Fiction
Mysterious Town
By Tai Matsumoto
Translated by Emily Balistrieri
A tale of a man in a foreign city by
Tai Matsumoto, an author well known for
his detective novels. As nice as San Francisco
really is, any place can feel strange if you’re
a stranger yourself.
In San Francisco with its many hills, whether traveling by train or by car, your field of vision changes at a dizzying pace. Buildings eight or ten stories high will suddenly look tiny like models below you.
On rainy days each building retains its own color — red, black, etc. — but on clear days they all sparkle amber in the sun.
If you go left where the elevated train tracks veer away, you’ll find Golden Gate Park.
My Pacific coast trip at its end, I was staying at the Willows Inn in the P neighborhood awaiting a st
