BREAST & EGG

Mieko Kawakami, a former bar hostess was just another wanabe singer - until she started a blog.

Initially this was a way of attracting more attention to her music but her poetic, street-wise writing satrted to make ripples then waves among internet diaries in Japan.

The 31-year-old won this year's Akutagawa Award -- named for Rashomon author Ryunosuke Akutagawa -- which is Japan's most prestigious honour for a new writer.

The bones of the story began with the chance hearing that some rich Japanese women were buying lambs for extortionate prices thinking they were poodles.

Now a best selling novelist it t shows that paying attention to 'by chance' incident can lead to unexepcted fortune.

Ms Kawakami, a Björk-loving 31-year-old, began blogging five years ago and her style quickly won admirers with, at one stage, 200,000 hits a day. The book has sold 110,000 copies, and there are plans for a movie. True to her origins, Ms Kawakami has little time for stuffy literary language. When she won the Akutagawa Prize, she said in her regional dialect, "Mesanko, ureshii": "I'm dead chuffed."