So yesterday, after eating way too much, I was chilling and listening to Christmas music (I much prefer traditional songs played on an Irish wire-strung harp to what they play in the stores—are we over those now? 😂) and it occurred to me that what was really needed was a… 

Sei Shōnagon is regarded as one of the two great prose authors in Japan’s history, the other being Murasaki Shikibu. Her Pillow Book and Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji are Japan’s two great prose classics, and together they form the twin pillars of Japanese literature. The stature of these two women in Japan is…