Friday, July 16, 2010

In the Miso Soup

Read a weird book, In the Miso Soup, by Ryu Murasaki. This Japanese writer writes about the sex tours in Japan. The tour guide named Kenji meets a strange American named Frank whom Kenji suspects as a serial murderer. Does Kenji do the prudent thing like avoid Frank? Nope, Kenji, the dope, keeps his promise to meet Frank for three nights with each night getting stranger and stranger by the moment.

Frank kills several people in an omiai club. Does Kenji do the proper thing like tell the police? Nope, Kenji, the dope, follows Frank to an abandoned warehouse where there are clues that violence took place in this location and sleeps over.

The craziest thing is that although the book was so weird and violent, I kept reading it until the very end. So who's the dope in the end? I guess I am but the last lines of the book were the most rewarding. I won't tell you...you'll have to find out for yourself. It will definitely make you scratch your head and say, "Hah?"

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

End of Bookstore Browsing

Hilo is a nice little town with really nice people. It is trying to grow into a comprehensive city but we keep hitting obstacles. Today, the newspaper reported that the Borders Bookstore will be closing its doors soon. Since I have been going to the public library faithfully, it does not really affect me in terms of getting books but its absence will be felt on weekends when families would go to Borders, the kids would plop themselves down in the children's section and perhaps whine for a manga. The parents would go and get some coffee, check out the latest magazines and perhaps talk to their friends or even each other.

It is this loss of a place to socialize that would be sorely missed. As it is, it is difficult to find place to stage a party. If you want to do to a county or State park, you need to reserve the pavillion a year in advance! We live in paradise but the number of places that we can enjoy without being crowded out are limited. Granted we are not Pensacola Beach in Florida where the people number in the thousands to go to the beach. But still....we need more open spaces and parks for old fashioned networking and family building, otherwise known as picnics and family gatherings.

Building the community one family at a time.