They slapped fancy names on these- Estates or whatever-to help sell units. When I was little, several neat but tiny buildings went up where there used to be plum orchards and farm fields. It used to be a nice, laid-back neighborhood, but all the old, larger houses got torn down, replaced by smaller single-family homes and apartments. I live in a crowded residential area on the outskirts of Suginami-ku in Tokyo.

To me, that’s creepier and weirder than anything about smog. What I’d like to know is where they hide those speakers. Most of these advisories happen in the morning, usually just as I’m about to leave for cram school. “An air pollution advisory has just been issued,” and the siren continues to drone on, like some kindly old dinosaur groaning away. “May I have your attention,” this woman’s voice drawls over a loudspeaker.

It’s happened every day since summer vacation started, so it’s no surprise. I’m penciling in my eyebrows when the smog alert siren starts blaring. 'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title. Psychologically intricate and astute, dark and unflinching, Real World is a searing, eye-opening portrait of teenage life in Japan unlike any we have seen before. But when he flees, taking Toshi’s bike and cell phone with him, the four girls get caught up in a tempest of dangers-dangers they never could have even imagined-that rises from within them as well as from the world around them. When Toshi’s next-door neighbor is found brutally murdered, the girls suspect the killer is the neighbor’s son, a high school boy they nickname Worm. There’s Toshi, the dependable one Terauchi, the great student Yuzan, the sad one, grieving over the death of her mother-and trying to hide her sexual orientation from her friends and Kirarin, the sweet one, whose late nights and reckless behavior remain a secret from those around her. In a crowded residential suburb on the outskirts of Tokyo, four teenage girls indifferently wade their way through a hot, smoggy summer and endless “cram school” sessions meant to ensure entry into good colleges. A stunning new work of the feminist noir that Natsuo Kirino defined and made her own in her novels Out and Grotesque.

Real world kirino