lack of sequentiality to the history cited, but then that's what happens when you travel around a city.
There is also a thread about a (now closed) old fashtioned coffee cafe and its owner that becomes a transition point and touchstone between each exploration and Bell of Time findings.

Most of my interest in history, cultures, art has been western - where I've studied and traveled - and I'm a deeply rooted francophile. That's expanded to Middle East and India, and as of my casual reading these last couple of years, East Asia. Japan itself has been far off my radar until very recently when my fiction reading has triggered interest. From this small book I gleaned a great deal about a number of the historic events - earthquakes of 1923 and 2011, US fire bombing and destruction of Tokyo, the end of Shogun and rise of Empire - but most of all the sense of how Tokyo rebuilds itself again and again, starting completely over and leaving much of the past behind.

Whatever they might have felt, they never talked about it. A lost thing is lost. If you try to chase it, that's a mistake. Being sentimental about the past leads to darkness.

It explains today's aggressively modern Tokyo which is very much present.

There is also plenty of analysis of the concept of time itself, from actual clocks and timekeeping to the philosophical and scientific. Sherman has included a great deal of research with copious notes (should be read as you go as they often expand on the themes and information of the essay just read) and bibliography (my TBR expanded a great deal). There also is a very handy map on the author's website.

In the end I was left with a desire to make my own journey to Tokyo and its Bells of Time, and perhaps even more an appreciation of just how vast and even mysterious time itself is.

BTW, many bells from Edo still exist and rung, especially on New Years. Here's a video of the traditional tolling of a Bell of Time in Kyoto: https://matcha-jp.com/en/1340. The sound is rich and deep and glorious.

[Keen Reader · Rating 1 out of 5]

This doesn’t take long at all before it descends into a swamp of self-parody, my Clicheometer was flashing red within the first ten pages or so as we ticked every single Japanese stereotype from haikus, Buddhism to weird sexual proclivities and paper cranes.

You know those writers who have that rare and wonderful gift of elevating the most banal of encounters into something quite special, well this isn’t one of those. This is mostly made up of bland, forgettable clichés wrapped up in pseudo spiritualist rubbish on a journey to nowhere. This really is the height of mediocre bourgeois self-indulgence.

I realise that complaining about white middle class writers from elite universities in the book world is like ruing the absence of truth and integrity within politics, but sweet baby Jesus come on! There is no coherent structure, but hey it’s OK because we can get away with that by calling it “a meditation” and then get some rent a quote to write a bit of fluff describing the book as “a tour de force”.

This is just a series of dull, self-indulgent ruminations from a privileged white girl who faces such devastating hardships like seeing her beloved coffee shops close down and shock, horror being replaced by Starbucks as she hunts for a bell and meets forgettable locals who have nothing to share beyond dull, empty clichés dressed as profound insights.

The only time when this became briefly interesting was when she dipped a toe into WWII and related some of the horrifying accounts of the Tokyo firebombing and we also get a hint of the nation’s superstition, xenophobia, sexism and cruelty which resulted in numerous acts of genocide and war crimes in the 20th Century.

Anyway that’s my thoughts…Phew! That feels a lot better…

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

From BBC Radio 4:
For over 300 years, Japan closed itself to outsiders, developing a remarkable and unique culture. During its period of isolation, the inhabitants of the city of Edo - later known as Tokyo - relied on its public bells to tell the time.

Anna Sherman tells of her search for the bells of Edo, exploring the city of Tokyo and its inhabitants and the individual and particular relationship of Japanese culture - and the Japanese language - to time, tradition, memory, impermanence and history.

Through Anna’s journeys around the city and her friendship with the owner of a small, exquisite cafe, who elevates the making and drinking of coffee to an art-form, The Bells of Old Tokyo presents a series of hauntingly memorable voices in the labyrinth that is the metropolis of the Japanese capital - an aristocrat plays in the sea of ashes left by the Allied firebombing of 1945; a scientist builds the most accurate clock in the world, a clock that will not lose a second in five billion years.

Abridged by Polly Coles
Read by Amanda Root

Produced by Clive Brill
A Brill production for BBC Radio 4

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00...

