Perhaps the greatest pleasure to be derived from shopping at secondhand book stores in Japan comes from never knowing what you will find. I refer not to the books themselves, mind you, but to what turns up between their pages.
More often than not you will discover what the Cajuns of Bayou Country call a "lagniappe" — a little something extra. And, almost invariably, that free bonus will present you with a tale more intriguing than any the book itself might contain.
It is a phenomenon that in my experience seldom occurs in other counties. For reasons unknown, secondhand book archaeology seems to be a distinctly Japanese field — one that, while fascinating, is also as frustrating as hell.