<story><title>Japanese Bookshop Stocks Only One Book at a Time</title><url>http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/dec/23/japanese-bookshop-stocks-only-one-book-at-a-time</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>meric</author><text>When playing a board game, like Terra Mystica, where there are choices I can make, and there are random elements that change from game to game, there&amp;#x27;s two routes I could go - The first is to play out the plan I&amp;#x27;ve thought about so many times previously, to align the choices I make with that plan as faithfully as the random elements allow. The second, is to completely ditch whatever was in my plan, look at the random elements for this game, and play accordingly. I call the second strategy &amp;quot;Play to the board&amp;quot;. The first strategy often means I&amp;#x27;ll do fine in the game, but will lose out to the player who benefited from the random elements of the game this round. The second strategy provide no such guarantees, but is the only strategy that allows great wins.&lt;p&gt;In life, people can pick one of &lt;i&gt;three&lt;/i&gt; strategies. The first is they can fantasise about what kind of car they want, what kind of job they&amp;#x27;d like, what kind of girlfriend they&amp;#x27;d have, and then try their best to make these &amp;quot;achievements&amp;quot;, often falling short because the world is not fantasy. The second, they observe what kind of random elements the world exhibiting, e.g. &amp;quot;Oh these days accountants make lots of money&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;These days Software Engineers have high salaries&amp;quot; and directly translate to mean &amp;quot;I am going to learn programming, even if I don&amp;#x27;t like it&amp;quot;, and then they are playing to other people&amp;#x27;s fantasy rather than accepting their own strengths or weaknesses. Or thirdly, they can &amp;quot;play to the board&amp;quot; and make the best of what life gives them, at each moment in time.&lt;p&gt;The bookshop-keeper here, is eking out every single edge he can out of books to operate his shop. Where 30 years ago operating a successful physical bookshop might mean having a large selection available at any time, and frequent events to draw crowds, today, in competition with digital books, operating a successful physical bookshop might mean emphasising the advantages of the physical book, the romanticism attached to physical objects. I get the feeling he is the type who sees what the world is like today, and because he&amp;#x27;s got experience bookshop-keeper, not a software engineer or tech startup founder, he goes with the flow with what he&amp;#x27;s got.&lt;p&gt;Where in a board game, the game board is the entirety of the world, and can be considered by itself, in the real world, &lt;i&gt;our own selves are part of the board&lt;/i&gt; - and I can&amp;#x27;t always do it, but I aspire to do what I can to play with what I&amp;#x27;ve got, like the man depicted in this article.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>azm1</author><text>This is such flat, materialistic comparison. What about going back to roots, hara how its called in Japan, doing one action well, instead of focusing on the amount, focusing on single quality and trying to find beauty in it. I would almost call it practical art. There is something peaceful about it.</text></comment>
<story><title>Japanese Bookshop Stocks Only One Book at a Time</title><url>http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/dec/23/japanese-bookshop-stocks-only-one-book-at-a-time</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>meric</author><text>When playing a board game, like Terra Mystica, where there are choices I can make, and there are random elements that change from game to game, there&amp;#x27;s two routes I could go - The first is to play out the plan I&amp;#x27;ve thought about so many times previously, to align the choices I make with that plan as faithfully as the random elements allow. The second, is to completely ditch whatever was in my plan, look at the random elements for this game, and play accordingly. I call the second strategy &amp;quot;Play to the board&amp;quot;. The first strategy often means I&amp;#x27;ll do fine in the game, but will lose out to the player who benefited from the random elements of the game this round. The second strategy provide no such guarantees, but is the only strategy that allows great wins.&lt;p&gt;In life, people can pick one of &lt;i&gt;three&lt;/i&gt; strategies. The first is they can fantasise about what kind of car they want, what kind of job they&amp;#x27;d like, what kind of girlfriend they&amp;#x27;d have, and then try their best to make these &amp;quot;achievements&amp;quot;, often falling short because the world is not fantasy. The second, they observe what kind of random elements the world exhibiting, e.g. &amp;quot;Oh these days accountants make lots of money&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;These days Software Engineers have high salaries&amp;quot; and directly translate to mean &amp;quot;I am going to learn programming, even if I don&amp;#x27;t like it&amp;quot;, and then they are playing to other people&amp;#x27;s fantasy rather than accepting their own strengths or weaknesses. Or thirdly, they can &amp;quot;play to the board&amp;quot; and make the best of what life gives them, at each moment in time.&lt;p&gt;The bookshop-keeper here, is eking out every single edge he can out of books to operate his shop. Where 30 years ago operating a successful physical bookshop might mean having a large selection available at any time, and frequent events to draw crowds, today, in competition with digital books, operating a successful physical bookshop might mean emphasising the advantages of the physical book, the romanticism attached to physical objects. I get the feeling he is the type who sees what the world is like today, and because he&amp;#x27;s got experience bookshop-keeper, not a software engineer or tech startup founder, he goes with the flow with what he&amp;#x27;s got.&lt;p&gt;Where in a board game, the game board is the entirety of the world, and can be considered by itself, in the real world, &lt;i&gt;our own selves are part of the board&lt;/i&gt; - and I can&amp;#x27;t always do it, but I aspire to do what I can to play with what I&amp;#x27;ve got, like the man depicted in this article.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>deciplex</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;The bookshop-keeper here, is eking out every single edge he can out of books to operate his shop.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;It could be, but it could also be the case that he&amp;#x27;s trying to be &amp;#x27;quirky&amp;#x27; and happened to implement this particular idea, picked more-or-less randomly from a set of other quirky ideas. Walking around Tokyo it is not hard to find shops where you really struggle to figure out how they are making money, and often it&amp;#x27;s the case that they actually aren&amp;#x27;t and they close their doors after a few months or a couple years.&lt;p&gt;I guess it&amp;#x27;s just really easy to get a loan in Japan even if your business plan is utter shit?</text></comment>