When I was a Boy in Japan, Sakae Shioya

  

   "When I was a Boy in Japan", by Sakae Shioya, is available freely at Gutenberg.org. This is the third Japanese book I've read in a very short period of time. There are neither Wikipedia articles about Sakae Shioya nor the novella-length autobiography.
   It is a charming series of stories about a fairly well off middle class boy growing up perhaps at around the beginning of the 20th century.
   My favorite part is actually the romantic finish. I am someone who generally labors through the romantic interludes that sometimes, in my opinion, detracts from the stories. But in this case, I really loved it. After some time being separated from his adopted cousin, they had fallen in love before love involved lust: a kind of purer stage perhaps. In any case, after a long time apart, he takes her to see a lovely view.
   Shioya writes,

   "Why, Fujiama!" she exclaimed. "Oh, how lovely! Could you see that every day from here?"
   "Not in rainy weather... But she wanted to see you today, as everybody else did, and waited there from morning."

I am a romantic in some ways. But too often the romance I find in books is tedious. But I found it to be that poetic romance that I have always had a fondness for.
   I enjoyed this fluffy piece.