It is confusing, because in this culture we really don't have anything that corresponds to geisha.

Oh I'm sure you're right," Auntie said. "Probably she's just as you say. But she looks to me like a very clever girl, and adaptable; you can see that from the shape of her ears.

It was what we Japanese called the onion life, peeling away a layer at a time and crying all the while.

We lead our lives like water flowing down a hill, going more or less in one direction until we splash into something that forces us to find a new course.

And yet if I drew my thoughts back from him, what life would I have? I would be like a dancer who had practiced since childhood for a performance she would never give.

I'm not sure this will make sense to you but I felt as though I'd turned around to look in a different direction so that I no longer faced backward toward the past but forward toward the future. And now the question confronting me was this: What would the future be