Strange Weather in Tokyo
Counterpoint · first published 2001 · 192 pages
A woman in her late thirties keeps running into her old high-school teacher at a neighborhood bar.
Seasonal food, slow drinks, and short, plain scenes build a closeness that is shy, funny, and full of small hesitations.
For a night at a small counter bar.
About this book
Tsukiko Omachi, an office worker who lives alone, sits down at a local bar and finds her former Japanese teacher, decades older, in the next seat. She still calls him Sensei. Over sake and small dishes they begin to meet without planning to, on a mushroom-hunting trip, at a cherry-blossom party, and through long silences. What stays is the texture of an unlikely companionship, unhurried and a little awkward.