“Beautiful day out there,” I said, perching on the stool and crossing my legs. “It’s autumn, Sunday, great weather, and crowded everywhere you go. Relaxing indoors like this is the best thing you can do on such a nice day. It’s exhausting to get into those crowds. And the air is bad. I mostly do laundry on Sundays—wash the stuff in the morning, hang it out on the roof of my dorm, take it in before the sun goes down, do a good job of ironing it. I don’t mind ironing at all. There’s a special satisfaction in making wrinkled things smooth. And I’m pretty good at it, too. Of course, I was lousy at it at first. I put creases in everything. After a month of practice, though, I knew what I was doing. So Sunday is my day for laundry and ironing. I couldn’t do it today, of course. Too bad: wasted a perfect laundry day.”

“Each day the sun would rise and set, the flag would be raised and lowered. Each Sunday I would have a date with my dead friend’s girl. I had no idea what I was doing or what I was going to do.”

“People who go through a heavy experience like that are changed men, like it or not,” he said. “They change for the better and they change for the worse. On the good side, they become unshakable. Next to that half year, the rest of the suffering I’ve experienced doesn’t even count. I can put up with almost anything. And I also am a lot more sensitive to the pain of people around me. That’s on the plus side. It made me capable of making some real friends. But there’s also the minus side. I mean, it’s impossible, in my own mind, to believe in people. I don’t hate people, and I haven’t lost my faith in humanity. I’ve got a wife and kids. We’ve made a home and we protect each other.Those things you can’t do without trust. It’s just that, sure, we’re living a good life right now, but if something were to happen, if something really were to come along and yank up everything by the roots, even surrounded by a happy family and good friends, I don’t know what I’d do. What would happen if one day, for no reason, no one believes a word you say? It happens, you know. Suddenly, one day, out of the blue. I’m always thinking about it. Last time, it was only six months, but the next time? No one can say; there’s no guarantee. I don’t have confidence in how long I can hold out the next time. When I think of these things, I really get shaken up. I’ll dream about it and wake up in the middle of the night. It happens a little too often, in fact. And when it happens, I wake my wife up and I hold on to her and cry.Sometimes for a whole hour, I’m so scared.”

“You don’t get it, do you?" I said. “It’s not a question of ‘what then’. Some people get a kick out of reading railroad timetables and that’s all they do all day. Some people make huge model boats out of matchsticks. So what’s wrong if there happens to be one guy in the world who enjoys trying to understand you?”

“I tell you, Mr. Okada, a cold beer at the end of the day is the best thing life has to offer. Some choosy people say that a too cold beer doesn’t taste good, but I couldn’t disagree more. The first beer should be so cold you can’t even taste it. The second one should be a little less chilled, but I want that first one to be like ice. I want it to be so cold my temples throb with pain. This is my own personal preference of course.”

“I made up my mind I was going to find someone who would love me unconditionally three hundred and sixty five days a year, I was still in elementary school at the time - fifth or sixth grade - but I made up my mind once and for all.”“Wow,” I said. “Did the search pay off?”“That’s the hard part,” said Midori. She watched the rising smoke for a while, thinking. “I guess I’ve been waiting so long I’m looking for perfection. That makes it tough.”“Waiting for the perfect love?”“No, even I know better than that. I’m looking for selfishness. Perfect selfishness. Like, say I tell you I want to eat strawberry shortcake. And you stop everything you’re doing and run out and buy it for me. And you come back out of breath and get down on your knees and hold this strawberry shortcake out to me. And I say I don’t want it anymore and throw it out the window. That’s what I’m looking for.”“I’m not sure that has anything to do with love,” I said with some amazement.“It does,” she said. “You just don’t know it. There are time in a girl’s life when things like that are incredibly important.”“Things like throwing strawberry shortcake out the window?”“Exactly. And when I do it, I want the man to apologize to me. “Now I see, Midori. What a fool I have been! I should have known that you would lose your desire for strawberry shortcake. I have all the intelligence and sensitivity of a piece of donkey shit. To make it up to you, I’ll go out and buy you something else. What would you like? Chocolate Mousse? Cheesecake?”“So then what?”“So then I’d give him all the love he deserves for what he’s done.”“Sounds crazy to me.”“Well, to me, that’s what love is…”

“I miss you terribly sometimes, but in general I go on living with all the energy I can muster. Just as you take care of the birds and the fields every morning, every morning I wind my own spring. I give it some 36 good twists by the time I've got up, brushed my teeth, shaved, eaten breakfast, changed my clothes, left the dorm, and arrived at the university. I tell myself, "OK, let's make this day another good one." I hadn't noticed before, but they tell me I talk to myself a lot these days. Probably mumbling to myself while I wind my spring.”