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Japanese bookstore invites customers to stay overnight

A Junkudo location in Tokyo is inviting six guests to sleep over at their store. 

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  • By Molly Driscoll Staff Writer

Do you think you would sleep better surrounded by tall shelves of books? If you live in Tokyo, you may have the chance to find out.

According to the bookstore’s website, the chain Junkudo is inviting six guests to stay all night in the store on Nov. 1. Participants need to be 18 or older and should bring their own sleeping bags. They can eat and drink inside, though alcohol is not allowed. The sleepover guests can also leave to get food or go to a nearby bathroom. The official run time for the event is 5 p.m. to 8 a.m.

Participants are also asked to buy at least one book during the event.

The store that will be participating is located in the Chiyoda ward of Tokyo, according to the Wall Street Journal. 

The deadline for applying was Sept. 30 and applications are now being looked at.

The Junkudo staff apparently aren’t the only ones to whom such an idea has occurred. A few months ago, Barnes & Noble writer Chrissie Gruebel described what she would do if allowed to stay overnight in a bookstore "going full-on 'Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.'" (For those who missed out on the children’s classic by E.L. Konigsburg, in the novel, siblings Claudia and Jamie run away from home and stay overnight in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.) 

“We sit at the best table in the joint without feeling the eyes of a person who also wants to sit down boring into our back,” Gruebel wrote. “This is also good. We could get used to this… Decide to finally, finally, FINALLY tackle Infinite Jest… Find the wheelie ladder and take a ride on it while snatching a book off the shelf… Or forget everything we just said and just read, read, read until the break of dawn, like you’re the maharajah of your very own book palace.”

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