Eloping with Izumi to Greece

The decision by the narrator and Izumi to leave for Greece is the turning point that converts their exposed affair into a joint departure from their established lives. Their plan takes shape after Izumi’s husband discovers the relationship, the narrator tells his wife the truth, and the two meet in Shibuya and talk through the night. Greece had long been Izumi’s dream; now she presents it as somewhere the pair might live beyond the pressures of Japan. The narrator agrees, resigns from work the next day, and recognizes how quickly one decision to let go can expand into a desire to discard everything.

The Affair Is Exposed

The narrator imagines that, absent an interruption, the affair might have continued in secret or ended quietly, allowing both people to return to their familiar lives. Instead, Izumi’s husband learns what has happened. After confronting Izumi, he comes to the narrator’s home, where the narrator’s wife is alone. The confrontation makes the affair impossible to keep separate from the marriages and homes that had contained it.

When the narrator returns, his wife demands an explanation. Because Izumi has already acknowledged the affair, he tells his wife what happened rather than inventing a cover story. The disclosure marks a change in the relationship’s circumstances: what had been hidden is now known within both households, and the narrator and Izumi must decide what to do after the secret has come into the open.

A Night in Shibuya

Izumi proposes that they go out for a drink, and they spend the night in Shibuya at an all-night bar. The narrator drinks vodka gimlets and Izumi drinks daiquiris; they lose track of how much they have had. For the first time since meeting, they have little to say to each other. Their silence distinguishes this night from the closeness of their earlier meetings: they are together, but the circumstances that brought them there have altered what they can say.

At dawn they walk to Harajuku to work off the alcohol, then have coffee and breakfast at a Denny’s. It is during this quieter morning that Izumi introduces Greece as a possible future. The sequence matters: the proposal comes not amid the drinking but after the night has run into morning, as the pair move from the bar to breakfast and confront what might follow the exposure of their affair.

Izumi’s Proposal and the Decision

Izumi explains that she has always wanted to go to Greece and had hoped to travel there on her honeymoon, but that she and her husband could not afford it. She proposes that she and the narrator go together and live there without worrying about anything. In her account, staying in Japan would only depress them, with no good outcome ahead. Greece thus becomes both a long-held destination and an imagined way out of the situation that has closed around them.

The narrator eventually agrees. The decision is presented as a choice made by the two of them after the affair has been revealed, not as a plan already in motion before the confrontation. Izumi supplies the destination and explains its appeal; the narrator’s brief assent makes the escape a shared undertaking.

Resignation and the Logic of Discarding

The next day, the narrator hands in his resignation. His boss has heard rumors and has decided that an extended leave would be best for the time being, while his colleagues are startled by the wish to quit. No one makes much effort to persuade him to stay. The narrator discovers that leaving a job is not as difficult as he had thought once the decision has been made.

He broadens that observation into a reflection on letting go: once a person begins discarding things, the impulse can spread from one possession or commitment to everything else. He compares the process to someone who has gambled away almost all their money and then decides to bet what remains, because holding on has become too much trouble. In the context of the planned departure, this image gives the resignation a wider meaning. The narrator is not merely leaving employment; he is beginning to loosen his attachment to the life that the affair’s exposure has disrupted.

Significance of the Departure

The Greece plan joins a concrete decision with an uncertain promise. Izumi speaks of living without worries, but the evidence here establishes the hope behind the escape rather than whether Greece can provide the life she imagines. What is clear is the immediate consequence: after their relationship becomes known, the narrator and Izumi choose departure over returning without change to their former routines.

The narrator’s resignation carries that choice into his working life. His reflection on how easily one discarded commitment can lead to another makes the episode more than a travel proposal: it shows the widening momentum of renunciation. The pair’s intended destination is Greece, while the narrator’s first completed step toward it is to leave his job.