Two-thirds of earth's surface is ocean, and all we can see with the naked eye is the surface.

I wrote a huge number of letters that spring: one a week to Naoko, several to Reiko, and several more to Midori. I wrote letters in the classroom, I wrote letters at my desk at home with Seagull in my lap, I wrote letters at empty tables during my breaks at the Italian restaurant. It was as if I were writing letters to hold together the pieces of my crumbling life.

I can't build a simple shelf. I have no idea how to change an oil filter on a car. I can't even stick a stamp on an envelope straight. And I'm always dialling the wrong number. But I have come up with a few original cocktails that people seem to like.

It is hard to be an individual in Japan.

I'd be smiling and chatting away, and my mind would be floating around somewhere else, like a balloon with a broken string.

I get up early in the morning, 4 o'clock, and I sit at my desk and what I do is just dream. After three or four hours, that's enough. In the afternoon, I run.

Of course it hurt that we could never love each other in a physical way. We would have been far more happy if we had. But that was like the tides, the change of seasons--something immutable, an immovable destiny we could never alter. No matter how cleverly we might shelter it, our delicate friendship wasn't going to last forever. We were bound to reach a dead end. That was painfully clear.