第九章

25 August 2075

As the train glided into Ueno station hovering on its electro-magnetic track, Shoichi’s wristwatch vibrated again to indicate that he needed to change lines. Den-Den thanked customers leaving the Jōban line, reminded them not to leave anything on the train and wished them a happy, healthy and safe onward journey.

Shoichi stepped down from the train and headed off in the direction of the Yamanote line following the overhead signs rather than the under-floor lighting he had used when returning the night before. He could feel his stomach rumbling gently as he walked and he thought to himself that the light breakfast he had eaten that morning was not going to sustain him for the duration of his visit to the hospital. 

There was a variety of restaurants tucked into the most unimaginably small spaces serving everything from food substitute shakes to more traditional handmade soba and udon noodles for those looking to remember a time when the pace of life was much slower and eating was more about a balance of different foods rather than living off custom-made cocktails of lab-produced nutrients that gave you exactly what you needed to maintain a healthy diet.

Choosing nostalgia over convenience, Shoichi ducked under the noren of a noodle restaurant, having perused from outside the plastic reconstructions of the dishes on offer – even these were evocative of a world gone by as many establishments had long since replaced plastic models with virtual images viewed through digital spectacles – and waited by the entrance to be seated. Despite his seventy-six years, he was still relatively young compared to the rest of the customers in the restaurant, some who looked like they had already passed a century of life on the planet, a not unusual occurrence as the average life expectancy in Japan currently stood at ninety-three for men and ninety-seven for women.

‘Good afternoon, sir,’ a waitress greeted him with a bow. ‘How many of you will be dining with us today?’

‘Just me, thank you.’

‘Please come this way.’

He was led to a seat by the window at the front of the restaurant and sat down at a small square table made out of solid pine. Laid on the table was a paper place mat embossed with the flowing kanji of the name of the restaurant, Hana, and a rather beautiful print of a watercolour painting of a salmon pink garbella. The waitress brought him a glass of water heavily filled with ice and a hand towel that was rolled up and placed on a shallow lacquered tray.

‘Are you ready to order, sir?’ she asked.

‘Please give me a few more minutes to have a look at the menu,’ Shoichi replied. ‘It all appeared so delicious when I was having a look at the display in the window and I’m struggling to decide.’

‘Very well, sir. Once you’re ready, please press this button and I’ll come straight back,’ she said and walked off to clear some dishes away from another table.

Shoichi scanned the menu in case there was something on there that he had not noticed when looking at the plastic food from outside. He was torn between ordering zaru-ten soba cold buckwheat noodles served with tempura king prawn and vegetables or the hot kitsune-udon noodles that came with Japanese onions and deep-fried tofu. In the end he decided to go for the soba as he thought that this dish would provide him with more sustenance and would mean that he could get a light snack later that evening for dinner. Taking a sip of the water, he leaned across the table to press the call button that was set in a domed wood-effect plastic container. The satisfying click triggered an electronic bell that rang just above the entrance to the kitchen.

The food was beautifully presented; buckwheat noodles curled into mouthful-sized portions and laid on a bamboo mat that sat on top of a deep tray into which the excess water drained. The dipping sauce was in a glass bowl that had a swirl of white running through it and the tempura, arranged on folded white blotting paper, was served in a woven bamboo strip basket, accompanied by a thumb-sized pile of grated daikon white radish.

The taste had not disappointed and once Shoichi started to eat, he then realised quite how hungry he had been and tucked into the meal with some gusto. Not holding back, he started with the noodles, immersing them into the chilled dipping sauce before pulling them into his mouth three slurps at a time. Having set a fast pace, he consciously slowed down but nevertheless, in just fifteen minutes, had cleared every plate in front of him, put the disposable chopsticks back down on their rest and sat back in his chair savouring the tastes lingering on his palette before washing them away with a final mouthful of his water which by now had just chips of ice floating on the surface.

The restaurant had begun to fill up as more travellers filtered in to have some food. It was also the beginning of the lunchtime visits from those working in the many shops that existed in this underground world.

Shoichi pressed the call button again and asked for the bill which, rather quaintly, was printed out from the same device used earlier to input his order. The restaurant was happy to take paper money – all part of the authentic traditional dining experience – but Shoichi opted to pay by waving his wallet into the payment field that existed around the till area. He noticed that there was even a soroban abacus for calculating how much change to give customers although he wondered how long it had been since anyone had actually carried out a cash transaction in this restaurant, or across the whole of Japan for that matter.

Moving through the station towards the Yamanote line, he used the escalator to get up to the platform and bought himself a can of ulon cha to take with him to drink on the train. The floor-to-ceiling glass partitions that had been installed to minimise suicide attempts meant that the platforms had become partially enclosed areas and therefore could be climate controlled, making waiting for a train a more comfortable experience no matter what the weather. He sat down on a bench and enjoyed the sensation of the cold can of tea pressed against the inside of his wrist.

The remainder of the journey to Ikebukuro passed uneventfully except for when an elderly lady took umbrage with a teenage girl who did not give up her seat. The teenager was not expecting such a verbal assault from the cantankerous woman whose sharp tongue more than made up for her weakened body which was almost bent double at the waist.

