My hands rose high above my head and crashed down onto the tatami mat with terrible force.

“I’m telling you, Mom, there’s no poltergeist.”

It was Yoko who made me become a fake medium six months ago.

By the middle of July, things were back to normal. Tokyo was hell.

“Even if we were to remove the crow’s feet, there's still the overall balance of your face to consider.”

I began to realize how disgracefully I was behaving.

Just as I’m thinking it’s about time to get out, she suddenly whips off her towel and shows me her own breasts.

And if you ask what I was doing, I was lying in the garbage like this pretending to be a nonconformist.

I can’t say I wouldn’t have sex with him if, after a few drinks, the mood felt right.

Just then my right arm hit something and pain pierced my flesh.

For now I’ll just give it that name, repelling all water, still

It is as though there is a real world and a world of eerie dreams.

It required a certain focus and concentration in order to vaporize.

For the time being I set the head in a shallow porcelain bowl, the kind used for flower arrangements.

Galactic Empire, you're my only hope.

“Please kill me. Kill me, like you killed your wife.”

The girl finally grew incredibly small, about one centimeter wide.

The next afternoon I saw Granny Nabi pushing a dog in a stroller.

All journeys explore this side of the atmosphere

And the woman who died—the victim, I mean—looked just like you.

The voice seemed to be coming from the pig.

“You expect me to believe you dug a hole just for the fun of it?”

Did you know that your husband is cheating on you?

Noisy animals can see Kafka’s castle in the valleys of the Musashino plain

I did not know that the earth / Is an unruly cradle

“Asako, how do you like this dream?” she asked, not turning her head from the hole.

Right at the peak of the afternoon heat, a bus strolled into the local general store.

Because even after being forgotten I cannot fade away

The man might not escape the death penalty. And I had become deeply involved with him and with his crime.

It felt funny being called a delinquent by a yakuza.

I took the watercolor in my hands, looked it over briefly, and ripped it to shreds.

When they lifted the lid of the pot again, the woman’s head was nowhere to be seen.

As usual, the boy missed the fly ball that anyone else would have caught with his eyes closed, and it rolled into a thicket of reeds by the river.

Contradictions had also surfaced in the Mutant Planet cycle, and then I got an earful from the other crewmembers, though I suppose I was partly to blame for not having kept a tighter rein on Xevale.

The woman gave birth to a baby girl at the maternity hospital and then disappeared the very same day.

I walked on, and something followed.

I once had a baby brother. An oh-so-very strange one at that.

We forget most dreams, so why should I dream this again and again?

He’s a pickpocket. I want his fingers to be agile enough he’ll be able to ‘work’ again.

The genius behind all those great works is sitting right next to me! Strange he doesn’t seem at all different from any other young guy…

The seat was wet because something had made it wet.

My hiccups won't stop.

What was going on? I asked the boy beside me in the car. His answer explained everything and nothing: The President was dead.

One day a group of tax agents announced that according to the new law, women would be required to pay tax on their legs if they had hair on them.

Granny Long Tongue and Red Ban loved to frighten people who lost their way and wandered up to Okumata Pass. But lately no one came up the mountain anymore.

But remember, no matter how upset you feel, you mustn't lose your composure.

At the far end of the bar is a pair of unattractive Mesdames with coarse skin and too much makeup.