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Strange Weather in Tokyo is a fairly short book set, unsurprisingly, in Japan. It tells the story of a middle-aged woman who bumps into her old Japanese teacher, or sensei as she calls him, in her regular bar. He is an elderly, slightly quirky and strange man.
Throughout the book, the two characters meet, mostly by chance at their local bar. Each chapter shows a different instance where they met, sometimes months apart from each other. And we see their casual friendship deepen over each interaction.
What I love about this book is the way in which it is written. It feels like a slice of life story. Most of the occasions when they meet are not very monumental, and most are part of ordinary, everyday activities. Yet there is a sense of magic realism; everything seems dreamlike and detached in an almost nostalgic way.
Towards the end, a couple of chapters take the magical elements a little too far for me, and become a little confusing to follow – so I struggled to understand why and how certain things had happened. But both characters are supposed to be very drunk at that point, so maybe that is the explanation – but it did slightly detract from my feelings about the rest of the book.
Throughout the story, the two characters get increasingly intimate, and for a lot of the book we are made to question what each character wants from the other. There is obviously a rather large age gap between them and that leads to a lot of questions. There is clearly considerable stigma attached to particularly romantic relationships when there is a large generational gap. And this book subtly plays on some of these thoughts, using them to create barriers for both characters throughout the book.
Much of the story is set in a bar and features a lot of drinking sake and eating delicious-sounding Japanese food. This naturally gave me a craving which meant that my diet consisted largely of very tasty Japanese food, during the week I read the book. Not a bad thing!
Without giving away any spoilers, there isn’t much more I can say. But I would recommend Strange Weather in Tokyo as a book to read on a rainy day, with a big mug of tea. It is definitely a book that puts you in a pensive mood. The style in which it is written is so captivating, and who doesn’t love a bit of food talk?!
