Hardboiled

There is something vaguely unsettling about reading fiction set in Japan - especially fiction by Banana Yoshimoto. One ends up feeling like she's in a parallel universe, talking about a country and experiences that can only happen to those people. Emotion run deep and intense, experiences are bizarre and unpredictable, nothing can be pinned down to realistic experience. And yet, at the end of it all, everything can be explained by the fragility of human nature and emotions. It's a kind of magic only Japan can weave, I suppose. A country whose people seem smart and efficient on the outside but are teeming with the burden of unanswered questions and life lessons yet to be discovered on the inside.

Yoshimoto's fiction always makes me think that my own culture/country is brutal, in that it throws reality in my face and gives me no space to deal with it. Maybe this is why I enjoy it - it is a nice medium for me to contemplate the things I've left un-thought of so far. It's an excuse for me to unburden myself as well.