Maki Horikita in Hanazakari No Kimitachie

Maki Horikita is an actress who is extremely popular in Japan right now but there is not a lot of English language material where she can be seen. Hanazakari No Kimitachie is still in Japanese but at least with English subtitles.



So this is for all those Maki Horikita fans who cannot speak Japanese. It is based on a popular manga also called Hanazakari No Kimitachie. Maki is playing the role of a girl called Ashiya Mizuki.

Other actors include Oguri Shun, Ikuta Toma and Konno Mahiru.

Out by Natsuo Kirino

The English translation of a bestseller Japanese novel by a bestselling female novelist Natsuo Kirino. Out.

Out is a weird novel. It is about a group of Japanese women who work the graveyard shift at a bento factory and end up chopping up people. This is not connected to the food industry in any way, although you would almost expect them to recycle human parts as food. But instead, they chop up the bodies, bag them in plastic bags and then have this guy who use to be a loan shark ship them to a different city.



The first murder happens with one of the women choking her husband, kind of by accident, not really meaning to do. She asks her friend for help and they end up chopping up the body in the bathroom.

All in all, the story is pretty twisted. All those difficulties with bagging human bodies is kind of obscene and disturbing at the same time. I don't want to spoil the end but the story escalates further towards the end of the novel.

But I found the description of these women really vivid. Their work at the bento factory, their dull and meaningless shift that keeps them sleepy and knocked out for the rest of the day, is very nicely done. You kind of feel glad that you are not part of the book.

Tokyo Underworld

By Robert Whiting. On the life of Nick Zapetti who stayed in Japan after the occupation and tried to make something of a life there. The title is ironic, although he is referred to as an "American gangster," it turns out that he actually was just trying to build his business, while there were plenty of real mafiosos among the Japanese political and economic elite. Whiting paints a vivid picture of the unavoidable connections between the Yakuza and Japanese politics.



This is a thoroughly fun book to read. Zapetti's life is not an ordinary story, he really comes through as a person who does not know the meaning of neither giving up nor giving in. And this is precisely what makes him easy to relate to. Especially if you have lived in Japan for any length of time beyond a two-week tourist tour of Kyoto and Tokyo. Japan is not an easy place to live, unless you behave exactly the way you are expected to behave. Even if you have lived in Japan for many years, you will still be a gaijin, that is, an outsider. Even if you get Japanese citizenship, as Nick Zapetti did. Even if you change you get a real Japanese name, as Nick Zapetti did.

But Tokyo Underworld is not about Nick Zapetti's issues as an eternal gaijin amidst a homogeneous mass of faces. It is about business, politics, and organized crime in a society that pretends to be immune from all such things. It is about someone who is let down because he does not conform, while actual criminals live and die as honored citizens.

Anyway, the books is definitely worth reading.