The End of the Moment We Had Toshiki Okada

🗼 Tokyo, strangers, silence — and everything we don’t say

This book is sharp and quietly devastating — two stories that unfold like inner monologues we were never meant to hear, but that reveal more truth than most conversations ever could.

Part I: The End of the Moment We Had

The first story explores a fleeting connection between two strangers who spend four nights together in a Shinjuku love hotel. What begins as an accidental meeting becomes an escape — not just from war, from reality, from obligation — but from identity itself.

They never exchange names or contact details. Instead, they share memories from childhood, stories that float in a suspended space where nothing else matters.

“We had no idea what was going on in the outside world, not even the weather.”

There’s something deeply raw about this — the kind of intimacy we allow ourselves only when we’re completely unanchored from real life.
What struck me most is how the story contrasts the chaos of the world (the Iraq War is a recurring backdrop) with the silence and slowness of these two people creating a world of their own, where nothing is asked of them.
No future. No labels. Just now.

“Why is it that when you're all spent after sex you want to talk about your childhood, especially when you don't know anything about the other person?”

And isn’t that something many of us experience? That paradox where strangers are sometimes easier to open up to than the people we know?

Part II: My Place in Plural

The second story dives into something even harder to talk about: the quiet violence of relationships that seem kind on the surface.

The narrator’s husband believes he’s being patient and supportive. But all she feels is rage — not because he’s cruel, but because he’s oblivious. She doesn’t want to be tolerated. She wants to be seen.

“I have a deep need for someone to let me hurt them.”

That line hit me like a punch.
It’s about being stuck in your own mess and wanting someone to really understand it — even if it means dragging them into the mud.
She wants her husband to feel it, not just witness it politely from a distance.
She wants to transfer all the “bad junk” weighing her down and have someone else carry it, just for a second.
Just so she knows she’s not alone.

“He's never picked up on the fact that this is a change he needs to make.”
“I want to take these chunks of negative shit that I’m carrying around like rock candy crammed into my head and body, like bad junk that needs to be thrown away, and I want to pass them on to him…”

Final Thoughts

Both stories expose something vulnerable and uncomfortable about human connection — or our failure to connect. It’s not romantic, but it’s true. It’s not tidy, but it feels real.

For me, The End of the Moment We Had is about all the things we don’t say.
The moments that come and go and leave us changed, even when we pretend they didn’t matter.
And how sometimes, the most profound things happen when you stop performing and just exist — broken, weird, wordless — in front of another person.

If you're looking for a book that lingers, like a memory you’re not sure how to name, this is it.