[Nicky Neko · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ugh. God. I feel terrible, because I *really* wanted to like this book, and was so looking forward to reading it, but it just wasn't my cup of tea at all. (Or ceramic mug of Daibo coffee, in this case)

For a book about 'time' this book sure made time drag for me. It was too pretentious, tried to be too poetic. Not every little detail of life in Japan is this religious and life changing thing. Not every old man you meet is full of some kind of sublime wisdom which will change your life forever.

The idea that the westerner goes to Asia to seek enlightenment bores me slightly, and being told dull details of every little thing some American has done or seen in Tokyo does not make for an interesting read, I'm afraid.

Overall, it lacked narrative drive or structure. There was too much bumbling over the Japanese language, too much boring information on esoteric history and religion that quite honestly are probably esoteric for a reason. Too much othering of Japan. Dull dull dull.

The one thread that did interest me was Daibo and his coffee shop. I honestly think it would've been a better book if it was just about Daibo and the coffee shop. Forget the bells, forget the dull descriptions of areas of Tokyo (which REALLY didn't bring the city to life). Daibo was the hero. And his story wasn't even wrapped up in an interesting way.

I feel bad not liking this book, but for anyone interested in learning more about Tokyo or Japan, this is probably the last book I'd recommend.

[Kinga · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anna Sherman seeks to find the bells which rang out at regular intervals for the residents of Edo/Tokyo before the arrival of western clocks and timekeeping. The city started out with three bells which told the residents when it was time to eat, sleep and work but later expanded as the city grew in size. Part travelogue, part history, this is a book for all those interested in Japan. We learn about strands of the city’s history, including the twelve-hour days (each hour named after an animal), the fall of the shogunate and old Japanese clocks. An interesting read and I really enjoyed the prose.

[Denise · Rating 5 out of 5]

In a nutshell, this book is the feeling of stepping out of a busy Tokyo street into the calm and quiet of a Shinto shrine, a little oasis of serenity amidst a sea of loud, bright, hurried modernity, distilled into its essence and poured into words. Sherman takes the reader on a slow, meandering journey around Tokyo and into its past, crafting a wistful elegy for a world gone by and a wonderful portrait of a city.

[Fiona · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not a history book... not a travel book... something in between but with more oomph and a sense of discovery to it.

If you’ve been to Tokyo, it will resonate. If you haven’t - you may yet want to!

[Veronica ⭐️ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Before time was measured by clocks, in Edo (now Tokyo) time was announced by the ringing of the bells. The Bells of Old Tokyo follows the origin of the bells through time, thus relating to the history of Tokyo.
The Bells of Old Tokyo is a book that delves into the history and culture of Japan told from the perspective of an outside.
Anna Sherman's admiration for the city of Tokyo shines through in her prose. They are lyrical and contemplative and evoke a sense of old-worldly charm.
I did find the format of the book a bit disjointed and found it easier to digest if it was read slowly.
Ends with 100 pages of source and explanation details (which is 1/3 of the book).
The Bells of Old Tokyo is a fascinating insight into an ancient city, its history and people.
Recommended for anyone interested in Japanese history.

[Maud · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. This is the most beautifully written nonfiction book I've ever read. If you are interested in the history of Tokyo, Japan or just time itself, I highly recommend this book. Also, if you love coffee or coffee shops, there are some beautiful passages from Daibo's coffee house and the author's friendship with him.

[quim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Avorrit, però és que Tokyo i els temples de fusta i el tema de la bellesa i Mishima i streetlights i pf ns el meu cora fa pumpum amb la puresa i aquestes coses

[Alan M · Rating 5 out of 5]

'The Myriad Year Clock has six faces. It shows not just the twenty-four hour day of modern time, and the twelve-hour day of Edo time, but the phases of the moon, the twenty-four Japanese seasons and the days of the week. Another dial shows the ancient Chinese system, which combined the Zodiac animals and the elements: wood, fire, earth, metal and water.'

