I love workplace novels and this one was no exception. Absurdist and refreshing. Can we a tad slow but once you got into the rhythm of reading it I couldn’t put it down.

Overall I would say I enjoyed reading May You Have Delicious Meals but it wasn’t a story I was itching to pick up and it took me a lot longer than it should have to finish given how short it is.

I almost felt it was a little underdeveloped particularly Nitani’s character as there was so much more than could have been done there in terms of his feelings towards food. Equally I feel like I expected it to be a bit more weird and in reality it was quite a mundane read!

I really wanted to enjoy this book as the blurb was interesting but I struggled with it's cadence and found it difficult to get into.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC!

This book has a very interesting concept, but I don't quite think this was a hit for me.

I have read a lot of books centring around Japanese culture and food this year, and I definitely enjoyed some of the other books more.

I have given this book 3 stars as I did enjoy the writing and the premise of this book, but I don't it does anything more for the topics involved in it's narrative. I also don't think I enjoy books about food as much as I think I do which is my own issue!

This was an odd one, and I really liked it!

I love books that deal with food in some way and I am a huge fan of Japanese literature, so I knew I had to read this book as soon as I first heard of it.

May You Have Delicious Meals is a short novel about Japanese office culture, especially when it comes to food. The novel pointedly begins with our main character Nitani refusing to go out for lunch with his boss, which marks the beginning of this unhinged ride. The book is centred around a quartet of characters: Nitani, two women he works with—Ashikawa and Oshio—and food, intertwined with the politics of working in an office.

Ashikawa is described as being archetypically a "good" person and, more than that, makes an effort to be perceived that way (e.g. bringing treats for everyone at work), but also acts as this really fragile individual who just can't handle the same workload as everyone else, which makes some people quite annoyed with her (i.e. Nitani and Oshio), even if secretly. Nitani feels very much bothered by her way of thinking about food and overall attitude (which seem to be always linked in this book); he is, in many ways, her opposite, which is evident by his favourite food: Pot Noodles, showing his different outlook on life. Oshio is, in a way, a character who voices a bit of this other side of Nitani, this toxic side of his, and they become kind of friends, meeting up to drink and talk badly of Ashikawa.

May You Have Delicious Meals, then, seems to link the characters' attitude to food with their attitude towards life and work in a very unhinged way, which I REALLY liked (and I don't know what that says about me).

Thank you so much to Hutchinson Heinemann and NetGalley for the e-ARC!

May You Have Delicious Meals by Junko Takase, translated with finesse by Morgan Giles, is a subtle yet impactful novel that explores the quiet complexities of everyday office life. The story revolves around three co-workers, with alternating perspectives from two characters who share a mix of intrigue and distaste toward a third colleague, creating a dynamic that is both peculiar and slightly unsettling. Written in a straightforward style, the novel’s humor and realistic tone accentuate a subtle bleakness, highlighting the small absurdities and unspoken tensions of ordinary relationships. Her storytelling makes the familiar feel both amusing and discomforting, drawing readers into a refreshingly honest look at the mundanity of work life.

During the last year it seemed as if every Japanese translation was in the genre of "before the coffee get's cold" episodic feel good novels or thrillers. I am tired of the convenience stores of hope by the seas, the pottery shops of dreams, the moonlight cafes, the laundromat stores of friendship and all the libraries of wishes. I want modern everyday life of some rando to show me life in japan. "May you have a delicious meal" is exactly what I was looking for. Nitani is an office worker and we're following him along as the situation with some work colleagues takes a turn. I found the passive-aggressive behavior and mobbing at work quite an interesting topic. All the office rules were super intriguing to me and I could relate feeling frustrated if one individual wasn't participating. Reminded me of Emi Yagi's Diary of a Void. Nitani as a person who is not fond of food was also an interesting change in japanese perspective. This Akutagawa prize winning novel was something else and I am so thankful for it. Unfortunately the style of writing makes it kinda hard to follow along. It took me a while to get into this. Maybe this is the fault of the translation?

The book is a look into the life of some Japanese office workers and their relationships with each other, their customs and food.

