Claire Youmans first went to Japan in 1992 and was immediately captivated.  After years of travel and study, she continues to be charmed and amazed by a fascinating history and a culture that's both endearingly quirky and entirely unique. She is a retired lawyer who now lives in Tokyo. Her family, including her daughter and two grandsons, live in Seattle, USA.

In 2014, she started Tales of the Meiji Era with The Toki-Girl and the Sparrow-Boy's unparalleled blend of historical fantasy in the first book of the series, Coming Home.  She continues exploring the combination of history and folklore to share her love and fascination with a very different country and culture. 

Exciting adventures continue to unfold in this delightful fantastical yet historical world as social and political changes expand, technology explodes, and two very unusual children grow up.  



The Toki-Girl and the Sparrow-Boy

Tsuruko wasn't in her room, and Kojiro was nowhere to be found  probably off with Yuta, Noriko decided  so she thought this would be a good time to begin going through their joint books and publications to weed out duplicates. Since she knew what she had, she went to Yuta's room to sort through his.


This was work she enjoyed. She went through the books first. While publication as an industry had boomed in Japan since the adoption of the Western printing press with its moveable type and fast reproduction, there still weren't many books available, though more appeared every day. They had many duplicates, she saw, including modern fiction. Noriko set those aside. She found a number of books she hadn't yet read and saw gaps in Yuta's collection that would be filled by her own. She piled the ones she hadn't yet read separately.


Chapter 130