"Do we have to do this?" "Do we really have to do this?" "Eat hot sushi off a woman's navel?" "If we want to seal the deal, yes, we have to do it." "Anyway, it's better if we do it." "You know that they love this place." "They love everything that's vulgar and free of charge." "At any rate, with all the alcohol they've got on board, they wouldn't care if they were in the zoo eating hot dogs." "We have to fit in with the idea that they have of us, Nagara-san." "In half an hour, they'll be so drunk that they won't notice if you leave." "We'll stay with them." "There must be another way of doing business." "There is." "But it isn't so profitable." "Cheers." "Cheers!" "Oh, thank you." "Hello?" "Hello?" "The sea urchin's really good." "Try some." "What do you say we take her home with us?" "West Coast office, huh, huh?" "I'm sure your wife would love that." "Oh, yeah, she would." "Oh, thank you." "Why?" "Why am I doing this here?" "Why nobody told me that?" "Why?" "What a rubbish job..." "We had all jerks today." "So tired of this job." "There is not a day I don't remember Ryu's breathing..." "Nor a single day I don't miss her silence." "When I met her, her name was Ryu." "Later on, I found out she had had other names:" "Keiko, Momoyo, Yuri." "But I'm almost sure" "Ryu was her real name." "We met one Sunday afternoon at the Ramen Museum." "I told her I liked the noise she made when she slurped her soup, that it reminded me of the noise that my mother made." "Would you let me record the noise you make?" "It's what I do." "That's how I make my living." "You really mean you make a living doing this?" "Yes." "I record sounds for a sound studio, for the radio, the telly, videos, sometimes... for a film." "And you also record the sound people make sucking their snot?" "Of course she didn't believe me, but that day, we began being friends." "But then I didn't know that I was going to be Ryu's only friend." "From then on, we saw each other often at small places near the market where she worked." "One day, I asked her why she worked there." "She replied that that was the only thing that prevented her from thinking too much." "That was the closest thing to a secret" "I got out of her." "Most of the time, we just kept each other company while we ate." "At times, if she was in a good mood, she'd let me record our long conversations on nothing in particular." "Are you doing anything on Sunday?" "On Sunday?" "Yes, on Sunday." "Why are you always making plans?" "Well, why do you never make any plans?" "What do you know about the plans I make?" "You never tell me about any of them." "Why should I have to tell you about them?" "She never told me if she was an only child or had brothers and sisters or even if her parents were still alive, if she had gotten good grades at school, if she had read War and Peace," "if she believed in God or something of the sort, if when she saw an old lady on the street, she suddenly asked herself what she would be like at that age, if she had suffered, if she had ever fallen in love." "After a while," "I just stopped asking." "Nagara-san..." "Midori was..." "My life too." "Today's a kiss day!" "A kiss is the best medicine!" "3, 2, 1, kiss!" "Dismiss!" "She did say a few things, though:" "That she had insomnia, that she was crazy about strawberry mochis, that she was brave but feared people, that she always thought she would die young." "One thing we used to do often together was to visit cemeteries on Sundays." "I would follow her while she found certain tombs and would clean the tombstones conscientiously." "She never told me who those tombstones belonged to." "And I didn't ask." "The silence that reigns in a cemetery in summer is unlike any other silence in the world." "We never broke that silence." "Nagara-san, do you want me to go to the bathroom and..." "No." ""WHY DIDN'T YOU love ME AS I loved YOU?"" "Are you all right?" "I cannot imagine a world in which my daughter is dead..." "And this man remains alive." "It's unbearable for me." "While she is no longer." "The idea of him still breathing, laughing..." "Eating." "I know that I cannot." "Leave it in my hands." "I'll take care of everything." "She liked music, but she never told me about any group or any singer or how many versions of Someone to Watch Over Me she had in her iPod." "I know that she went in to work at 7:00 in the evening and finished at 5:30 in the morning." "But I knew nothing of what she thought about during these hours." "She never told me if at any given time of those long nights, at about 4:00 in the morning, at that strange cold hour, her heart tightened and she asked herself if there was any point to it all." "Listening to her footsteps and breathing in the solitude of my room," "I asked myself as well." "Hello?" "Murakami-san gave me this telephone number." "Yes." "I have a photograph and his address." "Yes." "All right, the first half in advance." "At 7:00?" "Where?" "Okay, I'll be there." "With the first half?" "I'll bring it." "Good morning, David." "Hi, morning." "Thank you." "It's good." "Hey, come on." "What's wrong?" "It's good." "I don't need your help." "I can open my own door." "I tell you a million times." "It's okay." "There are three cases missing." "You want me to ring them?" "No, I'll do it." "I'll do it." "Okay." "Okay, ring