Matcha on Monday
by Michiko Aoyama
translated by E. Madison Shimoda
Purchase on Amazon | Bookshop.org | Libro.fm
Hanover Square Press | Pub date: July 7, 2026
What It's About
This is the second book in Michiko Aoyama's Hot Chocolate on Thursday series, and if you read the first one, you will feel right at home. If this is the first one you pick up, it is lovely in its own right and a perfectly fine place to start. Aoyama builds her stories the same way. Linked vignettes. Ordinary people who brush up against each other and change without knowing it. A coffee shop that holds it all together. Even knowing the format, I was still genuinely curious where the stories would take me.
It begins with a woman having one of those days where everything goes wrong. She stumbles into a pop-up matcha event at a local coffee shop and meets Maestro, a charming older gentleman running it, and a young man whose name carries the kanji for luck. He is from Kyoto, there for one day only. Before she leaves, he gives her his small hand towel, embroidered with the character for luck. Then he is gone.
From there, the stories ripple. A couple fighting. A husband trying to prove he listens. A shop that sells handmade lingerie. A woman finally letting herself have the delicate set she had been putting off, the kind of thing you wait until you feel you have grown into. Each story connects to the one before it without knowing it.
At the end, the circle closes.
What Stuck With Me
Aoyama tucks things in. Little details that mean something if you go looking, and sit quietly on the page if you don't.
Aoyama discusses Kenji Miyazawa. If you know Miyazawa, you know his most famous belief: until all people are happy, there is no individual happiness. That philosophy is the structure of the entire novel. A husband buying his wife's favorite tea. A shop owner staying open in the rain. A man giving away a lucky towel. Every small act of kindness travels further than anyone knows. Aoyama is making Miyazawa's worldview visible.
The minazuki detail sent me searching. Aoyama explains what it represents but I wanted to see it for myself. Minazuki is a Kyoto wagashi, a sweet made of white uiro and red azuki beans, triangular to represent ice, eaten on June 30 for Nagoshi no Harae, a purification ritual to ward off illness and invite luck for the second half of the year. Now I know what to look for next time I am in Japan. Aoyama did not drop that detail casually.
This is what I love about her writing. She embeds layers you can read on the surface and feel underneath. You do not need to know Miyazawa or the history of minazuki to enjoy this book. But knowing them adds something real.
My Takeaway
Matcha on Monday stands right alongside Hot Chocolate on Thursday. The warmth is the same, the format is familiar, and she has proven again with this book how well she writes this world.
If Hot Chocolate on Thursday is already on your shelf, this belongs next to it. Either one is a good place to start. For readers of What You Are Looking For Is in the Library, Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, or anything in the category of healing Japanese fiction, this belongs in your hands.
It is a book about how we affect people we will never know we affected. None of the characters know whose day they changed. We do.
Thank you Hanover Square Press for the eARC. All opinions are my own.
This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Purchase on Amazon | Bookshop.org | Libro.fm
If you liked this book you may also like:
Hot Chocolate on Thursday by Michiko Aoyama (Book 1 in this series)
What You Are Looking For Is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama
Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa
Days at the Torunka Café by Satoshi Yagisawa
