“After listening to a lot of these stories, I began to think that American loneliness is a completely different creature from anything we experience in this country, and it made me glad I was born Japanese. The type of loneliness where you need to keep struggling to accept a situation is fundamentally different from the sort you know you'll get through if you just hang in there.” LifeStruggleLonelinessJapanAmericans Book:In the Miso Soup Source: In the Miso Soup
“When you're in an extreme situation you tend to avoid facing it by getting caught up in little details. Like a guy who's decided to commit suicide and boards a train only to become obsessed with whether he remembered to lock the door when he left home.” SuicideJapanJapanese LiteratureJapanese Book:In the Miso Soup Source: In the Miso Soup
“He invited me to his apartment in the wee hours one morning and pulled out a set of children's building blocks. It seems he used to ride around and around on the Yamanote Line with them, building castles on the floor of the train.” TrainJapanJapanese LiteratureJapaneseYamanote Book:In the Miso Soup Source: In the Miso Soup
“When you're a kid, getting lost isn't just an event or a situation, it's like a career move. You get this thrill of anxiety and fear and a feeling that you've done something that can never be undone.” JapanJapanese LiteratureJapanese Book:In the Miso Soup Source: In the Miso Soup
“They needed a reason why a little kid would commit murder, someone or something to point the finger at, and I think they were relieved when they hit upon horror movies as the culprit. But there's no reason a child commits murder, just as there's no reason a child gets lost. What would it be - because his parents weren't watching him? That's not a reason, it's just a step in the process.” MurderJapanJapanese LiteratureJapaneseHorror Movies Book:In the Miso Soup Source: In the Miso Soup
“Lady #1, Maki, had never once given any thought to what was really right for her in her life, simply believing that if she surrounded herself with super-exclusive things, she'd become a super-exclusive person.” JapanJapanese LiteratureJapanese Book:In the Miso Soup Source: In the Miso Soup