them." "Ring them." "It'll be better." "Yoshi?" "What?" "Thank you." "No problem." "Come on, you're gonna catch something." "Let's go inside." "Yes." "Shall we go somewhere else?" "Somewhere else?" "What for?" "Excuse me." "This is the first time." "I've never..." "I've got tickets." "Welcome." "Thank you very much." "It's all there..." "The money and the information." "Right." "Don't you want to know why..." "Well, the circumstances." "Circumstances?" "Yes... why we want this man." "The circumstances don't bother me." "No?" "How would that change things?" "Would I do my work better if I knew the circumstances?" "No." "I suppose not." "There's nothing I want to know." "The only thing that interests me is if it's a recent photograph, if the address is correct, and that you haven't miscounted the money in the envelope." "I haven't miscounted it." "Good." "When..." "When do you think you'll do the job?" "Whenever possible." "Will you tell me when?" "And the second half?" "I'll call you." "Thank you." "Thank you very much." "Welcome." "Welcome." "May I help you?" "Sorry?" "Forgive me." "My Japanese is terrible." "May I help you?" "Are you learning Japanese?" "For two years, but I'm a disaster." "We Spanish are terrible with languages." "But I swear I am trying." "I'm really trying." "Are you looking for anything in particular?" "I want a red wine but not heavy one." "I understand." "Something light but with body, right?" "I have a couple of wines here that are quite interesting." "Look." "This is an amazing wine, not really well known, but very... it's very airy." "I always drink it with ramen or chicken yakitori." "It's a very sensual wine." "Sensual?" "Yes." "I didn't know there were sensual wines." "Why not?" "Everything can be sensual." "How about this one?" "This one, it's a more classic wine." "A good wine, but..." "But what?" "I think that this one is what you are looking for." "How do you know what I'm looking for?" "I don't know." "I suppose because it's my job." "Yes, but I have no idea about wines." "So it's too easy." "No." "That's not possible." "You look as if you know about wines." "Believe me." "When did it happen?" "When did Ryu start to see something special in that man?" "When he told her he knew what she was looking for?" "Or when he said, "Your money is worthless here,"" "and she felt the warmth of his hand against hers, which were always cold?" "Would you like to have dinner with me tonight?" "Why?" "Why do you want to have dinner with me tonight?" "I can't dine alone tonight." "If I dine alone, I'll drink too much." "And if I drink too much, I'll get terribly sad." "And if I get terribly sad, I'll cry, and I'll think of all the reasons I have for committing hara-kiri." "You're asking me to save your life." "Yes." "I wonder what Ryu felt while crossing the street with a picture of him ripped to pieces in her pocket." "I know." "I know." "You're supposed to be noisy eating ramen, but it's ill-mannered in Spain." "Look." "I'm a pig." "Yes, you are." "Now I know." "It was the first time they laughed together." "That's when it all began." "My girlfriend loved pachinko." "She always said it was a thousand times more relaxing than yoga, that with it, she managed to forget." "She spent hours here, the whole day." "She sometimes won." "Why do you speak in the past tense?" "Has she left you?" "In a certain way." "She committed suicide a month ago." "She slashed her wrists in the bathtub." "She also liked karaoke." "She would always sing Like a Virgin, and I sang Enjoy the Silence very badly." "Both of us sang terribly badly." "But that's the fun about karaoke, no?" "To sing badly." "I did everything I could." "I came here." "That wasn't any big deal." "I like this city." "I always wanted to live here in Tokyo." "When I was a kid, I loved everything Japanese, cartoons, food, pictures, films." "I don't know why." "And the adventure has been..." "I tried to understand her." "I swear I tried." "But nothing was enough for Midori." "Never enough." "I talk a lot, huh?" "No, not at all." "All this rubbish about the difference between the Japanese and the rest of the world." "We aren't so different." "Men are the same jerks in all countries." "I've only spoken about myself and haven't asked you anything at all about you, if you live alone or with somebody, where you work, the things you like." "I work the night shift at the fish market." "Tonight is my night off." "And what do you do?" "In the market, I mean." "Not much." "And do you like it?" "You really like questions, huh?" "I love them." "Once I met a monk who was a real cinema fan." "He watched two films every day." "It was terrible for his meditation." "How can you trust a guy who spends all day in a cinema?" "Do you want us going there?" "Why not?" "Yes, why not?" "What kind of answer is that?" "Do you, or don't you?" "Yes." "We came here every Thursday." "She was almost happy here, Midori." "I'm going to shower." "No." "Just sit here." "Do you want us going there?" "Why not?" "Yes, why not?" "What kind of answer is that?" "Do you, or don't you?" "Yes." "Why not?" "Why not?" "Fancy a mochi?" "Are you sure?" "It's no trouble for me to get you one next door." "Seeing her there so close to me but with her thoughts so far away caused me a pain that is difficult to