Probably Seaweed

 In the Miso Soup - Ryu Murakami

       Kenji, a 20 year old school drop out, works as an unlicensed sex-tour guide to foreigners in Tokyo.  His  life essentially revolves around his sixteen-year-old girlfriend, Jun, and his job.  One morning Kenji is reading a newspaper column about a young girl with ties to the sex-industry having been brutally murdered and dismembered the night before in a very "un-Japanese" way when he receives a call requesting his services as a sex-tour guide for the next three nights from an American tourist named Frank.

       From the start and he is leery and Frank seems a bit off: Frank looks odd, experts are, and he appears to ply frequently even when he has no need to. Kenji begins wondering if Frank might have killed the young sex worker he had earlier read about. At one point Frank wants to go out and have sex, the next minute he just wants to go to the batting cages and hit some baseballs.  Like I said...odd.

       In the Miso Soup was a book I had wanted to read for a few years. I'm a big fan of the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami and would see their Ryu Murakami's (no relation) novels next to his at bookstores and the library. It seems that In the Miso Soup was one of Murakami's more famous works.

I have a love/hate relationship with this author.  I had previously seen and disliked the J-horror film based on his novel Audition (which I have yet to read).  I read and not really cared for his coming of age novel 69, but absolutely loved his short novella Piercing. 

       In the Miso Soup was one of the last books I read in 2009 and unfortunately one of my least favorite by far.  Despite being a short book (just over 200 pages), for a suspense novel, the plot seems very predictable almost from the start and Kenji seems a very weak, almost horror-stereotypically stupid character, who sees the clues and can and at times does put them together, but doesn't act on those hunches.  I should also warn that the story turns violent and graphic at some points (note the tense of the verb "turns"...as in the first few pages you already have news of someone being murdered and dismembered).

Miso soup really is pretty tasty, actually.  photo credit

       Having read positive reviews of In the Miso Soup, I actually wonder if I'm just not seeing or understanding the greatness of the story.  Possibly I went into reading the book so overhyped that I just didn't get it.  I'm totally open to having someone discuss this book with me and change my mind on it...or even have someone who has studied Ryu Murakami's work more help me better understand the story.  Until then....

Rating: 2 of 5.