The Cat and The City

– tsundoku – a word that required a sentence in English: buying books and piling them up on a shelf without reading them.

He used to say you can judge a society by how it treats its cats.

But she would always tell herself, Who needs friends, when you have books.

You can press pause as much as you like, but it won't stop what's going to happen. Time to press start again; to un-pause this game and let it play out to the end.

Who needs friends, when you have books,

Seeing her books reassured her, made her feel calm.

It’s often the ones we love most who do us harm.

Sometimes I feel like this whole city is one vast organism. It’s like a human being that we’re all part of. But we’re restricted by the roads, by the waterways, by the tunnels, the trains. It’s like our paths are all laid out for us, and there’s no way of deviating from them. That’s what makes that cat different from us.

he never felt that way about Japanese - even though he didn’t understand it. The fluid monotonic sound of it alone made it a far more beautiful and spiritual language. English, with its heavy stresses and wobbly intonation, was dirty and repugnant to his ears

I decided i want to be a manga artist when i grow up. If you want to know why, it's because of you. I know that you hurt a lot inside. An I know that manga makes you happy. If i can make manga, maybe I can help people like you be happy.

This wave of nostalgia which constantly reminds us that we can never go home again. That those kids sitting on the floor, so young and so happy, are dead and gone now. They’re never coming back.

Seeing her books reassured her, made her feel calm. She'd read most of them, but there were a many waiting to be read, which gave her a sense of excitement, and conjured up one of her favourite Japanese words - tsundoku - a word that required a sentence in English: buying books and piling them up on a shelf without reading them.

Even if something dramatic or terrible in your life doesn't happen, just the act of growing older is like a massive trauma anyway.

I can't stand that shit - people talking about things they think they should talk about, so as not to be socially awkward.

For a cat is just a cat, and cannot change its nature.

Because what is fate, but that moment when you’re playing the computer on the hardest difficulty setting, you’ve run out of life force and you make that one mistake. It’s those excruciating moments that pass by like an eternity before that final hit comes. You know you’ve fucked up, and there’s no way of going back. You can press pause as much as you like, but it won’t stop what’s going to happen.

Like, even if something dramatic or terrible in your life doesn’t happen, just the act of growing older is like a massive trauma anyway.

You know, it was once an honourable thing to get a tattoo in the old days – it was the mark of a fireman. The public loved and respected firemen – not like these crude gangsters who show off their tattoos these days.

a person. Just like her. Just like everyone. Lost and alone

the buildings of the city blossoming and withering like flowers from the swamps of Edo

I can hear the pleasant cracking sound of the cubes fracturing, breaking apart like bone

I am at war - at war with the ants

then the train company will charge the family of the deceased. It’s supposed to stop the jumpers from disrupting the trains - Tokyo doesn’t appreciate being put behind schedule

he wanted so much, but asked for nothing. Just pretended he was respectable. Pretended as if he was never gripped by animalistic savagery

He had an anxious smile on his face. And he was clutching a letter in his hand.

There was something it was searching for - some kind of memory of a previous life - a scent, an image. Was it the purple-headed man, or something else?

whatever happened to the nice old guy with the purple bandana?