conversations.from: human
conversations.value: a title for a book about Japan, Western, Oriental with the genre: Travel, Asia
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'The Inland Sea'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first two paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Inland Sea
  Then it strikes me that naturally this would be so. Geta and kimono are Japanese; cigarette filters and photograph albums are not. Though I dare say there are many more people using my kind of filter than there are using geta at this late date, nonetheless, the mystique holds—things Japanese, no matter how useless, are important; things foreign, no matter how useful, are not, not really, that is.
  There are areas, however, where some things foreign remain. One wonders at this, and then realizes that a subtle change has taken place in the objects, that they have been japanified, and that some fancied resemblance to something already in the culture has proved their unhappy saving, and—finally—that they have not been saved so much as preserved, like flies in amber or, more fitting simile, like the mammoth in the ice.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me five more paragraphs.. End with the sentence ' Just like Louise.'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I took her hand and she let it lie there. Now that nothing was going to happen, I grew bolder. "Here you are," I said, "out in the dark with me. Why did you come if it wasn't all right?"
  She smiled and tried to remove her hand from mine. "I was feeling sorry for myself; you were sympathetic—very sympathetic. You are not like all men, you know, and so you shouldn't try to act like them."
  Again she pulled at my hand. This time I let her go, also remembering the drunken customer who had refused to let loose of her little finger.
  And I was reminded of Louise—honest, frank, thinking eternally of what was best, best for everyone, straight, true, sincere, and, consequently, beautiful.
  It was touching, her speech, because such a marriage is impossible. It was also both prim and based, I felt, on a kind of desperation. Just like Louise.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last five paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: So, with the boat system broken and the bridges unused, island population has shrunk. So have some of the islands themselves. Mitarai is now simply home to a bridge pylon. Because of the bridges land prices rose but land values considerably lowered. Look over there. I looked.
  Gas tanks, like enormous mushrooms. All empty, he said, but too expensive to tear down. Families moved and many islands are deserted now. The youngsters had gone to the cities anyway, the oldsters had died, and the middlesters just moved out.
  I ask if any more bridges are planned. Oh, no, no more bridges, said Mr. Matsuoka mordantly, and I realized that he had shown me the sights not because he wanted to be kind but because he wanted to complain and he felt he could complain only to someone who would not repeat what he had said. It was like shouting the truth down a well, or like confessing to a mirror—native customs both.
  The bridge was very beautiful, shining there in the late afternoon light, but it was also lethal, like an enormous razor. It and the others were responsible for the Inland Sea looking even more lovely than it had half a century ago, but it was a strange beauty I saw now, something perfect, something empty.
  BACK AT MIHARA I take the train to Hiroshima and then the ferry to Miyajima. Here at last is something like continuity. There still stands the great red torii, already up to its ankles in the surf. The evening tide is coming in. I watch as it races to shore, swiftly because the strait is so shallow, and just as the last light fades it rushes, as always, under the floors of the shrine that like a wonderful dragonboat now seems to float, ready to sail away.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the first sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: So have some of the islands themselves. Mitarai is now simply home to a bridge pylon. Because of the bridges land prices rose but land values considerably lowered. Look over there. I looked.
  Gas tanks, like enormous mushrooms. All empty, he said, but too expensive to tear down. Families moved and many islands are deserted now. The youngsters had gone to the cities anyway, the oldsters had died, and the middlesters just moved out.
  I ask if any more bridges are planned. Oh, no, no more bridges, said Mr. Matsuoka mordantly, and I realized that he had shown me the sights not because he wanted to be kind but because he wanted to complain and he felt he could complain only to someone who would not repeat what he had said. It was like shouting the truth down a well, or like confessing to a mirror—native customs both.
  The bridge was very beautiful, shining there in the late afternoon light, but it was also lethal, like an enormous razor. It and the others were responsible for the Inland Sea looking even more lovely than it had half a century ago, but it was a strange beauty I saw now, something perfect, something empty.
  BACK AT MIHARA I take the train to Hiroshima and then the ferry to Miyajima. Here at last is something like continuity. There still stands the great red torii, already up to its ankles in the surf. The evening tide is coming in. I watch as it races to shore, swiftly because the strait is so shallow, and just as the last light fades it rushes, as always, under the floors of the shrine that like a wonderful dragonboat now seems to float, ready to sail away.