Kitchen

I wonder why almost all of Japanese writers always having excellent things to write. Unpredictable, beyond belief, weird things, and stuff like that. Were they born as a genius or what?

Kitchen was actually written long time a go, back in 1988, by Banana Yoshimoto, but it's just translated into bahasa by kepustakaan Populer Gramedia on April 2009.

The book divided into 2 (two) separate stories: Kitchen and Moonlight Shadow.

Kitchen tells about Mikage Sakurai, a lonely girl who used to live with her grandma and when her grandma passes away, she has no body to rely on. Her parents already died long time a go.

Mikage loves kitchen very much. She's happy every time she spends time there. But the kitchen she loves most is Tanabe's kitchen. Tanabe is one of her friend. As soon as the pasing away of her grandma, Mikage agrees on Tanabe's offer to move to his house. She has good time there with Yuichi Tanabe and his transsexual mother, Erika Tanabe. When Erika's murdered and died, Mikage and Yuichi drown in their deep sorrow and try hard to overcome it.

While Moonlight Shadow tells about Satsuki, a girl who feels depressed at the time her boy friend died in a car crash. One day, she meets a mysterious woman, Arura, who knows how to deal with Satsuki's despair and sorrows.

Both stories are sad stories, but Banana Yoshimoto (her real name is Mahoko Yoshimoto) could present them in a very interesting way.

Kitchen was her first debut and awarded with many prizes and already translated in more than 20 (twenty) countries.