This is not a guidebook. This is not a history book. This is not story of a journey from A to B. What it is is a meditation on the nature of time and history that uses Anna Sherman's quest to seek out the old Bells of Time that were used in the past, in time before clocks and watches were commonplace, to mark the passing of the hours in the various districts of old Tokyo. It is purposefully meandering, shamelessly relishing, for example, the small details of her friend Daibo taking time to make the perfect cup of coffee. Indeed, Daibo's coffee shop becomes a focal point, the calm centre point to which Sherman can return to make sense of what she discovers.

The book explores the sweeping history of the city and the nation, but Sherman is not afraid to remind us that she, as a Westerner living in Tokyo for a brief time, is an outsider, someone who tries to learn the language and customs but will never understand it all. It is from this perspective that she writes, and from which we should read. There is a poetic lyricism to her writing that is fitting for the subject, the subtlety of silence or small moments of colour, of birdsong, give us an impression of a truth beyond us, a glimpse of something profoundly beautiful.

This is a book that will frustrate some (I note some of the low-star reviews and can understand their feelings). It is also a book that should be read at least twice; once, just to go with the flow, avoiding the temptation to dip into the notes at the back. A second reading will allow the reader to explore the more than 100 pages of notes and bibliography at the back of the book, to seek out the source material. For there is a huge amount of depth to this; the author has done a massive amount of research and the bibliography itself will see me happily exploring more and more of the resources for years to come.

A wonderful treasure trove, a beautiful meditation on time and identity, and at one and the same time an elegy for a lost city and a hymn to the modern. Let it wash over you, take joy in the quiet observations. This is a wonder of a book and is already a welcome addition to my bookshelf, to be visited again and again. 5 stars.

[Kira · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this gem of a book on a trip to Melbourne last year, and planned to read it in anticipation of a planned trip to Japan later this year. The cover sparkled iridescently in the bookstore light and caught my eye, and the glimmering ‘TOKYO’ in big letters had me hooked.

Anna Sherman has meticulously researched historical records of specific Tokyo districts and woven a personal account into this meditation on time, place and collective memory. The city she reveals is a soulful one, full of secrets and idiosyncrasies. This thoughtful debut allows glimpses of brilliance, with passages so beautiful you could almost imagine this to be a piece of literary fiction at times. There were a few sections that were a bit lacklustre for me, but also many rewarding chapters. I was moved more than once by the stories within, and particularly enjoyed the final chapter.

How things have changed since my purchase of this book: due to border closures to prevent the spread of COVID, I can’t even hope to visit Melbourne this year, let alone Japan. On the upside, I have more time to brush up on my Japanese..!

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a thoughtful and engaging book - will appeal mostly to people with either an interest in Japan/ Tokyo or those who have lived as expats anywhere. I loved hearing about Anna's experience as an expat and how she developed deep connections during her time in Japan. I haven't been to Japan but lived overseas for eight years so could relate quite a bit to some of her experiences. Beautiful writing.

[mattrco · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wanted to finish this book so I could go back and read it again. Stories of timekeeping and the perception of time in historic and present-day Tokyo are told through touching personal histories, interviews and physical exploration of the city.

A third of the pages are notes so this is a relatively short book. At times I was disoriented by the depth of detail, but it's worth trying to take it all in by going slowly.

[Danni Jervis · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful exploration of Tokyo in an unusual manner. The historical context merged with the modern day culture really showcased how it is an ever changing city. The sense of realism that comes from Sherman being treated very much as a Gaijin while she explores is very honest.

I'd highly recommend this for those who have visited Japan before or have read other travel memoirs in Japan.

[Dan Konigsburg · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short (220 pages) meditation on time, marking time, Japanese culture and history - all wrapped up in a personal quest to see the old time-keeping bells that have survived into modern Tokyo’s cityscape. Enjoyable, poetic, and allusive in parts, I think this book will appeal more to folks who know Tokyo reasonably well and who have had at least some exposure to the language.

[Amber Sherlock · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating, melodic and winding tale of time and the differences between East and West. soft and mesmerising, Sherman weaves philosophy and anthropology into a fine weave of a book.

[Bojana Lalic · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prelepo napisan putopis o magicnom gradu Tokiju.