The Kitchen Book

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Moonlight Shadow is the other short story in this edition and it is... short. It covers much the same ground as Kitchen and feels like an earlier work. It was too sparse for me, too blank. The more diversely we eat, the lower our risk of heart disease, diabetes, obesity, depression, and the more enhanced our immunity. This is a book you'll be reaching for time and again, because these recipes are a joy to eat and fuss free, and you can feel happy in the knowledge you'll be helping your body to stay healthy too.

Ze volgt altijd haar intuïtie, ik vind het fantastisch dat ze ook de kracht heeft dat te realiseren A couple of days ago, I watched a film called Millenium Actress, a Japanese anime film centered around the life of a once wildly popular Japanese film star. I loved it for its lovely story as well as its wonderful animation, but most of all for its peculiar disregard of many of the 'rules' of film that I hadn't realized I unconsciously followed until they were subverted. This sort of bending and breaking of my own sensibilities into something I had never considered something that would work is rampant in this book here, on a much more heartbreaking level. As both the film and the book are Japanese, there could be a correlation that other partakers of that particular cultural entertainment would be familiar with, but I shy away from labeling it as something inherent on a sociocultural level. Instead, I will describe it on my own terms, and see what happens from there.When you lose someone, a void is created. You seek to fill that hole inside you. Stability is what you desire, because your once solid world of certainties has crumbled. And so we latch onto the most basic things and habits. Constant things we know that will never leave and never fail us: a kitchen, cooking, the road, running, clothing, videos, pictures, songs, books. You lean on that, get strength from the habit till you are strong enough to gamble on more uncertain things. Although one may notice a certain Western influence in Yoshimoto's style, Kitchen is still critically recognized as an example of contemporary Japanese literature; The Independent, The Times, and The New Yorker have all reviewed the novel favorably. In Kitchen, a young Japanese woman named Mikage Sakurai struggles to overcome the death of her grandmother. She gradually grows close to one of her grandmother's friends, Yuichi, from a flower shop and ends up staying with him and his transgender mother, Eriko. During her stay, she develops affection for Yuichi and Eriko, almost becoming part of their family. However, she moves out after six months as she finds a new job as a culinary teacher's assistant. When she finds that Eriko was murdered, she tries to support Yuichi through the difficult time, and realises that Yuichi is probably in love with her. Reluctant to face her own feelings for him, she goes away to Izu for a work assignment, while Yuichi stays in a guest-house. However, after going to a restaurant to eat katsudon, she realises she wants to bring it to Yuichi. She goes to Yuichi’s guest-house and sneaks inside his room in the middle of the night to bring him katsudon. There Mikage tells him she doesn’t want to lose him and proposes to build a new life together.

Months pass and Eriko is murdered at her club. The tables turn and Mikage helps Yuichi cope with his loss. Their relationship continues to center around food, and Yoshimoto paints a vivid picture of their life with her description of food and colors as well as Mikage's dreams that determine which life path that she should take. Although both Mikage and Yuichi appear to have bleak existences, their story ends with the reader feeling hopeful that they have finally turned the corner. Chosen, constructed families feel warmer than many societal more acceptable constructs. The protagonist gets unhappy at her university and with her former, more conventional boyfriend, while her oddball roommates don't judge her, but support her in overcoming grief. Just when one can't take anymore, one sees the moonlight. Beauty that seems to infuse itself into the heart: I know about that.’ Truly great people emit a light that warms the hearts of those around them. When that light has been put out, a heavy shadow of despair descends. Perhaps Eriko's was only a minor kind of greatness, but her light was sorely missed.

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Lost in Translation – what planet was everyone else on? This was a snoozefest. If you haven’t seen it, count yourself fortunate I'm surprised it's taken me this long to get around to reading The Kitchen. It's been a subtle suggestion for my reading list from a fair few people since it was published in 2015. That said, I'm very glad I didn't postpone it any longer. This was an incredibly enjoyable read. The tension of the story seems legit. The main characters try to continue business as usual for their incarcerated husbands' turf in Hell's Kitchen, but solving each problem brings a greater obstacle. You just know something is going to blow up in their face eventually, but the trip is still entertaining. Spoiler: pretty much everybody dies at the end. It's beautiful how the author didn't leave any loose threads, so there likely won't be a sequel. Love Exposure – quite insane, probably brilliant, unmissable, but you should be warned that it’s quite insane

Siguiendo con mi costumbre de no alejarme demasiado tiempo de la literatura japonesa, elijo Kichen (1988) la ópera prima de Banana Yosimoto (1964-) para mi lectura. El libro consta de dos novelas cortas independientes (la segunda más breve, casi un cuento), pero con un nexo común: la muerte como tema principal. La muerte y, especialmente, los efectos que ésta causa sobre las personas que rodean a los fallecidos y que sienten un gran afecto por ellos.Unfortunately, this involves killing loved ones, brutally murdering and torturing people, etc. etc. etc. Women's "strength" is represented by being as violent, horrible, abusive, and brutal as the men around them are. Kitchen es un libro de personajes rotos descritos con elegancia. Es un libro que habla de la muerte como lo que es, totalmente natural e irremediable. Morirán personas amadas de tu vida así como el río fluye, encontrarás con quien tomar un té después y buscarás la forma de que ese dolor desaparezca, o de hacerte creer que ha desaparecido.