Harry Potter in Japanese

It is still Book Week here in Japan so I thought I would show more books. Maybe you can't tell what these are. Click to enlarge the picture. You will see the title in English on the front cover, too. It's Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. It was published in two volumes in Japan. The book covers were re-done. Illustrations inside the book were, too. The one on the right is the first volume of the set. You would read that one first.

This is the front cover. Notice that the spine of the book is on the right. When opening a Japanese book to the front, the spine is on the right. Think about it. How do you open a book to read?

This is the Table of Contents. The orange string is a bookmark that is attached to the spine of the book.

If these were the first two pages, you would start on the right page. To read Japanese, you would start on the right page near the outside edge of the page and book. You start at the top of the column of characters or kanji. Then you read that line of print downwards. Then you go up to the next column. Read that line of print downwards and on and on to the center of the book. The second page is started on the column near the center of the book. You would read the columns top to bottom moving from the center of the book to the edge of the left page.

So, Japanese is read from right to left, top to bottom. See the page number at the bottom? They are the same numbers as those used in English. If you click to enlarge the picture, you will see the title of the chapter "Dudley Demented" in English. It is under the Japanese title at the top of the page.