[DeepL Translation - needs review] Volume 1: The time is the era of the Great Opening of Ports. In the port town of Yokohama, there is a small coffee shop called "Kamome-tei". A little girl, Chirori, works there. This is a story of the four seasons of a little girl who lives her life to the fullest in the changing seasons.
Historical slice-of-life manga set in Meiji-era Yokohama, where Japanese traditions and Western ones are beginning to meet and young Chirori works at a coffee shop. Interesting setting and very pretty art with lots of kimono and lovely coffee cups.
Language-wise: I found this a very easy read. There is full furigana, and many pages have no text at all, including an entire chapter where the storytelling is done through the pictures alone. Most of the vocabulary is fairly simple, and some of the words I would guess a newer learner might not know are repeated multiple times. The one tricky thing is that one character speaks in dialect/slurred Japanese, and there are a few older words/kanji usage (e.g. コーヒーをいれる→カヒーを淹れる).
Note: while the opening scene where Chirori dresses up for the day felt tasteful to me, there are a couple of other scenes that tipped over into feeling fanservicey, including one where grown men are openly ogling her and one where the author seems to have forgotten to draw a layer of her under-kimono, though the scenes don't show a lot of skin. As she is supposed to be 12 or 13, I found this a bit uncomfortable. Both scenes are short. (EDIT: Having finished the series now, there was only one other scene I would really call fanservicey in the rest of the manga, in one of the last chapters.)
Historical slice-of-life manga set in Meiji-era Yokohama, where Japanese traditions and Western ones are beginning to meet and young Chirori works at a coffee shop. Interesting setting and very pretty art with lots of kimono and lovely coffee cups.
Language-wise: I found this a very easy read. There is full furigana, and many pages have no text at all, including an entire chapter where the storytelling is done through the pictures alone. Most of the vocabulary is fairly simple, and some of the words I would guess a newer learner might not know are repeated multiple times. The one tricky thing is that one character speaks in dialect/slurred Japanese, and there are a few older words/kanji usage (e.g. コーヒーをいれる→カヒーを淹れる).
Note: while the opening scene where Chirori dresses up for the day felt tasteful to me, there are a couple of other scenes that tipped over into feeling fanservicey, including one where grown men are openly ogling her and one where the author seems to have forgotten to draw a layer of her under-kimono, though the scenes don't show a lot of skin. As she is supposed to be 12 or 13, I found this a bit uncomfortable. Both scenes are short. (EDIT: Having finished the series now, there was only one other scene I would really call fanservicey in the rest of the manga, in one of the last chapters.)