Usually, when you stand in line at the ramen shop, you eventually open the door and you are greeted by the sounds and smells of the restaurant. You sit down at your table and you get your bowl of noodles. But sometimes – only sometimes – a patron opens the door of the ramen shop and instead finds themselves somewhere else entirely.
Toshio Ishikawa has been the proprietor of a very special pawnshop. It’s a magical place and not everyone can see it – most only see a ramen shop. But for the patrons who find their way to his door, they have a rare opportunity: to lay down a burden they have been carrying, to pawn their bad decisions and painful choices, and move on without those regrets.
Toshio has been training his daughter, Hana, since she was a very small child; her destiny is to take over the shop and its unusual goods and clients. Her father is growing old and wishes to retire and turn the day-to-day operations over to Hana. But on her first morning as proprietress, she is stunned to find the shop ransacked and her father missing – along with some very valuable merchandise. As she is reeling from her discoveries, a young man, Keishin, comes through the shop’s door and offers to help, first with Hana’s bleeding foot, and then with the search for her father.
Hana accepts his offer and they find themselves on a magical, mystical adventure in a universe where nothing is as it seems. You see, the pawnshop is a portal between two worlds and if Hana cannot find her father and the missing merchandise, the results will be catastrophic.
The book is absolutely magical. There are so many amazing places and people and items they come across! They go to the village where every night, the stars are made anew. They climb the ladders to the Night Market where almost anything is available – for a price. They travel across the universe on the wings of a rumor as it races through the population of this parallel place. They jump through puddles and visit an amazing museum where the exhibits are borne by paper cranes. Keishin is a scientist, a physicist, and he is astounded by the things he is seeing, but it is Hana who truly commands his attention – but he will learn her secrets too late.
I devoured this book in one sitting. I had read the first 15 or 18 pages, but on a quiet Saturday afternoon I read the remaining 360 pages in one sitting. It is absolutely lovely, musical and magical and such a pleasure. And I will never look at the doorway of a ramen shop the same way again.
My copy of Water Moon came to me courtesy of my local public library. Give your library some love.
