"Sand poured down from overhead. The man had a feeling of curiosity, as if he had returned to his childhood. He wondered whether the woman was old; she had been called granny. But the person who came to meet him, holding up a lamp, was a smallish, nice sort of woman around thirty. Perhaps she was wearing powder; for someone who lived by the sea, she was amazingly white. Anyway, he was extremely grateful for her cheerful welcome, from which she could not conceal her own pleasure."
Kōbō Abe "The Woman in the Dunes"