Below are a couple of my favorite excerpts from the book that can be savoured without context.

Some excerpts I liked

A relative of mine once said the best thing about work was getting to use skills that had never been appreciated when they were growing up. Midori shares a similar feeling about cooking

It wasn’t easy,” said Midori with a sigh, “growing up in a house where nobody gave a damn about food. I’d tell them I wanted to buy decent knives and pots and they wouldn’t give me the money. “What we have now is good enough,’ they’d say, but I’d tell them that was crazy, you couldn’t bone a fish with the kind of flimsy knives we had at home, so they’d say, “What the hell do you have to bone a fish for?’ It was hopeless trying to communicate with them. I saved up my allowance and bought real professional knives and pots and strainers and stuff. Can you believe it? Here’s a 15-year-old girl pinching pennies to buy strainers and whetstones and tempura pots when all the other girls at school are getting huge allowances and buying beautiful dresses and shoes. Don’t you feel sorry for me?

Reading about Midori caring for her father in the hospital really struck me. Maybe we’d treat each other better if we took more time to think about what we say.

Relatives come to visit and they eat with me here, and they always leave half their food, just like you. And they always say, “Oh, Midori, it’s wonderful you’ve got such a healthy appetite. I’m too upset to eat.’ But get serious, I’m the one who’s actually here taking care of the patient! They just have to drop by and show a little sympathy. I’m the one who wipes up the shit and collects the phlegm and mops the brows. If sympathy was all it took to clean up shit, I’d have 50 times as much sympathy as anybody else! Instead, they see me eating all my food and they give me this look and say, “Oh Midori, you’ve got such a healthy appetite.’ What do they think I am, a donkey pulling a cart? They’re old enough to know how the world really works, so why are they so stupid? It’s easy to talk big, but the important thing is whether or not you clean up the shit. I can be hurt, you know. I can get as exhausted as anyone else. I can feel so bad I want to cry, too. I mean, you try watching a gang of doctors get together and cut open somebody’s head when there’s no hope of saving them, and stirring things up in there, and doing it again and again, and every time they do it it makes the person worse and a little bit crazier, and see how you like it!

A very typical post-uni discussion

Itoh was from Nagasaki. He had a girlfriend he would sleep with whenever he went home, he said, but things weren’t going too well with her lately.

“You know what girls are like,” he said. “They turn 20 or 21 and all of a sudden they start having these concrete ideas. They get super- realistic. And when that happens, everything that seemed so sweet and loveable about them begins to look ordinary and depressing. Now when I see her, usually after we do it, she starts asking me, “What are you going to do after you graduate?”’

“Well, what are you going to do after you graduate?” I asked him. Munching on a mouthful of smelt, he shook his head. “What can I do? I’m in oil painting! Start worrying about stuff like that, and nobody’s going to study oil painting! You don’t do it to feed yourself. So she’s like, “Why don’t you come back to Nagasaki and become an art teacher?’ She’s planning to be an English teacher.”

“You’re not so crazy about her any more, are you?”

“That just about sums it up,” Itoh admitted. “And who on earth wants to be an art teacher? I’m not gonna spend my whole fuckin’ life teaching teenaged monkeys how to draw!”

“That’s beside the point,” I said. “Don’t you think you ought to break up with her? For both your sakes.”

“Sure I do. But I don’t know how to say it to her. She’s planning to spend her life with me. How the hell can I say, “Hey, we ought to split up. I don’t like you any more’?”

This excerpt sent shivers down my spine—a reminder of how deeply we can hurt others without meaning to, especially when we’re already burdened by pain from elsewhere. Perhaps we really must live firmly in the present.

I’m writing this letter to you while you’re off buying drinks. This is the first time in my life I’ve ever written a letter to somebody sitting next to me on a bench, but I feel it’s the only way I can get through to you. I mean, you’re hardly listening to anything I say. Am I right?

Do jou realize you did something terrible to me today? You never even noticed that my hairstyle had changed, did you? I’ve been working on it forever, trying to grow it out, and finally, at the end of last week, I managed to get it into a style you could actually call girlish, but you never even noticed. It was looking pretty good, so I thought I’d give you a little shock when you saw me for the first time after so long, but it didn’t even register with you. Don’t you think that’s awful? I bet you can’t even remember what I was wearing today. Hey, I’m a girl! So what if you’ve got something on your mind? You can spare me one decent look! All you had to say was “Cute hair”, and I would have been able to forgive you for being sunk in a million thoughts, but no!

Which is why I’m going to tell you a lie. It’s not true that I have to meet my sister at the Ginza. I was planning to spend the night at your place. I even brought my pyjamas with me. It’s true. I’ve got my pyjamas and a toothbrush in my bag. I’m such an idiot! I mean, you never even invited me over to see your new place. Oh well, what the hell, you obviously want to be alone, so I’ll leave you alone. Go ahead and think away to your heart’s content!

But don’t get me wrong. I’m not totally mad at you. I’m just sad. You were so nice to me when I was having my problems, but now that you’re having yours, it seems there’s not a thing I can do for you. You’re all locked up in that little world of yours, and when I try knocking on the door, you just sort of look up for a second and go right back inside.

So now I see you coming back with our drinks - walking and thinking. I was hoping you’d trip, but you didn’t. Now you’re sitting next to me drinking your Coke. I was holding out one last hope that you’d notice and say “Hey, your hair’s changed!” but no. If you had, I would have tom up this letter and said: “Let’s go to your place. I’ll make you a nice dinner. And afterwards we can go to bed and cuddle.” But you’re about as sensitive as a steel plate. Goodbye.

PS. Please don’t talk to me next time we meet.