I received this book from Netgalley in exchange of an honest review.

So I just had to have this book when I spotted it on Netgalley, and yay, I got approved for it!

After reading I can say that I knew about 99% of the gestures used in this book. Then again, that is not so strange considering I have been watching anime/jdorama/j-movies, reading manga, playing JRPGs/visual novels for a long time now. A lot of those gestures get used in those I mentioned.

Still it was a lot of fun seeing them in this book. Some I didn’t recognise directly (as it often works better if you see the hand moving), but when reading and trying it out, I recognised them.

I loved the format of the book. First up a photograph of someone doing that gesture. With then a English phrase, the romaji form of the phrase, and then the Kanji/Hiragana/Katakana. That is followed by a description of the gesture, and then followed by a description of what it means. You get all the information, but in a handy bite-sized format.

I also loved how the book doesn’t just take the standard gestures, but also takes a few office related ones, slang, and others that you won’t always see. It was also a definitely plus that the book is so diverse, you will see old, young, dressed up, or just dressed normally people, on the street, or out on a mountain, or in the office, or other places.

I like how they ended with a Sayonara and Tejime. 😛

There was just one thing I didn’t like, and for that I will remove one star. The photographs. If you add photographs, at least make sure they are good quality. Especially in these days of pictures being high definition, it is just a shame if your book features photographs that look like you plucked them of the internet and didn’t care about how they looked.

But all in all, I still really liked this book, and I would highly recommend it to everyone!