I now know why I gravitate towards japanese literature, why I crave to read more and more of it. Amidst the uneventful and sombre plot, I always find bits and pieces of myself.

And Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto made me feel no different. I was living in Mikage's world heart and soul. I could feel her emotions as if they were my own, making my eyes well up every now and then.

Yoshimoto has the ability to turn the mundane into something peculiar. She has the ability to make the reader realise that, while in the bigger scheme of things it may not look like you went through myriad changes in life, but when you do sit and look at certain events, you will realise how you went through paradigm shifts . . . how some events changed you. Kitchen might have an ordinary plot, but Yoshimoto's writing made it sublime.

With limpid prose, Yoshimoto stole my heart with Mikage's and Yuichi's story. She has also lightly touched upon transsexuality and depression.

For Mikage, being in the kitchen helped her escape her sorrowful reality. And I saw myself in her as I was taken back to the time I used to bake simply to get a break from my incessant worries.