Breasts and Eggs

No breathing room between the buildings, which means unagi restaurants rubbing shoulders with telephone clubs, and estate agents sharing walls with sex shops. Busy electric signage and pachinko parlors waving banners. Seal-engraving businesses whose owners never bothered coming in. Video arcades that looked anything but fun.

I mean, 1,500,000 yen is serious cash. Hard to fathom. Neither of us had that kind of money. It didn’t even sound like a real number. She said 1,500,000 like it was nothing, but I worried that the way I’d said it made it sound like it was too much for her breasts—I’d asked her “Are you really worth that much? Are your breasts worth that kind of an

when I was in high school (and still use on occasion). That was 1998. Ten years now. I seriously doubt at twenty that I saw myself, in my vague dreams for the future, still being in Tokyo at thirty.

It’s like I’m in there, somewhere inside myself, and the body I’m in keeps on changing, more and more and more and more, in ways I don’t even know.

Makiko, the one visiting me today from Osaka, is my older sister. She’s thirty-nine and has a twelve-year-old daughter named Midoriko. She raised the girl herself. For a few years after I turned eighteen, I lived with them in an apartment back in Osaka, when Midoriko was just a baby. Makiko and her husband had split up while she was pregnant, and a

I dunno. I thought it would be better if we didn’t talk for a while. I mean, we’d just end up fighting again, and I’d say something mean. I know it’s partly my fault she has to work the way she does. Who am I kidding, it’s all because of me. I get so upset thinking about it. I want to become an adult, right now. That way, I can work hard and help w

The whole town was ripe with salt and haunted by the action of the tides. At night it filled with boisterous drunk men.

“The thing about hyaluronic acid is that your body sucks it up and then it’s gone.” She pursed her lips. “For 800,000 yen? No thanks. You’re right, though. It doesn’t leave any scars. It doesn’t even hurt. Honestly, it would be the best thing ever, if it lasted. It’s more for models or celebrities. For those big moments when they need a little extr

Midoriko had not spoken to her mother in over half a year. I had no idea why. One day, Makiko said something to her, and she didn’t answer. That was it. At first she thought Midoriko was depressed, but that didn’t seem to be the case. She had a healthy appetite, went to school, and talked like normal with her friends and teachers. Just not with her