recommended

norwegian wood by haruki murakami






i recommend nw both in it's original book form, as well as it's recent 2010 film adaptation. while my first experience was in movie form, i was pleasantly surprised to find that text and moving image both correlated well with each other. the conclusive result being a new kind of clarity and beauty that my japanese-culture-ignorant-self would not have been able to fully grasp otherwise. 
nw's emotional content is surreal in a way that it held onto me the entire length of time that i was reading the book and not reading the book. the novel's incredible inconsistency where intense emotion is interjected into the absolute commodity of everyday life was amazing, as well as extremely disorienting. it made me unable to realign myself with the normal world around me as quickly as i should, even when i was only able to fit a few pages into my day.
watching the movie for the first time i found my emotions mirroring the overarching sadness that the entire film had taken on. wonderfully, i felt as though it and i were having a conversation where i was understanding everything on a deeper level that i would normally never access. emotional revelation, to put it simply maybe.
also, on a purely fan-girl basis, kiko mizuhara is in this film (third screenshot in a red dress)! it was a surprise to see her, as i remember watching in an interview that her japanese wasn't very good? but glad to see her off magazines and into movie screens nonetheless. she played her part convincingly.
over the course of nw the movie (or any movie i'm watching these days, really), i've taken to screenshotting any beautiful moment i find. i hope they'll be inspirational for me at some point in the future.

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