I enjoyed finding out more about Japanese culture and, even though parts of it directly translated well into English, much of it just felt a bit flat in my opinion.

It is a short read, there's nothing massively captivating about the story but I did become somewhat invested in Natani and Oshio. Parts of the story made me laugh as they resonated with personal experience - the praising of home cooked food for example, but not enough took place for this to be a story I rate highly.

A nice short piece of Japanese fiction. I did enjoy this overall, it’s an interesting story about working life in a Japanese office and the different roles that people and their food play and the dynamics this may cause. I enjoyed the characters and the plot, mainly the descriptions of the different kinds of people that exist in a work place.

A novel about the small ways people can irritate us at work.
Oshio suggests she and her male college bully their coworker who has ways of getting under everyone's skin even though there is no discernable reason why.

I loved this, it's writing is subtle but Takase has a really talent for getting you to read between the lines, and what isn't written is almost as important as what is. I only wish they were saw more of the coworkers being bullies/inconsiderate/belittle of Nitani, honestly this book could have been another 100/200 pages and I think it would have been perfect! But still a brilliant read!

May You Have Delicious Meals captures Japan's somewhat stifling work culture and it's links to food with the protagonist Nitani despising food seeing it as a chore much preferring the ease of a pot noodle in the time it takes to make and the fact it fills him up, despite this he starts to date beloved foodie Ashikawa who keeps bringing in cake and other baked goods into the office to make up for leaving work on time without doing the perceived obligated over-time everyone else is doing.

An interesting thought-provoking novel.

There seems to be quite a thing about Japanese novels based on food and this is a typical example of the genre, focusing on food in the workplace and its place in establishing relationships, hierarchies, respect and promotions.

So, when the boss says “we’re going out to eat”, it is risky to decline. Nitani, the central character, does exactly that, right at the start of the story, and as the rest of the office workers cheerfully return you can see where this is going.

Nitani is not a connoisseur of food and could be addicted to pot noodles but he gets on with his job. Ashikawa, on the other hand, is fragile, a cry baby who does not work long hours like everyone else. She lives with her parents and she should be a problem for HR! She survives by bringing in delicacies for the office, beautifully cooked and presented which everyone simply has to love and, increasingly, her snacks dominate the working day.

Oshio, another female colleague, can’t stand her and sees through her, while liking Nitani, but he is drawn to Ashikawa’s helplessness and her food, and is gradually pulled in to her web in spite of his efforts not to be.

As it continues, food dominates the story as Ashikawa cooks for Nitani as well as the office. Nitani is confused, might be better off with Oshio, but he can’t escape the clutches of Ashikawa.

It’s an amusing story and revealing about Japanese culture as well as food. You’ll have to decide for yourself whether you think Ashikawa is a sweetie or a monster and if you work in an office with a fridge, labelled food and the occasional rage over food thefts you’ll enjoy it.

I worked in a Japanese office for two years, and this short novel does well to capture the stifling conformity of the culture. It’s kind of a bizarre love triangle, where one corner embraces the roles and routines of office life, another just wants to throw a (metaphorical) brick through them, and the third wavers between the two. It’s quite a downbeat book, with a pretty cynical and jaundiced view of life, but an enjoyable one.

"May You Have Delicious Meals", though based in the Japanese office-environment, seems to revolve around another, more universal principle - that attitudes around food tell quite a story about an individual's approach to self, life and others.

The cast of three characters - Nitani, Ashikawa and Oshio - showcases it quite well. Nitani seems to despise not only food, but the pleasure of it whilst his matrimonial interest, Ashikawa, is immersed in the world of flavours. In this coupling Nitani expresses two contradicting attitudes - one is to go with societal expectations to find himself a proper wife, the other feels like a silent protest and treating Ashikawa's cooking and feeding like an attack on his autonomy. There's also Oshio, who represents more modern attitudes towards life, for whom food doesn't seem to function as either positive or negative obsession, but she surely likes her drink. But she isn't a type of woman that men like Nitani are supposed to marry.

