Yet another reason I’m dying to go to Japan!

This library in central Tokyo is like no other. Instead of offering volumes ranging from the usual, it displays the decidedly unusual.

How about a bittersweet story of unrequited love between two high school students, a man’s passion for job-hunting or someone’s fixation on a pop idol?

These glimpses of the emotions of total strangers are available courtesy of personal pocket notebooks and diaries.

Called Techorui Toshoshitsu, the cubbyhole of a library located within the art gallery Picaresque near Sangubashi Station in the capital’s Shibuya Ward is generating quite a stir.

Visitors are able to browse through the “honest feelings” of nameless people they have never met.

Set up in a small space about the size of four and a half tatami mats, shelves in the small space house 300 diaries, pocket notebooks and jottings. A list of the materials available allows visitors to choose notepads they like based on an author’s personal data, or perhaps a specific period when the stuff was written.

Read more: Library offers a raw glimpse of what ordinary people think：The Asahi Shimbun