Strange Weather in Tokyo

by Hiromi Kawakami

The idea of spending time at a widower’s home was slightly off-putting, but once I’ve started drinking, not much can stop me, so I went along.

‘I feel pity for these batteries that worked so hard for my benefit, and I can’t throw them away. It seems a shame to get rid of them the moment they die, after these batteries have given me light and sound, and run my gadgets.

‘It’s unusual for a woman to pour her own saké,’ Sensei chided me. ‘Oh, Sensei, you’re just old!’ I retorted.

‘The twenty-eighth?’ I repeated, slowly leafing through my own diary, despite the fact that there was nothing at all in my schedule.

When I tried to think whom I spent time with before I became friendly with Sensei, no one came to mind. I had been alone. I took the bus alone, I walked around the city alone, I did my shopping alone, and I drank alone.

Sensei would probably be angry if he knew I was comparing him to the band on a dust jacket.

When she said ‘sales tax’, it sounded like ‘tales sax’.

I gazed at the blades, so sharp that touching them would draw blood instantly, the desire to see Sensei grew. I had no idea why the gleam of the knives elicited such a feeling, but I missed him intensely.

I didn’t think he would be so fickle, but then again, he was a Giants fan. There was no way that I could genuinely trust what he might do.

When I was in Tokyo, I couldn’t help but feel that I was always alone,

My wife had a book she loved called Suburban Hiking for Pleasure. On its cover, there was a photo of a woman climbing a mountain with a walking stick,

Come to think of it, he will soon be fifty years old, the same age my wife was when she ran off.

My wife drank her tea, laughing, and I drank my tea, stewing in my anger.

My wife was a difficult person, but I wasn’t so different. I used to think that we complemented each other – as the saying goes: even a cracked pot has a lid that fits.

‘You don’t get as drunk if you eat a tomato first,’

‘I think you just ate a bug,’ Sensei pointed out to Toru, who replied with a straight face, ‘Mmm, delicious!’

I felt a wave of dizziness. Was I anaemic?

being in love makes people uncertain. Don’t you know what that’s like?

Lazing in bed all day had brought up memories of the past.

I remember thinking to myself there wasn’t a chance in a million that I would ever encounter ‘a love fated in the stars’.

I kept crying as I took bites of the apple. The crisp sound of my chewing alternated with the plink, plink of my tears as they fell into the stainless steel sink.

I busied myself with eating and crying.

I had the urge to sit down right there and sob, but it was too cold for that.

Sensei would always be Sensei. On a night like this, I knew he was out there somewhere.

It’s always better to drink than to cry.

I pranced about my flat, naked except for a towel twisted around my head.

I went to the toilet and did my business vigorously.

At any other time, Sensei would stubbornly insist on salted skewers when he ate yakitori. But apparently he was capable of flexibility under certain circumstances, I thought, growing reproachful as I sipped saké by myself in a corner.

Kojima had been rather impressed by a trick that was employed in the film. I, on the other hand, had been rather impressed by the various hats worn by the lead actress.

‘The first time I asked a girl on a date, well, I actually wrote out something like a flow chart of how the conversation might go.’ Did you make a flow chart today? I asked. Kojima answered, ‘Oh, no,’ in a serious tone. ‘But I will admit that I thought about it.’

How many years had it been that I’d lived in this neighbourhood? After I left home, I lived in another part of the city but, like a salmon that returns to the stream of its birth, at some point I ended up back here, in the neighbourhood where I grew up.

While I had been agonizing over my feelings for Sensei, he had been agonizing over the puzzle of the octopus.

I would ask Sumiyo, Don’t you love your grandson? Don’t you have any desire to see him? ‘Not particularly,’ she would say. Then Sumiyo disappeared.

There must have been something inviting about the current, because occasionally people would throw themselves into it. Most of the time, though, instead of drowning, they would be carried downstream and then rescued, to their dismay, or so I heard.

She had given up being sad or being disappointed. Just like my grandmother when she had taken her last breath, Yuko had purposely stopped feeling things.