describe." "I never wanted so much to be someone else." "What do you want?" "Nothing." "I don't want to lie to you." "Don't you?" "I want to be honest with you." "That's really scary." "I think about her, you know?" "When I'm fucking you, I'm thinking about her." "We played this game." "She would say, "Please, the first finger. "" "Please, the first finger." ""Please, the second finger. "" "Please, the second finger." ""The third, please. "" "The third, please." ""The fourth. "" "The fourth." ""The fifth. "" "The fifth." ""And the sixth. "" "Are you hungry?" "What would you like?" "Japanese girl" "Getting me worried" "She asked me how" "To go to some place" "I taught her the way" "To go" "And then stayed there watching her" "Walking away" "Walking away" "Walking away" "Suddenly I began" "Watching the buildings around" "As if I was a tourist in my town" "In my town" "In my town" "The boards of the shrine say:" ""Grant me a child," ""a husband," ""a fiancee," ""a car, money," ""fame, happiness, health. "" "Ryu wished for none of these things that day." "Ishida-san?" "I would like to speak to Nagara-san, if it's possible." "What has happened?" "Will he be long in hospital?" "I see." "Pay him my respects." "Please." "See you soon." "Bye." "Dad!" "Dad!" "Dad, look at Midori!" "Look at Midori!" "Ryu never spoke to me of this man, the wine shop owner." "But ever since she met him, there was a new sparkle in her eyes." "Only her silence was the same." "We are forgetting about the elephant in the room:" "The dollar is in free fall, and the world is collapsing in front of our eyes." "In top of that, we cannot overlook we have made the mistake of commissioning these reports from an international American company, and in passing, I must remark, they have been obscenely expensive." "I demand an explanation from the board regarding this." "Gondo-san, it was at this same table six months ago that everyone voted in favor of commissioning the provision of these reports from the Waterholmes company, as has been done for the last ten years and without complaint to date." "Another thing to point out is that our Nagara Company is holder of, as I suppose Gondo-san is aware," "whose board of directors is made up entirely of Japanese citizens." "I don't wish to seem disrespectful, but if we spend a fortune on these reports, it is because we are willing to believe what the market experts tell us." "Otherwise..." "Excuse me." "Nagara-san." "She must have been about seven when we took her to Ocean Dome in Miyazaki." "Midori was so happy going into the water..." "Splashing about in her new bathing suit." "She was happy..." "Yelling when the waves came in." "And suddenly, her face changed, and she came running out of the water, seeking refuge inside her towel." "The directors are waiting." ""Midori, why were you crying?" I asked her on the way back." ""Did the water scare you?"" "And she said," ""No, Dad." "I was crying..." "Because I was too happy and couldn't bear it. "" "Nagara-san, you must rest." "I will take you home." "If you had told her that you loved her, everything could have been so different." "I've never seen you..." "Smile like that." "Like what?" "How?" "I've never seen you draw a koala with soya sauce." "People change." "We all change." "Things change." "No." "People don't change." "Things maybe do." "But people don't." "Really?" "No." "Break the silence." "Yes?" "I told you not to ring me." "I know we have a deal." "But deals can be undone." "That is the rule." "Don't call me again." "I said don't call me again." "I cut myself." "That's why I'm late." "It doesn't matter." "I'm a disaster." "Anyone can cut themselves." "No." "I don't mean it for that." "I don't want to hear this." "Sooner or later, you have to hear it." "We have to talk." "That's what people do apart from fucking and eating." "Why do we have to talk?" "What do you mean, "Why?"" "Listen..." "I'm not gonna listen to you." "I don't want to listen to you." "I don't need a speech now." "I'm tired." "I'm hungry, and I'm cold." "I shouldn't have asked you to come." "I'm sorry." "I'm not in the mood for anything." "I shouldn't have come." "But I'm here." "Forgive me." "Come here." "I don't want to." "I promise I won't make a speech." "Come here." "Do you promise?" "I swear I won't." "Come here." "Come here." "Get your panties off." "I thought that you weren't in the mood for anything." "Well, for some things." "As you said, you were cold." "Sit here." "Where?" "On top of me." "In my face, just until you get warmed up." "You taste of lemon." "Today's anger day!" "Let's release all your stress and anger!" "3, 2, 1..." "Get angry!" "Stop!" "Dismiss!" "I'm going to give you back the money." "I said that I would do the job, and now I'm saying that I'm not." "Are you going to go to the police, then?" "Listen, I'm offering to give you back the money" "Nobody is going to force me to do something I don't want to do." "Nobody at all." "Why don't you just shut up?" "Shut up, for fuck's sake!" "Yoshi." "Yeah?" "You like this, don't you?" "Yes, of course." "V ery much so." "I've learned a lot since I've been here." "I thought..." "I'm thinking that after all that's happened," "I thought..." "I just wanted to know if you'd like to... if you'd be interested in running the shop." "Run the