  In my CL 145 class (Japanese Literature - which, under Sir Wendell Capili was more Japanese Culture than anything else, no harm done though, I still enjoyed it very well), I've learned that the Japanese are one repressed lot. Imagine having to hold your feelings inside you for as long as you can remember. (I remember Doc Ock saying how complex emotions shouldn't be kept locked inside.. oops, back to the topic) so it isn't such a surprise to see extremely wordy works by Japanese authors, since literature is one field they can pour out their emotions with the safe guise of "poetic license".
Recalling Banana Yoshimoto's story, which was really wordy I almost grew nauseous, I felt relieved to discover that Yasunari Kawabata's The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket was only two pages long. I read on, and found out that whoa! This is very typically Japanese, so wordy, yet so natural.
The idea could have been expressed in a shorter piece, but I believe its wordiness was what won me over. It almost feels like sitting under a cherry blossom tree in autumn, just when the pink petals are falling. A shower of damaged pink petals is more beautiful than the single perfect petal falling on your lap. The large number of words used and the subtlety of the realization were working against, but with each other, like a fugue where the main melody woven with the counterpoint resulted into something of beauty. The repetitions, which would have been irritating in other cases, became charming, especially since the repetitions were placed where they should be: near the end of the story, offering an echoing quality to the tale. And the way the repetitions were done was such that I could vividly picture the other kids flocking around the boy, the girl and the insect, repeating each other's comments.
The idea of the names written in green and red light is nothing to scoff at. Such sweet beauty is almost heartbreaking, especially for the adult watching over the children, whose only outlet for emotion is to watch the children do the simple things which symbolize most of the feelings he could never show. Children are so lucky to be allowed such a freedom, only they are not aware of it. And if they became aware of it, that freedom is taken away because awareness signals maturity, and maturity calls for supression of emotions. Thank God I'm not Japanese. *** Dan Rhodes seems to be addicted to biatches. Of the five women featured in the five 101-word stories, it is only the girl in the "Mold" story who is not "bad". But of course, I'd rather be a bitch than a bore. The stories are really irritating and at the same time pretty hilarious: irritating because they are all about women and gosh, the pseudo-feminist in me just wants to scream "FOUL! ", while the hilarity of the situation kicks in just when the realist in me says it's all true. Looking at the form of the stories, I find it marvelous how one person could create so much amusement in 101 words.
There are funny one liners, yes, but they usually don't have complete narratives such as Dan Rhodes' pocket stories, do they? His ability to squeeze in dialogue is nothing short of amazing. Also, the one-word titles successfully sum up the main theme of each story. Now, if only I could devise a way to tell these stories to my friends with a straight face... 
