We have a little corner of Kingyo Used Books on our shelf -- two manga wide. A friend visited Japan in 1998 and brought back two manga magazines, a Weekly Jump and a Weekly Big Comic Spirits. I was flipping through Big Comic Spirits, June 29, 1998 the other day and recognized Oishinbo, the long-running food appreciation manga that made a splash in English translation in 2009. This chapter (which later appeared in volume 69 in Japanese in March 1999) starts out with a fried fish, but ends up being about mixing drinks. Page 19 above includes the inevitable panel when Kurita sees what Yamaoka has been talking about. Can you spot the kana for banana?
[A backgrounder on the development of Japanese publishing and book retail. (Via Manga Critic.)]
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