Yeah, I guess I got sucked-in by the illustrations. I can't read Japanese but I loved the soft watercolour illustrations in this book. Normally, I can get the gist of an illustrated Japanese book just by following the illustrations but not so with this book. Clearly it's about a cellist who is having some difficulties and with the involvement of a variety of cute animals he seems to make his way and be accepted into the orchestra. But there is a lot of Japanese text and clearly I am missing the nuances. Anyway, I didn't buy the book for the story but for the illustrations, And in this respect, it is good but maybe not as good as some of the other Japanese books I have which are illustrated in a similar vein. It looks like a wet-into-wet technique but is beautifully managed and some of the illustrations still have the hint of outlines ..so not sure how the artist managed this ...unless with some sort of "resist".
But I'm still not sure if one of the main characters is a cat or a fox. Wish I could read it. But 4 stars from me ...because of the illustrations. ( )