Author : Julie Caplin
Plot: The little Teashop in Tokyo by Julie Caplin is a breezy romance between two photographers who happen to meet each other in Tokyo after an unpleasant encounter they had a decade ago . Fiona is a travel blogger and a photographer who wins an all expense trip to Tokyo , a photography mentor for two weeks and an opportunity to display her photos in an exhibition. What she doesn’t know is that her mentor is going to be someone with whom she got into an embarrassing situation ten years back , an ambitious, successful and handsome photographer Gabe . How the equations play out between them is the rest of the story. But the heart of this book lies in Tokyo itself . During her stay , Fiona stays with a Japanese family which owns a tea shop in Tokyo . She gets a chance to meet women of three generations in that family and through each of them , she gets to understand the little customs, food , attire , the traditions and also the bohemian practices of the Japanese people . Because her profession is photography, she travels with Gabe to all the prominent attractions in Tokyo and captures the soul and the beauty of those places on camera. The first half of the book is really enticing with lot of nitty gritty details about the streets , the houses and the local restaurants of Tokyo. There are vivid descriptions on importance of chopsticks , the broken pots , the Bonsai trees and the cherry blossoms . It is the second half which precipitates the whole book and fails to capitalize on the pace which is set in the first half . There should have been some twist or action, instead the plot drags with stereotypical romance and misunderstandings between the lead pair . I also felt that there should have been few photographs of the places and things in the Epilogue for the readers to appreciate the descriptions in the book a lot better .
But overall, I liked the book. It’s a fast read and for a while , I got lost into the world of cherry blossoms and appreciated the beauty of wabi-sabi and kintsugi once again . If you have a fascination towards Japanese culture , go for this book. Don’t expect too much on the plot , you will not be disappointed.
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