This is a memoir, written by the travel writer Pico Iyer. He finds himself in Japan, which for decades has been his
chosen second home. He is there because his Japanese wife, Hiroko, a seemingly more pragmatic and
uncomplicated soul than her spouse, has just lost her nonagenarian
father, a man who survived the bombing of his native Hiroshima because
he was away, fighting in World War II, which he misses. She is now grappling with next steps while Pico is trying to catch up with what has happened.
The death feels quick and
unsettling to him, again probably because he arrives in the aftermath, going to the two-room apartment he’s
shared with his wife for years in the Deer’s Slope community near Nara,
Japan. So it is both home and not home at the same time, which is unsettling for him, just as Japan is neither home nor not home. He allows the coming the fall season to reveal the beautiful
impermanence of life, and to reflect on that. It is contemplative and a mixture of hope and questioning.
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