It's hot in the Kitchen

There's something about Japanese novellas, mostly, (or all of the ones that I have picked up) are written in this sort of clear, concise yet eloquently descriptive way, A Personal Matter by Kenzaburo Oe is a favourite of mine.
Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto is a little book that I picked up in a second hand bookshop in Hawthorn about 4 years ago, at the beginning of the year I re-read it, the simplistic manner in which it's written made it almost hypnotic- a strange mood is imbued once the binding is cracked- a similar mood to that created by Haruki Murakamis writing, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is currently housing my miniature persian rug bookmark.
So I thought, why not make this book a little more mine, after sitting quitely on my bookshelf for a few years I altered the paperback by including close-up, fogging, out-of-focus black and white 35mm images of Karl and I in bed.
Some of the images are caught somewhere between totally ambiguous and abstracted, whilst others shout a pretty obvious statement. Kitchen is probably one of my favourite pieces, it's such a subtle memoir, and there is a curious nature in the fact that the dialogue produced by the images can be instantly put on hiatus, with the tiniest movement- closing the cover.