A Dish Best Served Cold

忘れかけてた甘い夏の日を

あれからどれくらいの時間がたつの？

大好きだったあの笑顔だけしばらく近くで重ねあう日々を

Ah　もう戻れない時を小さく祈っている

「君がいない夏」 (DEEN) 

Those sweet summer days I've begun to forget

How much time has past since then?

The days with just the smile I loved close to me passing by

Aah, I silently pray for the time we can no longer return to

"The Summer Without You" (DEEN)

One of the best ice dessert I ever ate was a patbingsu in Seoul. Unlike Japanese shaved ice, which is only covered with a syrup, patbingsu was loaded with many yummy ingredients like fruits. And talking about ice, I am not that big a fan of matcha and black sesame ice cream you see so often lately. Also, I never did muster up the courage to eat the soy sauce soft icecream they sold at the Kikkoman factory...

The Petit Bourgeoisie series
The Spring Special Strawberry Tart Case (2004)
The Summer Special Tropical Parfait Case (2006)

Kobato Jougorou and Osanai Yuki are two model second year high school students. Indeed, all they think of everyday is to how to be the perfect citizen, a real petit bourgeoisie. But their examplary behaviour is just a disguise, a goal to distract themselves from their inherent character faults: Jougorou has the habit of flaunting with his deductive capabilities, while Yuki loves taking revenge on people who have done her wrong. On the first day of summer holiday, Jougorou is visited by Yuki, who wants him to join her with her summer plans: to eat all the summer special desserts / icecream / cakes / other sweets the many bakeries in their town offer. Jougorou tags along on her fattening summer plans, but during their quest for sweetness, the two come across a gang led by someone who has an ax to grind with Yuki. Can the duo uphold their perfect, upstanding image as the petit bourgeoisie in Yonezawa Honobu's Kaki Gentei Tropical Parfait Jiken ("The Summer Special Tropical Parfait Case")?

The first book in Yonezawa Honobu's Petit Bourgeoisie series, The Spring Special Strawberry Tart Case, was a sweet surprise: while I am not a fan of the everyday life mystery genre, which usually revolves around rather mundane troubles, I had to admit that quite enjoyed the things Yonezawa did in that book. How to Make Delicious Chocolate Milk, a story where Jougorou and Yuki deduce how three cups of chocolate milk were served, was fantastic: the problem was extremely simple and mundane, but the logic behind the duo used to find out how the milk could have been served under the specific circumstances was something you'd expect in an all-out investigation by Inspector Queen. The protagonists were quite funny too, so I was looking forward to reading the second book in the series.

To start with the conclusion, I like The Summer Special Tropical Parfait Case. Heck, I like it overall better than The Spring Special Strawberry Tart. Overall, I stress, because I don't think that any moment Summer Special reaches the heights of the chocolate milk story of the first book, but the overall story of Summer Special is better structured, I think and more engaging to read. Like the first book, The Summer Special Tropical Parfait Case consists of multiple short story-esque chapters, but with an overarching story to connect all these stories (the sweets Yuki wants to eat in the summer).

The best of the bunch is the opening story, Charlotte Dake wa Boku no Mono ("Only the Charlottes for me"), which is a fantastic inverted crime mystery, but of course in the vein of a everyday life mystery. Jougorou is presented with the problem of having to hide the fact he actually already ate one of the three charlotte cakes he bought: he hopes to make it seem like he only bought two. It has the thrills of a good inverted story, with Jougorou trying to hide all the evidence that hints at the existence of a third cake and him having eaten it, but on the other hand, hiding the fact you stole some sweets is pretty much the most childish crime there is. For me, the everyday life mystery works best when it applies deep analytical thinking on extremely mundane problems, because it's just funny.

The other stories deal with code cracking and some other mysteries, but and while not bad, none of them really reach the level of the opening story (except for maybe the final chapter). What is interesting though, is the fact The Summer Special Tropical Parfait Case does deal more with crime than The Spring Special Strawberry Tart Case. Sure, there was a stolen bike there and there was a bit more 'regular' (criminal) mysteries as it neared the end, but it seems like The Summer Special Tropical Parfait Case is a bit more 'normal' criminal mystery oriented, than just focused purely on everyday life mysteries.

The Summer Special Tropical Parfait Case is a sweet book, and has just the right mix of crime and everyday life mystery to keep the reader satisfied. One warning though: you will want to eat something sweet when you read this.

