Banana the Writer.

Japan is one of the countries in my "To Visit" list, especially in the "Sakura Sakura" (Cherry blossoms, Cherry blossoms) season. I am in love with this time in Japan. As a person living in the country located in Europe but with Eastern traditions, Japanese people always seemed to me somehow cold till their movies or my fav cartoon Sailor Moon. But in all the books that I read by Japanese authors there are some kind of coolness that I cannot even express. I see the story line, characters, places - all in pale colors as I imagine them through pages. After reading Murakami's Norwegian Wood I watched movie and had the same feeling.

Recently I finished Banana Yoshimoto's novel Kitchen. One of my friends recommended it and I loved it from the first pages. But still all in pale colors.

The story is about a Japanese girl - Mikage Sakurai who first lost her parents and then her grandmother. After a while she gets close with her grandma's lovely friend - Yuichi who is in her age. They become friends and she moves to live with him and his transgender mother - Eriko per Eriko's invitation. Eriko is his father but after his wife's death, he  understood that will never marry again and had changed his gender.

They three were just friends and living like that. No any side effects of being man or woman. Eriko had night club and was away all nights, Yuichi was working at a flower shop, Mikage was a student. There were hardly a time when all of them were at home and doing anything together. Besides, being a student Mikage had love for kitchens, food and cooking. And she started attending one cafe as a chef's assistant and wanted to become a professional chef.

The whole story is about the love towards food and kitchen of a girl who had a lot of sad things in her life. And about the love that grew in her towards Yuichi that she realised after Eriko's death. I myself was very happy when while speaking to Yuichi's girlfriend Mikage realized that she was jealous :)

And her act in the last scene - to overcome hundreds kilometers for taking Yuichi to eat katsudons in the night and to get back to her place.

I  do not know why but I was reading this novel via iBooks on bus, road, elevator, etc. Just could not put the phone aside not knowing the next page. Till the last pages I had a fear that now something would happen to either of them and the story will not have the ending that I want. But...

Read yourself :)

One last point, Banana is her pen-name and she has only 12 works. Will read the others asap.

 Watch also the movies adapted from this story and released first in 1989, the second in 1997.