Meet your next Japanese fiction obsession – perfect for fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Days at the Morisaki Bookshop and Convenience Store Woman

What does the way you spend a small amount of money say about your life?

In How to Use 3,000 Yen, Hika Harada weaves a warm, wise and deeply relatable story of three generations of women navigating love, work, family―and the quiet anxieties of money. From a young woman confronting the fragility of financial independence, to a mother managing a household on a single income, to a grandmother facing the uncertainty of old age, each must rethink what security, freedom and happiness really mean.

As their lives intersect, small everyday choices begin to carry extraordinary weight. Can careful saving shape a better future? And when life refuses to go to plan, what truly matters most?

Blending gentle humour with sharp insight, this uplifting novel offers not just a story, but a fresh perspective on money, modern life and the ties that hold us together. 

Perfect for fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold and Days at the Morisaki Bookshop.

About the Author

Born 1970 in Kanagawa Prefecture, Harada won the 34th NHK Creative Radio Drama Grand Prix in 2005 for Little Princess No. 2. In 2007, she won the 31st Subaru Literary Award for The Teatime That Doesn’t Start. Her novel How to Use 3,000 Yen won the Miyazaki Book Award. Her other books include Dinner at the Night Library and many more.

Alison Watts is the award-winning translator of The Boy and the Dog, What You are Looking For is in the Library and other highly acclaimed contemporary Japanese fiction. She lives in Australia.