Brain Fodder

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If you're in Japan and are having trouble laying your hands on a first edition of Jack Kerouac's On The Road, or Allen Ginsberg's Howl, then consider a trip to Cow Books, www.cowbooks.jp. Specializing in countercultural works, the Tokyo bookshop is a repository for treasures that will make beatnik bibliophiles weep with happiness. Here's a copy of Daniel Seymour's cult 1971 photography book, A Loud Song; there's a surviving Organic Design in Home Furnishings,[an error occurred while processing this directive] the exquisitely rare catalog that U.S architect Eliot F. Noyes wrote to accompany the highly influential 1941 New York exhibition of the same name. Filling shelf space between hallowed titles like these are works from William Burroughs, Marshall McLuhan, radical hippy activist Jerry Rubin and many more (it's an inventory that betrays the impeccable taste of literary critic and store owner Yataro Matsuura).

When you've browsed to your heart's content, you'll find the immediate area, Nakameguro, well worth exploring, too — it's one of the Japanese capital's hippest neighborhoods, strewn with cafés, vintage-clothing boutiques and music stores. If you can't make it to Nakameguro, there's a Cow Books branch in the swish Aoyama district, as well as a mobile library, the Traveling Cow Books service, which sets up shop at various locations across Tokyo. That way, your copy of On The Road can get on the road to you.