Last night I was standing by the magazine rack at Barnes & Noble thumbing through some magazines, and I read this article in GOOD magazine, which I found pretty interesting. Standing and reading magazines is somewhat common here in the United States, but in Japan it’s extremely common. In fact, it’s so common that there’s a word for it in Japanese—tachiyomi o suru, which, of course, means, “To stand and read in a bookstore.”

Actually, though, I would say that most of the tachiyomi o suru that occurs in Japan isn’t at bookstores, but at convenience stores, where you’ll often see hoards of people reading the latest Japanese comic books, or manga. The stores don’t make any money when people tachiyomi o suru and don’t buy anything, but they don’t seem to care—probably because the store employees tachiyomi o suru themselves when they’re not working.

Tags: GOOD, GOOD Magazine, tachiyomi o suru