“Kamusari Tales Told at Night” is the follow-up to last year’s “The Easy Life in Kamusari,” both translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter, the ironically titled young adult novel about a high school graduate from Yokohama moving to rural Mie Prefecture.
In the first book, Yuki Hirano is packed off against his will to participate in a forestry training program. In Kamusari, a tiny village built around the Nakamura Lumber Company, he struggles to adapt to the slow pace of life and to the rigors of physical labor, though his main struggle is to win the heart of Nao, a young school teacher. “Kamusari Tales Told at Night” picks up the story a few months after “The Easy Life” ended.