A Tale For The Time Being

Nao tells the reader that her father has tried to commit suicide several times in the past. She and her father are currently fighting about the fact that she is refusing to go to school. She did badly on her high school entrance exams, which means she will have to go to trade school. The reason she did badly on her exams is because up until a year or so ago, she attended school in the United States where she was raised. Her parents left Japan when she was a baby to move to Sunnydale, California when her dad got a job as a computer programmer. When her dad’s company went bankrupt after “the Dot-Com Bubble” exploded, he was fired, and the family lost their visas and their savings.

In Tokyo, Nao begins public school in the middle of the school year and is bullied for being foreign and a transfer student. Her dad can’t find a job, so they must live in a poor part of the city in a tiny two-room apartment. The first time her dad tries to kill himself happens after they have been back in Japan for six months. After awhile, her father announces that he has been hired by a start-up that is “developing a line of empathic productivity software” (49).