A small mountain town slowly emptying of its people. Long ago, a young man deceived a local girl into stealing money from the post office, took the cash, and vanished to Tokyo without a word. Using that money as his foundation, he built himself into a successful businessman — and now, forty years later, he has returned to the town. No one recognizes him as the young man who once ran away. No one, that is, except the girl he left behind…
Can't remember where or who recommended this one, but it was a good pick early into my year of trying read as many Japanese books as possible. I did struggle with some of the grammer, but I'm glad I stuck with this because this story is nuts. It's sort of a crime/mystery/soap opera, a man commits a crime and leave behind his girlfriend, then comes to town decades later as a successful hotelier. I won't spoil what happens but the twists were crazy and the ending was insane. Definitely a bit of a shocker, and does a good job fleshing out its cast in the span of about 100 or so pages.
In terms of language learning, the vocab was pretty commonplace and real-world, but the grammar was occasionally quite challenging and maybe just a bit higher than I should've attempted, but I'm glad I stuck with it and I picked up a couple interesting new kanji versions of words.