Lokenstein's

• Black Tea (2024) - Abderrahmane Sissako
• Two Weddings and a Funeral (2012, 두 번의 결혼식과 한 번의 장례식 / Du Beon-ui Gyeol-hon-sik-gwa Han Beon-ui Jang-nye-sik) - Kim Jho Kwang-soo
• The Taste of Tea (2004, 茶の味 / Cha no Aji) - Katsuhito Ishii
• Teahouse (1982, 茶馆 / Cha guan) - Tian Xie
• Tampopo (1985, タンポポ) - Juzo Itami
• U Are the Universe (2024) - Pavlo Ostrikov - After Earth explodes, Ukrainian space trucker Andriy Melnyk becomes the last person in the universe until he receives a call from Catherine, a French woman on a distant space station
• Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse (2000) - Agnès Varda
• Concerning My Daughter (2023, 딸에 대하여 / Ttale Daehayeo) - Lee Mi-rang - a daughter moves back in to her mother's place and brings her girlfriend
• Shinjuku Boys (1995) - Jano Williams & Kim Longinotto - rec from Sam
• Aki no Kanade (2015, アキの奏で) - Suzuki Youhei
• Paterson (2016) - Jim Jarmusch - Referenced in a Letterboxd comment on Perfect Days
• Anna and the Apocalypse (2017) - John McPhail
• High-Rise (2015) - Ben Wheatley
• The Platform (2019, El hoyo) - Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia
• The Turning Road (2017, 돌아가는 길) - Kim Sangbaeg
• The Circle (2015, Cirkeln) - Levan Akin

Fiction

Queer books

I have separate wishlists specifically for Asian queer books; you can find them in my Asian queer literature page and my danmei to-read page.

• Finna (2020) - Nino Cipri - queer characters & criticism of capitalism and retail work, based on the author's work for Ikea
• Nettleblack (2022) - Nat Reeve - a neo-Victorian queer farce that follows a runaway heir/ess and an organisation of crime-fighting misfits as they struggle with the misdeeds besieging a rural English town

Realistic fiction

• What you are looking for is in the library (2021, お探し物は図書室まで / O sagashi mono wa toshu shitsu made) - Michiko Aoyama - stories of people going through changes and discovering what they really want, lessons in patience, determination, contentment and self-compassion, comforting
• The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane (2017) - Lisa See - A Chinese Ahka tea farmer in Yunnan has to give up her daughter for adoption, but when the girl grows up, she tries to reconnect with her family
• Days at the Morisaki Bookshop (2010, 森崎書店の日々 / Morisaki Shoten no Hibi) - Satoshi Yagisawa - a story about starting again after a painful breakup and losing a job, healing / finding oneself again
• Hunchback (2023, ハンチバック) - Saou Ichikawa - the inner thoughts of a Japanese disabled woman, written by a disabled author
• Taiwan Travelogue (2020, 臺灣漫遊錄 / Táiwān mànyóu lù) - Yáng Shuāngzǐ (楊双子) - a fictional travelogue through 1950s Taiwan - then under Japanese occupation
• Sweet Bean Paste (2017, あん) - Durian Sukegawa - book recommended by Suvi, about a grandma and dorayaki
• Taipei Story (2026) - R.F. Kuang - As Taiwanese-American Lily Chen goes to an exchange program to Taipei to try and reconnect with her roots, nothing goes as planned and she hits the tough reality that belonging to a diaspora doesn't mean you'll feel at home in your ancestor's country
• Yellowface (2023) - R.F. Kuang - A white girl steals an Asian-American woman's manuscript and publishes it as her own, getting deeper and deeper into lies as she goes
• Strange Weather in Tokyo (2001, センセイの鞄 / Sensei no kaban) - Kawakami Hiromi (川上弘美) - A reflective novel about unlikely (straight) love
• Out (1997, アウト) - Kirino Natsuo (桐野 夏生) - four women working the nightshift in a bento factory come together to help one of them dispose of her murdered husband's body

Magical realism

• The Kamogawa Food Detectives (2013, 鴨川食堂 / Kamogawa shokudō) - Kashiwai Hisashi (柏井壽) - A very special restaurant in Tokyo is able to recreate dishes from people's memories...
• Lost Souls Meet Under a Full Moon (2010, ツナグ) - Mizuki Tsujimura - a rich teenager arranges meetings between the living and their departed loved ones

Fantasy

• Babel (2022) - R.F. Kuang - An adopted Chinese boy in a dystopian England using translations to power up their colonialist goals will have to choose between his motherland and the empire which raised him

Non-Fiction

History

• The Shortest History of China (2021) - Linda Jaivin - A short (263 pages) summary of China's history

Politics

• The Jungle (1906) - Upton Sinclair - a realistic depiction of life inside a meat-packing factory during the early 20th century