Foreigners who think of Japan as a polite society have never ridden the Yamanote at rush hour. The
But, like all indulgences that are valued not just for their product but for their process, the sento will never entirely disappear. For in the unhurried rituals of scrubbing and soaking, and in the p...
A turtle doesn’t get up on a bookshelf by itself,
Somnolent
When I’d killed Ozawa at the sentō, I’d briefly wondered whether I was now one of the bad guys. By the time I did McGraw, I’d figured out there are no bad guys, any more than there are good guys. Ther...
Then she reached lower and started to ease my pants down. I stopped her so I could get my shoes and socks off first. Pants-pooled-at-the-ankles is too helpless a posture for me.
The room was large, and largely empty. The pace would pick up later in the evening. For now, the action comprised just a few lonely souls. They seemed lost in the expanse of the room, their play joyle...
Sometimes you need the anesthesia. Because what you learn about yourself when fear finally overtakes you isn’t pretty. You understand that the person you thought of as yourself, your immutable, indivi...
Shoganai, I said. Literally, There is no way of doing it. Yes, he said, nodding. Elsewhere they have Cest la vie, or That’s life.
She laughed. Good. You still haven’t told me what you were afraid of. I thought for a moment. Drowsiness was settling on me like a blanket. Of getting involved. Like you said, I haven’t been with some...
Relax, he said again, probably reading my thoughts from my expression. I’ll get you the other file. I considered telling him what would happen if he didn’t, but recognized that doing so would have bee...
Pardon me, but the drop-down menu of my mind just offered up so many enticing possibilities that for a moment my brain froze.
On the other stage, there was a girl who looked like a mix of Japanese and something Mediterranean or Latin. A good mix. She had that silky, almost shimmering black hair so many modern Japanese women...
My mother had tried to raise me as a Catholic, but war had deracinated whatever meager plantings her efforts had achieved. No God ever would have stood silent spectator to what I saw in Vietnam. To wh...
Maybe democracies, maybe all cultures, had life cycles, the same as the humans who comprised them. And maybe there were things cultures could do to extend their lives—the equivalent of exercise and ea...
Life can only be understood backward; but it must be lived forward. —Kierkegaard
It was only later that I came to learn how dangerous it is to allow yourself to be seduced by that first attractive theory. If you don’t keep testing for alternatives, you might wind up satisfying you...
It was fascinating, how people could be so reluctant to recognize blackmail, how eager they could be to convince themselves it was something else, even something fundamentally mutually cooperative. An...
I heard laughter and looked up. Some kids at the terminal next to me, playing an online game. I wondered for a moment how I had gotten here. And I wondered if maybe this is what Tatsu had meant when h...
I heard a bolt moving, then the door opened. It was Washio. You’re early, he said. I shrugged. I rarely make appointments. You don’t want to give someone the opportunity to fix you in time and place....