The style was very direct, crisp, and matter-of-fact, which made for a brisk read. The story is about a woman that hadn’t slept in 17 days. I’m not sure if this is actually physically possible (the character in the story wonders the same thing.) Although not a lot happens in the story, it builds up nicely. When she first describes her dissatisfaction with domestic life, she seems unhappy, but as the story progresses, you can sense her desperation growing, and the tone becomes more menacing.

The ending, however, did leave me a little confused.  (spoilers!) At the very end she is trapped, crying in the car and says that the two guys are going to flip the car over.  What I got out of it, was that even as she was “expanding her life” by staying up all night, she was becoming increasingly isolated, her discontent was swallowing her, the walls were closing in.  So it made sense that she ends up trapped alone in her tiny car, which was being assaulted from the outside, rocked back and forth by forces beyond her control.  So I think I understood the feeling he was invoking, but when I think about it logically, I wonder what was going to happen.  Were they going to kill or rape her? Were they just going to flip the car over as a prank? I guess no matter what happens, her secret night life is over since something terrible was about to happen.

Anyways, that my rambling on the story.  If you read this and wonder “what story was he reading?”, then maybe I understood the Japanese less than I thought!

I’ve read maybe 6 or 7 pages of the story “眠り/ Sleep” so far.  It is interesting to read, even if it is challenging for my Japanese level.  On each page, there are usually at least 5 words that I have to look up, but the writing style seems to be very direct and matter-of-fact, which I think makes it easier for me to understand.

I’m sure I’m missing out on the subtle nuances of the work, nevertheless I think it is good Japanese practice.  Reading this, I’ve realized how boring most Japanese textbooks are.  Studying in a textbook is a chore, but so far I am enjoying this. 

Another thing good about reading novels or  short stories is that they introduce and reinforce vocab really well.  In the story I’m reading, I’ve seen so many new phrases related to sleep, and many of the phrases come up repeatedly in the text, which is useful for remembering the words later.

There’s no way I’m going to finish the whole collection before the book is due back, but hopefully I’ll be able to finish a story or two.

A friend of mine sometime back recommended this book, “Norwegian Wood” to me. He said that since I liked Japanese novels, that I would get a kick out of it. I was pretty surprised by just how good a book it was. Its not in my particularly favorable genres, but the love story told in its pages was magnificent, touching, sad, funny, you name it. Apparently the book and its author Haruki Murakami are pretty big here, yet even though the book says its a book “everyone” has read in Japan, only one of the foreigners at work had ever heard about it. Then again it is 20 years old, so I wouldn’t expect some of the people there to know about it. But certainly, its a great love story, and the late 60’s college setting really is a change of pace for the modern Japanese novels I have read, particularly the ones I read in college, that tended to fall into the usual overplayed time period of post war Japan. Definitely one of the best love stories I’ve read. The author even described my old home of Yotsuya perfectly in the book.

Next up for me, the works of Sherlock Holmes, and Neuromancer.