Friday, November 24, 2006

intitle:Japan

Google Book SearchTesting the new Google Book Search interface, I was surprised by the number of results you get for Japan related queries. It's now also possible to download public domain books in PDF format, which is a fantastic feature (just wished the PDFs were searchable). Have a look at these (mostly forgotten) first-person accounts of trips to pre-Meiji Japan, for instance. Intriguing.

NB: One of those books actually contains an small surprise: if you go to page 8 of "The Japan Expedition", you can see a spooky picture of the scanner's hand.