She has seen eight managers – whom she refers to only by their numbers – and more co-workers than she could count. Keiko Furukura is thirty-six and has worked part-time in the same convenience store for eighteen years (as, in fact, has her creator). I have become a functioning part of the world, rotating in the time of day called morning.” I am one of those cogs, going round and round. “It is the start of another day, the time when the world wakes up and the cogs of society begin to move.

Read More: Review of Earthlings by Sayaka Murata Convenience Store Woman That wonderful convenience store woman helped me get my best foot forward as I started my commute into the centre of Tokyo, and I’ll always be grateful to her for it.Īs I devoured page after page of Convenience Store Woman I imagined its setting to be that same convenience store in Inagi-shi, and its wonderfully odd protagonist, Keiko, to be my same convenience store woman with her clock wound back a decade or so. She said it all with a toothy smile that some might call robotic or automated, but I was lulled to joy by each and every morning, rain or shine. Infecting each other like this is how we maintain ourselves as human is what I think.She would greet me time and again with the same rising and falling pitch of her voice as she almost sang, ‘ ohayou gozaimasu!’ The phrase beginning low, reaching a squeaky midpoint and at last dropping to a near growl at the end. And I probably infect others with the way I speak too. Izumi at her previous store came to help out, and she dressed so much like Mrs. Izumi came, Sasaki started sounding just like her when she said, “Good job, see you tomorrow!” Once a woman who had gotten on well with Mrs. When some of Sugawara’s band members came into the store recently they all dressed and spoke just like her. My speech is especially infected by everyone around me and is currently a mix of that of Mrs.

Izumi, 30 percent Sugawara, 20 percent the manager, and the rest absorbed from past colleagues such as Sasaki, who left six months ago, and Okasaki, who was our supervisor until a year ago. I am currently made up of 30 percent Mrs. “My present self is formed almost completely of the people around me.

Convenience woman