Review: a chance encounter, a forgotten wish, and a scrap of paper
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 10 12, 2012
The author states that this short story is semi-autobiographical, and as I was reading it, I wanted very much to be there in her stead. It's a weekend in Tokyo with a bag, a guide book, and hardly any useful language skills but the most basic of Japanese. It's an adventure roaming that big, crazy city, and throughout the piece, you feel the author's sense of almost belonging but of not quite fitting in. She is Asian but is always recognized as American and gaijin, and it is a random encounter with a fellow American, a Caucasian student, that oddly reminds her most of home. From a chance meeting to a wish and small scrap of paper, you never know where fate may or may not lead you when you're far from home.I have to own up to being an otaku (an obsessive fan) of Japan and most things Japanese, and just the title alone was enough to cause me to download this little treat, if only for a brief glimpse of a place I long to see one day. I loved the descriptions of Tokyo; I felt the spirit of the city, its frenetic pace and sometimes quirky vibrancy, and the quiet weight of honor and tradition. All of that is captured here, with fondness. For me, this short story reads very much like a love letter to this place and time in the author's memory, and if you also have any love for Japan, I think you, too, will enjoy this short story.