Vampires stories aren't my bag, baby. Neither is Harry Potter. But as I writer, its almost my duty to read such popular stories. To keep in touch with current trends in contemporary litereature.

When I first moved to Japan, finding English books was nearly impossible. Bookstore after bookstore had no English section, or a woefully inadequate section. What would become *the* bookstore for me was Junku. And their English books are always hidden away. On the sixth floor. And the elevators usually have a line, so you've gotta take the escalator all the way up. Very inconvenient.

But get to the top floor, and walk to the very back, and there's the gold at the end of the rainbow. Rows and rows of books. In English! They had an entire bookcase—not a shelf, but the entire collum of shelves—devoted to Harry Potter.

Except Harry Potter is over. Twilight is in. And even then I'm sure I'm riding the wave down. Take a look at this.

Twilight is the new Harry Potter. Remember how Japanese books are always wrapped in paper, so that you can't tell what somebody is reading? Well that makes Japanese people all the more curious when they see you reading a book where they can see the cover. My Japanese is just good enough to say that Twilight is the new Harry Potter. That's always how I describe the book. “Twilight wa atarashi no Harry Potter desu.” How do you say vampire in Japanese?

Now, lets talk about the books. I'm only halfway through New Moon, but I'm going to be giving away spoilers.

You see, New Moon begins with the entire vampire family going ape-shit when Bella gets a paper cut. Because the smell of blood is so intoxicating for them. Does anybody else think that isn't very consistant? Has anybody else wondered what happens when these vampires smell a woman on her period? Surely they'd go just as crazy. You wanna say that they don't like the taste of menstral blood? Okay, I can buy that. But if they go nearly uncontrolably crazy over the smell of blood, a woman on her period should have some effect on them. It's like saying you're hoplessly addicted alcoholic when it comes to rum, but whiskey doesn't make you bat an eyelash.

Not to mention the fact that they're in a high school. I've worked at enough public schools to know that kids are constantly fighting, playing and drawing blood to various degrees. Even if menstral blood had no effect on these vampires, they'd never make it in a high school. One scraped knee during PE and the fangs would show themselves in no time.

And let's also mention what an idiot Bella is. Why does she have to take a hundred pages to realize what the reader knew right away? I don't mind her taking a while to sort out what's happening. But if the reader knows what going on right away, why do you have to drag us through hundreds of pages before our protagonist comes to speed?

Despite my ranting, I have enjoyed the story. Probably because its more of a high school drama from a woman's perspective. It's nice to know what the girls were thinking when I tried to hold their hand back in high school. And if the true focus of the book was vampires, I'm sure wouldn't been enjoying it even half as much.