Sonoko Machida "The Convenience Store by the Sea"
"Helping people is a good thing, isn’t it? Even if it’s just for the tiniest moment in their lives."
Today I want to share another gem of Asian healing literature: The Convenience Store by the Sea by Sonoko Machida.
In short, this is a novel about overcoming life’s hardships, searching for yourself, and finding the path toward happiness. One of the main ideas that struck me while reading was this: all of the characters make their own choices to change their lives. Yes, sometimes we need a lucky circumstance or a gentle push, but in the end it is always up to us whether we take a step forward (or back).
The stories all revolve around a 24-hour shop belonging to the Golden Villa Tenderness chain, located in Moji Port, Fukuoka Prefecture, in (on?) Kitakyushu. The shop sits on the ground floor of a housing complex built by the same company.
Through interconnected novellas, the reader meets not only the staff and regular customers, but also random passersby who somehow get pulled into the lives of the main characters:
• Mitsuri Nakao – a store clerk and manga artist, author of a popular online series about the “Phero-Manager.”
• Mr. Shiba – a store manager, "who had a sort of mysterious magnetism that made him intensely attractive" and said to be the inspiration behind the series, with a strange ability that made both, women and men of all ages, fall for him.
• Tsugi – another enigmatic figure whose business card simply says: “Junk removal and problems.”
Other stories follow Mr. Kiriyama, who gave up on his dream of becoming a mangaka; Mitsuri’s son, Kohei, experiencing first love; Azusa, a schoolgirl fighting social pressure to discover who she truly is; Takiji Otsuka, a retired man unsure what to do with the rest of his life; and many more.
Each story resonates because it raises questions we all face at some point. And more importantly, each offers a sense of possibility that not all is lost, that change is still possible, that happiness can still be found.
This book fills my heart with warmth and joy whenever I think of it. Every character is memorable, every story tugs at the heartstrings, and every ending feels “good” in its own way because each character reaches a moment of understanding, a small but real step forward.
I highly recommend it to anyone who feels “stuck,” who needs motivation and encouragement, who longs for a smile and the comfort of a warm embrace.
A few quotes I loved:
"…What i mean is, to eat without enjoying yourself is to disrespect the food."
"The more we suffer, the more we should eat. If you don’t get enough nutrition, it distorts your thinking."
"It's hard to know what's inside a person. If you judge people only by their words and faces, you miss the really important things. But then, what should we do instead? I think it's best to let people's actions speak for themselves."
"Talent is being able to keep going. Successful people all say that. They just had to find a way to keep going, no matter what. If you can do that for long enough without reward, can’t we call that talent?"
"I don't care what they say. There are more important things to do than worry about what other people think. I don't want to be sorry later that I missed something really important because I was focused on things that didn't matter."
"Until recently, I thought that love and longing didn't exist. But love existed long before I was born, and longing was there in me, too. […] The world is overflowing with it. And maybe one day, I'll know love. I'll pine for love, and lose it, I'll laugh and cry over it, and maybe like my parents did, I'll find a way to keep it. Even if that's still far off in my future."