shop?" "Or buy the business off me." "We could reach an agreement." "But you don't have to decide at the moment." "But I thought you like being here." "I would feel better if I knew that the shop was run by you." "I could think all this has been worthwhile, all this time here." "And what are you gonna do?" "I don't know." "I have no idea." "But I could do things properly." "I'll try, at least." "I want to talk with Nagara-san." "Midori's father?" "Yeah." "Why do you want to talk to a man who never said a word to you?" "That's not true." "Once he said a word to me." "He said "asshole. "" ""Asshole"?" "Asshole." "I know that it's none of my business and even risking blowing up the ideas you Westerners have of Oriental discretion, but I'm gonna do it." "Midori believed her own films." "Midori didn't commit suicide because you didn't love her or didn't know how to make her happy or because you were half an hour late on a date or because you looked ten seconds too long at a waitress." "Midori committed suicide to upset her father and you along the way too." "I don't think that reason enough for it to keep on fucking up your life after her death." "You seem to have thought a lot about this." "Midori was ill." "But she was that kind of ill person who wanted to be ill, that kind of ill person who wanted to, you know, take down everybody that loved her." "There are people in the world like that, men and women, people who poison your life." "I loved her, you know?" "She didn't love anyone." "Well, that, we'll never know, will we?" "No, I suppose not." "Hey, man, I'm sorry." "I shouldn't have told you any of this." "By the way, who's that girl with the black long hair and straight hair right here and..." "Is that... you know, is that a new girlfriend?" "No, she's nobody." "Nobody?" "Nobody." "I sometimes wonder if Ryu would have wanted me to do something for her..." "If, way down deep inside, she was asking for something more than my silent company." "I know there are voices coming from the Edo times trapped in the dark spaces between Tokyo buildings." "Maybe the words are different, but Ryu was right when she said people never change." "Nagara-san, it's David here." "I only wanted to tell you that I'm leaving Japan." "I know that you probably never want to see me again..." "That you blame me for Midori's death." "But I want you to know that I loved your daughter." "Good-bye." "Words like violence break the silence" "Come crashing in into my little world" "Painful to me" "Pierce right through me" "Can't you understand" "Oh, my little girl" "All I ever wanted, all I ever needed" "Is here in my arms" "Words are very unnecessary" "They can only do harm" "Hello." "So this is what you do to stop yourself thinking." "Uh-huh." "It looks fun." "Yeah, really fun." "I've come..." "If you've come for sushi tasting, it starts later on." "No." "After having been here for three years," "I still can't get used to having sushi for breakfast." "Or make a noise eating ramen." "Or make a noise eating ramen, yeah." "Why you've come here?" "Don't you want to get changed?" "Don't you like my uniform?" "Yes, I've always liked women in uniform:" "Nurses, policewomen, fish market girls." "Have you come to say good-bye?" "No." "Well, yes." "Uh-huh." "I've come to say good-bye and to thank you." "You don't have to thank me for anything." "Yes, I have to thank you." "Without you, I don't know what I might have done." "You don't have to thank me." "We've gone a few times to a love hotel." "You've made me try interesting wines." "We've eaten ramen." "We fucked 'cause you missed your girlfriend." "That's all." "Anyway, I would have liked to..." "I don't know... to have known you in another time in my life." "It would have been great." "I like you, and I realize I know nothing about you." "It's better that way." "If we you had got to know me, you wouldn't like me." "No." "I don't think so." "I don't think so." "I don't think so." "Say my name." "Ryu." "Say it more times." "Ryu." "Ryu." "Ryu." "One dove" "You're the one I've been waiting for" "Through the dark fall" "The nightmare's the lonely nights" "Days after Ryu's death, they reopened the marketplace for the tourists." "On their part, the employees forgot, little by little, about what had happened, although no one knew what had really happened." "One dove" "To bring me some peace" "In starlight you came from the other side" "To offer me mercy, mercy, mercy" "One dove" "I'm the one you've been waiting for" "I tried not to think how different things could have been between them, because it's too late." "Perhaps it was too late from the beginning." "I see things you were too tired" "You were too scared to see" "I know that Ryu would have liked to know that, when he returned to Barcelona, there was a while in which he knew neither who he was nor where he was, just thinking about the girl with the long hair" "who loved strawberry mochis." "Later on, he opened up a shop of Japanese products and served, every Friday, tastings of sake." "David, are you coming?" "Coming." "To bring me some peace" "In starlight you came from the other side" "To offer me mercy, mercy, mercy" "One dove" "And he started a new life." "But he has kept in his heart a secret room in the shape of an underground wagon where Ryu always waited for him."