Superb—just what I, a big josei fan, needed after the incredible storytelling of the "ODDTAXI" anime. This is a delicately-told tale, as seen through the gauze of memory, curious with poky bits of humor in surprising places.

A couple of notes—I think original title, "Sensei no kaban", meaning "Sensei's briefcase", is much more lovely than the English's non sequitur.

Also something really funny about the opening. In English it goes, "His full name was … but I called him 'Sensei.' Not 'Mr.' or 'Sir,' just 'Sensei.'" I was curious what original text could result in this strange sentence, and I went to look on Bookwalker, and—if I may be so bold as to attempt a non-translation—it is, "… but I called him 'Sᴇɴsᴇɪ'. Not '先生', not 'Sensei', but all in small caps, 'Sᴇɴsᴇɪ'" (先生 is "sensei" in kanji, and the small caps are analogous to katakana, the "uppercase" Japanese syllabary; for the analogy to hold, the author would have typeset it as Sᴇɴsᴇɪ through the whole book). I laughed and laughed.