Pearl City: Stories from Japan and Elsewhere is an eclectic collection of short stories. The author, Simon Rowe, has clearly put in an immense amount of effort to ensure that everything about the stories is varied. From Japan, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia, to Australia and New Zealand, readers are kept on their toes with the different locales presented. That variety extends to the stories and themes themselves too. Each story is easily able to stand on its own. There isn’t a single story in the collection that relies on another. Not only that, but the actual content remains unique for each individual story too. There are historical stories and…