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Smartening Up
Aoko Matsuda
‘‘Let’s become monsters together,’ she said, looking straight into my eyes.’
Bucket of Eels
Mitsuyo Kakuta
‘I was gazing into my empty bowl and realizing how little time it takes to eat when you’re not carrying on a conversation.’
The Bees that Disappeared
Keiichiro Hirano
‘It was during this period that I got to know K, one of the local mailmen.’
Filling Up With Sugar
Yuten Sawanishi
‘The vagina was the first part of her mother’s body that turned to sugar.’
A Clean Marriage
Sayaka Murata
‘Frequency of sex since marriage: zero.’ Sayaka Murata on a sexless marriage and the ‘Clean Breeder’ technique for pleasureless reproduction.
Breakfast
Toshiki Okada
‘If I had known she were heading for Tokyo then, and if I had known she thought of Tokyo as a city of zombies, I would have wanted to know, of course, whether she saw me that way, too.’
Things Remembered and Things Forgotten
Kyoko Nakajima
It was something Takashi remembered but Masaru had forgotten.
Final Fantasy III
Tao Lin
‘On the F train to Manhattan I emailed a friend in the UK. I said I couldn’t write my essay about Japan.’
Spider Lilies
Hiroko Oyamada
‘The breeze smelled of many things: autumn and earth, the green of the countryside, face powder and old age.’