For further exploration of young adults growing up in Japan readers might want to read Kyoko Mori's Shizuko's Daughter (1993).

Yuki is a young girl in Japan who returns home to find her mother has committed suicide. Her mother's advice in a suicide note starts her on the path to independent thinking. Mori has also received praise for One Bird (1993). Like the boys in The Friends, Megumi is a teenager who must face losing one of her parents. At fifteen, she finds she must stay behind with her father when her mother leaves. In order to recover from her loneliness and isolation, she rescues a bird and cares for it as she wishes her mother could care for her. This helps her to accept her situation and devise ways to stay in touch with her mother. Readers might also like Amy Tan's adult book Joy...