Publisher's Synopsis
I tried very hard to get out of the way of what was happening. I wasn't always successful. Tokyo is an expensive place and all I could afford was a three mat room. Basically I had to sleep diagonally. But before that I was sleeping in the park (Inokashira Koen) with the other bums, of which there were not many. In the end, as I cannot tell a story, or hold a rational thought in my mind to save my soul, the pages just took over and said what they wanted to say. They had in fact much more to say than I had thought was possible. And each one of them had their own, centered existence. I owe my survival, what is left of it, to the plum tree outside the door that bloomed early to tell me I would survive the long hungry winter. I have now as an old man, run across this journal again, and looking out the window hope fervently for my plum tree to once again bloom.