Original Japanese title(s): 米澤穂信 『夏期限定トロピカルパフェ事件』

Strawberry Jam

「クラーク博士は北海道大学の学生に『紳士たれ』という言葉を残したというけれど、ぼくと小佐内さん も似た信条を持っている。「紳士」によく似ているけれど、それよりはもうちょっと社会的階級が低い。『小市民たれ』。これ。日々の平穏と安定のため、ぼくと小佐内さんは断固とした小市民なのだ。もっとも、その表れ方はちょっと違う。小佐内さんは隠れる。ぼくは、笑って誤魔化す」

『 春限定いちごタルト事件』

"Professor Clark had told the students of Hokkaido University to 'be a gentleman'. Osanai and I had a similar principle. Similiar to "be a gentleman", but ranked a bit lower in society. 'Be a petit bourgeois'. That was it. We decided firmly to be petit bourgeois, for the sake of tranquility and stability. But we executed our beliefs differently. Osanai, she hides herself. And I, I laugh and pretend"

"The Spring Special Strawberry Tart Case"

One thing I'm definitely not missing about Kyoto: the tsuyu rain and the unbelievable heat!

I usually read several books at the same time and that means books sometimes takes ages to be finished: one of these was Yonezawa Honobu's short story collection Shunki Gentei Ichigo Tart Jiken ("The Spring Special Strawberry Tart Case"). Introducing Kobato Jougorou and Osanai Yuki. He is an ordinary boy with a fairly good set of brains. She is a small small girl with a love for sweet things. They are both first year students at Funato High School. And they try to live their lives in the same way: as what they call the petite bourgeois. Just go with the flow of society. Don't stand out. Don't go looking for trouble. Be one of the many. Just one of the many, yet crucial cogs of the machine that is society. These two, neither lovers nor dependent on each other, just try to be what they believe is the best way a person can live. Their classmate, Doujima Kengo however, always seems to get Jougorou (and to a lesser extent, Osanai) in trouble. Not because Kengo is a bad person: in fact, Kengo is usually a good enough a person to want to help others. But helping people, getting involved with other people's problems is another way of standing out. And so our petite bourgeois-aspiring duo contineously have to decide whether to do the good thing, as a contributing member of society should do, or try to ignore trouble, as a contributing member of society should do.

Shunki Gentei Ichigo Tart Jiken is, like Kanou Tomoko's Nanatsu no Ko, an 'everyday life mystery'. No bloody murders, no mysterious locked rooms. Just little mysteries that you and I might encounter, or might have really have encountered in our daily lives. A stolen bike. A purse gone missing. Like I mentioned in my review of Nanatsu no Ko, I am not really a fan of this subgenre. I'd rather have the bloody murder and the mysterious locked room. Not that a everyday life mystery is always bad though. And I think that Shunki Gentei Ichigo Tart Jiken is one of the books that can prove this case.

For while the scale of the mystery might seem a bit small, one shouldn't underestimate the scale of the deductions Jougorou makes about these everyday life mysteries. The best story in the collection is Oishii Cocoa no Tsukurikata ("How to Make Delicious Chocolate Milk"), where Jougorou and Osanai try to figure out how Kengo managed to make delicious chocolate milk with a limited amount of cups. Yes, this intellectual problem might sound very, very uninteresting, but the way the duo think about all the possibilities and shoot down each other's suggestions is what you'd expect in a Queen-style novel, not 'just' an everyday life mystery. But it works wonderfully here and the solution is in the same light-hearted, yet satisfying style.

The short stories collected in Shunki Gentei Ichigo Tart Jiken are written to form one, bigger story, with hints and events happening in earlier stories all coming together in the final story. Osanai's bike is stolen rather early in the collection (together with the last Spring Special Strawberry Tarts available that year she had left on her bike), which is rather troublesome because a petit bourgeois can't go around getting involved with the police (even if it wasn't her fault). But the way Yonezawa placed the hints in the earlier stories is excellent and the deductive chain shown here is quite impressive, especially I hadn't seen such the deductive reasoning approach used in a connected short story collection before (like Mari Yukiko's Futarigurui for example).

Shunki Gentei Ichigo Tart Jiken is a really sweet short story collection. Half daily life mystery, half youth comedy and it works. In a way, this book is like the opposite of Otsuichi's GOTH, both featuring high school students with a particular look at life. This one is more happier and sweeter and cozier, but that really doesn't have to be a bad thing.

Original Japanese title(s): 米澤穂信　『春期限定いちごタルト事件』