In the books, wines trigger dramatic stories and images. For instance, the tasting of 1982 Chateau Mouton Rothschild evokes The Angelus by Jean-Francois Millet. Since the wine is rated 100 by Robert Parker and costs around US$1800 a bottle, I probably won't be able to have the same profound experience any time soon. Nevertheless, the comic books are fun to read and quite addictive. I read three books at one sitting and learned a few things about wines.
Another interesting thing I found was about the character 雫 in the title of the book. At first I didn't think 雫 is a Chinese character and certainly didn't know how to pronounce it. I thought 雫 is a Japanese character meaning drip and pronounced as shizuku. A little research on the Internet showed that many people were wondering about 雫 as well. This is a rarely used character and does not exist in most dictionaries. I finally found the character in the 10-volume 中文大辭典 in our home. The only problem is in 中文大辭典, the entry for 雫 says 義未詳. Since 神の雫 is a Japanese comic book, I will go with 倭俗 and interpret 雫 as drip.
Explanation of 雫 is also available here: http://www.yywzw.com/STW/stw5-11.htm
I've been reading this comic online recently as well though it's a pain to do so via computer. Pretty interesting and you get to learn a little about wine!
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