Yet, even though the concept was interesting, "May You Have Delicious Meals" is not a memorable novel.

May You Have Delicious Meals is a novella about office culture and social interactions in Japan. Reading this was as fun and exciting as watching paint dry. The novel is plotless and I’m going to get into it in a moment, but I do want to say if you’ve been unlucky enough to take Japanese sociology classes, this is a good book to reflect on wa/和/social harmony.

The novella mainly follows three co-workers: Nitani, Ashikawa, and Oshio. Nitani is a sexist man who hates the idea of cooking and doesn’t care about food. He starts sort of seeing Ashikawa (secretly), a woman who loves to cook and is just scared and insecure about everything. In their company, there is an unspoken rule to not ask Ashikawa to do much work because she can’t take it, and everyone cuts her slack. This means that Oshio, her colleague, has to do everything else and gets screamed at when the team doesn’t perform. Hence, Oshio keeps getting drinks with Nitani to whine about Ashikawa.

That’s pretty much it. We just follow vignettes in which the characters meet and interact and eat food.

I found the story very uninteresting, Oshio and Nitani were unlikable as fuck, and Ashikawa just put me off. She was just so weird. Nitani’s thoughts on women weren’t fun. Oshio was just so annoying, she kept jokingly (?) proposing to bully Ashiwaka and it was disgusting. Ashikawa needed some personality, she was just boring to read about. And lastly, I just couldn’t keep track of the other characters, there was very little introduction when the book started, it felt like coming into the fourth season of a TV show and being bombarded with “Fuji drinks from a bottle,” “Junko wants to eat noodles,” etc.

I understand this has won the prestigious Akutagawa prize in Japan and that’s why it’s been translated to English, but it really didn’t work for me. Even if I do admit that it was interesting to reflect on wa and all the stuff I’ve learnt about sociology in Japan and so forth, this was not entertaining or fun to read at all. I’m not taking anything from this book.

A most curious book with characters that were wooden and unlikeable. No real story as such just a mood of unhappiness, loneliness and depression. I didn’t enjoy at all.

This is a tricky one to review. A very little book about a group of co-workers in Japan, revolving around the dynamics of food and eating. An interesting comment on eating together, the pleasure of food and consumer culture but maybe a little lost on me because of the cultural difference. I also found the main character who disliked food and purely ate to live difficult to get to grips with because there was no context around why he felt this way, but maybe this was the point - why does everyone have to take pleasure in food, necessarily? Maybe, I dunno. I liked the end, which I felt was unexpected, funny and also tied all the commentary together well. I also liked Oshio, little bit of a bitch but owning it you know. Think maybe I was just hoping for a weirder book because of the comparison to Convenience Store Woman and I didn’t get that - not similar books at all. That’s why it only gets a 3.

This is an unusual book focusing on the culture within an office in Japan. It could also be described as highlighting bullying and eating disorders. The relationship between the three main characters is uncomfortable but written in such a way that the reader can understand the context and motivation for the behaviours of each. A very interesting perspective of Japanese culture and the nuances of manners and expectations. I found it interesting.

I really enjoyed this darkly funny satire on office politics and the pressure to conform at work. I was firmly on Oshio’s side throughout- not sure what that says about me! The switching perspectives were well observed and I would love to read more from this author in the future. I like the eye-catching cover design too!

May You Have Delicious Meals by Junko Takase, out in the Uk Feb 25 - I’ve read a fair few Japanese authors recently (I blame Shogun and a growing publishing trend) & I’ve enjoyed most of them, but not so much this, despite it being the 2022 winner of the Akutagawa Prize.

We have 3 main characters, none of whom I could connect with or really understand: Ashikawa is obliging, a keen baker and office feeder; her colleague Nitani, is addicted to pot noodles and no food-lover (yet he knows Ashikawa’s the kind of woman he will probably marry); & Oshio, Nitani’s drinking buddy, friend, and a bolder woman.

The main themes of office politics, cultural rules and expectations, plus the role of food in society, raise questions, but all in all this book left me perplexed and sad.