I bought this purely because it was themed around Japan and I have a major soft spot for the country. It turned out to be a pretty novel experience for me because it’s a collection of short stories and some of them are pretty experimental (which is not something I usually read).

In this issue, there are 20 pieces here – most are short stories but there are 3 photo-essays and one memoir + poem. Out of the 20 pieces, 11 are written in Japanese. The book (magazine? It looks more like a book than a magazine, perhaps the word ‘mook’ is appropriate here) doesn’t state the genre of the piece, so sometimes, I was left guessing.

Anyway, since this is collection of short stories, not all of it was to my taste. So instead of focusing on the negatives, because I suspect what I like is highly subjective in this instance, I just want to talk about the stories that I liked:

• Variations on a Theme by Mister Donut (author: David Mitchell): The premise of this is pretty simple; describing a scene that could take place in a Mister Donut store through a variety of POV characters. I like the pathos in it and I thought it was absorbing.
• Things Remembered and Things Forgotten by Kyoto Nakajima: This story starts with a man and his wife visiting his brother and alternates between the past and the brothers’ childhood. Just that alone made it interesting (I was reminded of Grave of the Fireflies), but the twist at the end really surprised me.
• The Dogs by Yukiko Motoya: Reading this story about someone who purposely goes to live in a cold hut in the mountains during winter during a work week helped me to understand the narrator’s feelings of being alone. But what I really liked was the sense of mystery at the end, because I still don’t know what’s up with the dogs and I’m very curious.
• Pink by Tomoyuki Hoshino: The last story in the collection, this one starts with a heatwave and then transitions into a…spinning cult? Not “spin class” spinning (though I guess some people would call that cult-ish) but spinning in circles. There’s a bit of the supernatural in it and like The Dogs, it doesn’t fully explain itself, but I thought it was an interesting tale that reminded me of how hot Tokyo can get in the summer.

As you can tell, I was drawn more to the stories by Japanese authors. I also, in general, prefer stories that I can understand – meta stories about a translator reading a translated novel tend to go over my head; I get what they are doing, but it’s not my thing.

Overall, I found this to be an interesting collection. The pieces here are pretty diverse and I think that if you are into short stories, you’ll find something to enjoy in this collection.