For the final reading, I’ll focus on the theme of loss and gain.

Initially, Nao started losing her way after quitting school and not doing so swell on her exam tests that her mother told her to take. She kind of lost the will to do something meaningful, even with the “supapawa” she learned from Jiko. Her father lost the will to live after failing to win the auction to get her daughter’s panties back from some unknown “hentai”. After his failed suicide attempt, Nao left home and started working under Babette at a “maid cafe” which actually operated as more of a brothel. Her loss of a direction in life and a strong father caused her to become a worker under Babette, where she served men who paid for her service. The first guy was a nice rich man who seemed to have a shota complex, which is hinted on how he kept dressing Nao in his clothes and liked her better bald or with extremely short hair, only leaving her when her hair started to come back to its original length. Her next customer was a “hentai” who got frisky before they even reached the room. It’s here that she received a text telling that old Jiko was on the brink of death. Without giving a second though, Nao ran away, losing the only way to financially sustain herself, but also gaining her freedom back.

For Ruth, she could be seen as losing some of her sanity. She kept obsessing over the diary and the messages she had sent to the professor that she asked her husband, Oliver, if she was going crazy, to which he responded that she might be. Though she loss some sanity apparently, she gained the answers she was looking for and learned more about Nao’s father and Haruki #1 and how he hated the war and despised the treatment they were receiving while in training. Meanwhile, the family lost the cat Pesto during a storm and assumed he was dead.

Nao, feeling lost on how to get to Jiko’s in time, stops writing further on in her diary, giving the reader the assumption she gave up and killed herself. Wanting to know more, Ruth “transcended” time and space and “met” with Nao’s father, telling him not to kill himself and that Nao needs him more than ever. Cut to Nao meeting her father at the station and both of them fixing loose ends, resulting in them going to see Jiko together. When they arrive, Jiko writes a last poem that says “to live on” and they both interpret that as Jiko’s message to have them not throw away their lives, but live on together. The loss of Jiko brings them together, which is a gain in this matter as well. With this established, Ruth gains an ending she could live with, I guess, and they rediscover Pesto, barely alive, and are able to nurse him back to health after awhile. Finally, although not as important, it can be said that Nao and her father lost the drive for suicide, and instead decided to pursue on the hopes in living, which eventually paid off in that Nao’s father made a good program that erases personal things on the Web while Nao decided to write a book on Jiko’s life and how it spurred her to live on. I guess you can say they gained aspirations.

This reading for A Tale For The Time Being reminded me more of the theme of place. In the story so far, Nao is taken to old Jiko’s temple for her summer vacation, as recommended by her father and Jiko. While there, she feels more “alive” and is able to confess the many negative things that have been happening in her family’s life ever since they moved back to Japan. It should also be noted that at the temple there are not as many modern amenities that Nao had at home, so she is forced to be more active in order to sustain herself and Jiko. It’s also here that the story takes an interesting take in introducing Haruki #1, the son of Jiko who was conscripted during World War II to serve as a kamikaze pilot, due to Japan starting to lose the war. One could say the temple is where Nao learns more truths and develops a confidence of her own, or a “supapawa” or superpower to help her get on with her life.

When Nao returns home with her father, her life is returned to turmoil once again. She left a place where she had a peace of mind, at least most of the time, to a place where everything wasn’t right without Jiko around. School is like hell for her, where she is hardly noticed and when she finally is, it’s for the wrong reasons. For example, a sukeban named Reiko sexually harasses Nao in the bathroom and ends up selling her panties off in an online auction. Using the lesson she learned from Jiko to use her “supapawa”, Nao publicly announces herself in class one day, which stuns everyone in the room and she never returns afterwards.

For Ruth, living on the island away from an urban atmosphere seems to be driving her towards boredom. It’s not until Nao’s lunchbox washes on her shore that she finally gets some excitement back in her life. This isn’t without a cost though as her constant search for answers causes people around her, including her husband Oliver, to think that she might  be a little crazy. The island is supposed to be a sort of isolation from the busy world, but for Ruth it’s not much for a writer to spread out their wings.

On another note, the Internet can seem like a place too. It holds all the clues and answers Ruth needs to solve the case on Nao Yasutani, while it can be a “wretched hive” for others like Nao when personal belongings are sold to strangers on a probably global scale.

For this post, I wanted to focus on the Time/Age elements that I noticed.

While reading all the Nao diary entries, I was seeing the progression and transformation of Nao’s writing. To me I noticed the before and after…Before when she went to visit Jiko, it was still “ok I’m writing this and Like…Like…” I would categorize it as rambling like a teenager would. However, during and after her visit with Jiko, he writing was more fluent, thoughtful, and more descriptive.