Chidori High is a boys' school that takes in the dregs of society with the lowest grades. Next door stands Kikyo Girls' High, where the wealthy, high-class families send their precious daughters. Chidori second-year Rintaro, who has a fierce face but a gentle heart, is helping at his family's patisserie when he meets a girl named Kaoruko. The two hit it off right away…but this blissful peace is quickly disturbed when Rintaro discovers that Kaoruko is actually a student at Kikyo. Worse, she...

No one is born with a positive self-esteem, because the mind of a child is a tabula rasa. However, everything is learned. You learned how to have a positive self-esteem, same way I did. If you have a low self-esteem, you weren't born with it, but developed it due to several factors including parents, family, environment, success or failure, etc.Now, whatever your situation is, and regardless of your age, you can completely remodel your life by becoming more self confident and havin...

Meg Raspberry lives a charmed life in the English countryside as an apprentice to the powerful witch Faust. That is, until her seventeenth birthday rolls around, and Faust reveals that Meg will die in a year from the Death Sentence curse! There’s only one way to avoid her inevitable demise—collect a thousand tears of joy to create a Seed of Life, which will grant Meg immortality. But can Meg still find joy in her circumstances? She might have to learn how anyway…The clock is ticking, and t...

Despite the hostile rivalry between their schools, after spending time together, Rintaro and Kaoruko have begun to feel comfortable around each other. However, even with their growing bond, the barriers between the two schools are so high that Rintaro finds himself at a loss with his friends. The secret of his relationship is putting up walls between them. And so, Rintaro calls Kaoruko and her friend Subaru to a meeting, hoping to find a solution…

The town of Lapis is abuzz as the annual spirit festival kicks off! Visiting to inspect the parade, Meg and Sophie come across Mary, a girl they met at last year’s festival who’s looking forward to seeing the boy she loves again—even though she doesn’t know his name or face! Meg and Sophie manage to place the werewolf Ulf as her paramour, but as a resident of the spirit world himself, Ulf has grown apathetic to the idea of a reunion with Mary... For the sake of their love, Meg and Sophie w...

The sports world’s attention was focused on Japan for the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics and Paralympics. The years-long buildup to and aftermath of the games occurred in the midst of the global pandemic, which delayed the event until 2021. Given all of this, there is perhaps no better time to delve into an often overlooked but critical facet of sport in Japan: religion.Religion has long been a part of the Japanese sport tradition—from Shugendō practitioners offering sumo bouts to the ...

Chidori High second-year Rintaro is a gentle soul, with a fierce face and an even fiercer reputation. Used to being judged by everyone around him, he finds himself thrown off balance when he meets the open-hearted Kaoruko, a girl who attends a rival school and should be his polar opposite in every way. But her genuine attitude slowly makes his walls crumble. Despite their growing relationship, the rivalry between the two schools becomes a deep chasm that may be hard to cross, especially af...

On Meg’s seventeenth birthday, she learns that she only has one year left to live. Her mentor—the Eternal Witch, Faust—explains that she is cursed and the only way to save herself is to grow a seed of life using one thousand tears of joy. Of course, such tears aren’t easy to come by. As Meg begins her quest, she finds herself drawn into the lives of her friends and neighbors in ways she never imagined. By sharing their burdens and using her magic to comfort them, she learns how precious th...

An eventful Christmas Eve brings a battle won and hard lessons learned. After much needed reflection, Ayato is able to confide in his friends about a hope he's held in his heart since childhood. As for Rintaro and Kaoruko, their passionate exchange in the chill of Christmas night is all that occupies their minds, though the upcoming new year's festivities may just shake things up…

“I will erase the magic that took everything from me.”Meg Raspberry has one year to evade Death’s Decree, and her hunt for a thousand tears of joy is underway. But when someone dear to her begins nearing the end of their life, Meg is faced with a question she can’t ignore: Why is she allowed to fight fate while others must simply accept it? Determined to help however she can, Meg sets out to grant elderly Flaire one last wish before time runs out. The clock is ticking, and Meg’s journey ha...

Now carrying the title of Lapis’s Witch, Meg heads to an elite event feeling like a full-fledged magic user. Held once every twenty years, the Rite of Witchcraft boasts the latest in magical innovation, and everyone is focused on curing one of the world’s deadliest diseases: magical contamination. After the convention, Meg heads back to Lapis to find the town’s sacred tree suffering from that exact affliction. The Spirit inhabiting the tree wishes to give back to its beloved town, but as t...

'Although the study of such defects is regularly examined at length in more general books on electron microscopy, this text in which they are centre-stage will surely be appreciated.' [Read Full Review]UltramicroscopyThis unique reference text provides those who are studying crystal lattice defects using a transmission electron microscope (TEM) with a basic knowledge of transmission electron microscopy. As it has been written for beginners, the principles of both transmissi...