Yukihiro Shinohara, "Lombok Island Dispatch"

"How can I describe the color of the sea? It was like jade, stretching as far as the eye could see. Surfers floated in the distance, tiny as beans. The sun was strong, but there was a breeze, so it was cool under the parasol. I put a sweatshirt over my T-shirt and could have watched the sea forever."

A little press novel by an author based in Nagano.
It traces the author's days spent on Lombok Island, Indonesia, with the aim of doing nothing, and the many small memories, scenes, episodes, and streams of consciousness recalled and associated with what was seen and what happened there. The slow pace of the island, which repeatedly returns through the recollections, manifests itself in the writing style. This travel novel, like an endless chat, reveals that recalling even mundane things (such as pancakes at Royal Host) is the richness of passing time, being in the present, and reading a book.