telophase | Book recs!

This time for

wintersweet, which I'm mostly-reposting from the original post because this is the sort of book that I like to read, too. She asks, in part:

I'm going through past book recs but I have a new and challenging novel rec request for you. The problem is how to describe it, because I don't know how to put it in non-Japanese/manga/anime terms that won't sound overly schmoopy.

First, for the anime/manga fans/Japanese readers: The textual equivalent of Yokohama Shopping Project or Omohide Poroporo (Only Yesterday) or something where Oga Kazuo (the main Ghibli landscape artist) would do the backgrounds for it if were made into an animated film. 癒しの本。

For everyone: Something interesting but...I don't know, gentle? with detailed settings and scenery (landscape porn? :P). Not too tense. No pervading sense of the downfall of the human race, no suicides, no Literary Copout Tragic Endings, no "anomie as character." (So no literary equivalent of Wong Kar Wai, despite the settings.) It doesn't have to have a huge Hollywood musical-style happy ending, but at least a vague positive overtone would be good. Slice of life is fine; mainstream realism is fine. Huge bonus points for beautiful settings (or settings made beautiful by the author's attention.) I just want something I can swim around in, but with enough story to keep me reading. But, and here's the big catch, I don't want anything gooey, schmoopy, New Agey, or romance-booky. (Romance novel tropes make me tense if they don't make me stabby, which counteracts the effect I'm going for here, so even if they're good it would backfire.)

I was thinking fiction, but travel writing or memoirs might be OK, as long as the story is immersive enough and doesn't push too many buttons. I have a low tolerance for "I went to an offbeat place and there sure were a lot of offbeat people doing offbeat things! but I wasn't impressed 'cause I'm too hip" *cough*PicoIyer*cough*) or "I went to a mystical place and they thought I was really special!" or "I went to a really poor place and got off on how poor yet beautiful everyone was and learned about doing things simply and became enlightened and then took a $1000 flight back to my $2000/month yuppie flat in Marin and felt awesome about myself."

If you recommend Eat, Pray, Love, or anything along those lines, I will smack you. (That is exactly the kind of thing I don't want to read.)

So! Go over there and rec away!