第四章

11 March 2011 07:58

I stepped out of the door and into the small garden at the front of our house. Running alongside the garden was a narrow driveway which led out onto the road that wound down the hill to my school, Ōfunato Elementary, along which I walked every weekday. Although the front garden really was quite modest, Okāsan spent lots of her time out here tending to the plants she had carefully nurtured, many from seeds and saplings: fragrant pine bonsai, dwarf azaleas and Japanese maple as well as many others that I had not yet learnt the names of. Later in the year, the sakura cherry tree that she had planted to celebrate my first day at school would be in full bloom and no doubt we would sit out here with our bentō lunchboxes eating and chatting with each other as we had done every year since then. For now, the garden was neat and tidy but in the main lying dormant until the weather warmed up a bit and coaxed it into life.

After about five minutes I was at my friend Haruka’s house, a fairly large traditional Japanese farmhouse with wood panelling around much of the base and swooping curved roofs that were covered in green-grey tiles and finished with open mouthed fish end-tiles. She was already outside waiting for me so that we could walk to school together. Haruka had three older brothers, two who were in junior high and one who was in the final year of elementary school. They had already left to get there in time for the early morning clubs that they had signed up for; Shōki and Shōta did baseball whilst Shoichi – named in memory of his great-grandfather and so had a name that was typically associated with the first- not third-born son – played clarinet in the school band.

‘Morning, Kimiko. How are you?’ Haruka asked, waving to me as I approached.

‘I’m fine thanks,’ I replied. ‘How are you?’

‘Oh, a little tired but I’m good, thanks.’

We started to walk back towards the main road, the gravel drive crunching beneath our feet. To the east and in the distance, the mountains that sat further inland behind Ōfunato rose into the sky looking like scenery in a play, mainly green on account of the generous covering with matsu pine trees, but most still topped with snow as a reminder that winter had not quite let go.

After a few minutes more, we passed “The Living House,” as we liked to call it. For some reason it was surrounded in scaffolding and it was actually difficult to see the building itself because in every available space were pots of flowers and plants growing wildly as they sat  on platforms at different levels created by whatever the owners could get their hands on: old pieces of wood, bricks, breeze blocks, plastic crates. Even the scaffolding was adorned with hanging baskets and winding vines. Although we had passed this house hundreds of times, it always made us happy and I enjoyed watching the flowers come into bloom as winter moved into spring and then into summer.

‘It’s so cold isn’t it? I couldn’t get of bed this morning,’ I said. ‘If it wasn’t for Okāsan making my favourite breakfast I think I would have stayed there all day long!’

‘Me, too. I can’t wait for spring to arrive and for the weather to warm up a bit,’ Haruka said turning towards me. ‘I really don’t like our old paraffin heaters and dad refuses to pay for more modern ones. He says that the heaters we’ve already got do the job and why should he replace them with newer ones that have a built-in fan.  He even suggested that if I wanted blown hot air so badly that he would get my brothers to take it in turns to sit behind the heater and manually fan the air in my direction. He’s really missed the point.’

‘Although you have to admit, that’s pretty funny and such a typical thing for your dad to say!’ I said with a smile.

Her father was a local fisherman and tougher than most. Since his early childhood, he had followed in his own father’s footsteps entering the fishing trade and had made a decent living out of the abundance of saury fish found out in the Pacific. The arrival of a girl after three boys came as a bit of a shock, although I’ve seen that way that he treats her, she’s just like a princess to him.

‘By the way, how did you get on with the maths homework that we were set yesterday?’ I asked as I thought about my efforts from the night before.

‘Oh, it was really hard,’ Haruka replied. ‘It took me twice as long as Kinoshita-sensei suggested it would take and I got a headache by the time I had finished.’

‘Phew, glad it wasn’t just me!’ I said, genuinely relieved as I did find it very challenging.

I thoroughly enjoyed spending time with Haruka. We’d known each other since nursery and as both of our families had close ties with the area, we were pretty certain that we’d be moving up through junior high and then high school together. There was also a sense of balance that we brought to each other’s lives. I was an only child and my father had left Okāsan for another woman a year after I was born so as long as I can remember it has been just the two of us. I wasn’t lonely but I did sometimes dream of having a big family and whenever I went to her house after school to study or more often talk about the latest pop sensation or sentimental soap-opera it was like walking into a zoo and I loved it! Likewise, whenever Haruka wanted some peace and quiet or a bit of girl-only time, she would come to visit me.

Turning right at the bottom of the slope and then immediately left, we walked past a couple of empty plots of land that were waiting to be built on and eventually become someone’s home. A little further on, once we had passed the apartment building where some of our teachers lived, the wide open ground and the L-shaped three-storey concrete school building came into view. The weak sun gradually became obscured by cloud, just as the weather forecast on the television last night had said it would. It seemed that the day was going to be a little dreary and overcast but I wouldn’t let a bit of grey weather dampen my spirits.

I walked with Haruka through the teachers’ car park into the school’s genkan, changed from my outdoor shoes into white indoor plimsolls, marked with my family name Yasuda, and started to make my way up to our classroom on the third floor.

‘I wonder what sort of day we’re going to have?’ Haruka asked.

‘I don’t know but whatever happens I’m going to enjoy it!’ I replied, bounding ahead of her up the stairs.

***

…I wonder where I’ll go this time…

…it was fun going west…

…but perhaps I’ll head north if I can…

…somewhere a little cooler…

…if only I could get this damn stone off my head…