Once the train had come to a halt at his station, he stepped off, walked down the stairs and exited onto the street which was busy with taxis, bicycles and, he noted, a large number of people walking around laden like pack horses with bags full of the evidence of their morning’s shopping.

Taking a slightly different route to the one he had used late the night before, Shoichi soon reached the University Hospital and walked across the site to the Nakamura ward. The main glass doors at the entrance slid open as he approached and Shoichi walked directly to the reception to collect the visitor smart-stamp that would afford him access to the communal parts of the hospital and, most importantly, the room where he hoped Kimiko was making some progress in her recovery.

The lights were on low and the windows set to an opacity that prevented too much sunlight coming through. It was cool compared to outside, cooler even than within the hospital which felt humid. Kimiko lay there serenely, resting with her head supported by a stack of soft pillows, motionless beneath the sheet that covered her body. As before, machines continued to blink and beep supporting her life whilst her brain stem was unable to carry out the vital job of regulating breathing, heart rate, blood pressure and body temperature. The distraction of the journey and having a morning that had some semblance or normality were forgotten as he was back here by Kimiko’s side hoping that today was going to be the day that something changed.

‘Konnichiwa, Kimiko-chan,’ Shoichi said as he stroked her hair with the back of his fingers.

‘Well, that watch you bought me for my retirement saved me last night as I fell asleep on the train on the way home and would have surely gone to the end of the line if it hadn’t awoken me in time,’ he added.

‘I was fast asleep and having a dream about travelling in space, you know like they are advertising now in all the travel agents. Forget Hawaii, make your next holiday a trip that gets you closer to the real stars.

The air pressure in the room changed momentarily as the seal around the door was broken, pushed open by Aoyagi-sensei who was the doctor overseeing Kimiko’s treatment. A young lady, not many years out of medical school but who had already established a sound reputation amongst the medical faculty and was quickly developing into something of a pioneer in coma treatment research and care techniques.

‘Good afternoon, Tanaka-san,’ she greeted Shoichi. ‘I’m pleased to see you here again today.’

‘Good afternoon, Aoyagi-sensei,’ Shoichi replied before asking rather directly. ‘Has there been any improvement overnight in Kimiko’s condition?’

‘Well, as you know, this is going to be a slow process and your wife is still in the phase of the coma where her body has completely shut down to allow her brain to do some deep healing,’ she said.

There was a look of disappointment on Shoichi’s face. He knew that there was every chance that nothing would have changed in the relatively short time he was away from her bedside.

‘However,’ Aoyagi-sensei continued, ‘I was looking at the brain activity charts earlier and at about one o’clock this morning the machines picked up a very slight change in the magnetic field around the hippocampus part of the brain which could have been caused by some electrical activity.’

It was the glimmer of hope that Shoichi had been looking for and he pounced. ‘So, is she finally beginning to recover?’

‘I think that it is too early to begin to draw such strong conclusions as we do sometimes pick up changes to the brain’s magnetic field that are not directly related to brain activity although I am hopeful that this could be the start of something positive,’ she asserted. ‘The hippocampus is the part of the brain that helps with memory formation, organisation and storage, connecting other senses such as sound and smell to these memories. Ordinarily, we would expect to observe early signs of activity in the brain stem as the subconscious actions such as breathing and beating of our hearts recommence but I have seen some evidence recently published that suggests other deep-functioning areas of the brain can repair earlier than the stem.’

‘So how quickly will the other parts start to work again?’ Shoichi asked in anticipation, eager for more good news.

‘It really is on a case-by-case basis and I wouldn’t want to get your hopes up although this is a good sign,’ Aoyagi-sensei said. ‘Please feel free to stay with your wife as long as you like. And don’t forget to keep talking to her. If there are some memories being reconstructed inside the hippocampus then talking about anything to do with her past could help.’

‘Thank you doctor,’ Shoichi said with a bow towards Aoyagi-sensei who left the room.

‘Did you hear that Kimiko? Aoyagi-sensei thinks that your brain has started to come to life again. I wonder if you can hear what I am saying?’ he said, slightly self-conscious that he was probably just talking to himself.

However, as suggested by the doctor, Shoichi reflected on the many wonderful moments that they had spent together in their lives. He settled on one trip that remained special to him, when, for their fifteenth wedding anniversary, they travelled south from Ōfunato to take a short break in Yamanashi Prefecture which started with a hike to the top of Mount Fuji.

***

The alarm went off at just after four o’clock in the morning, although he was so excited about finally climbing up Fuji-san – a lifelong dream – that there was no danger of him oversleeping. In fact, he had laid on his futon for the last forty-five minutes wondering how much longer before he could get up and start the final preparations for their trip. The alarm had come as a relief and he pushed back the light blanket and rolled on his front before easing himself up to a standing position. Kimiko was still sleeping and he left her that way as they did not need to leave the house for another hour.

Gently sliding open the door from the tatami room, he slipped through into the living area and pulled the cord hanging from the square lampshade made of paper and wood that was positioned in the centre of the ceiling. It was another hot August morning and he took the remote control from its clip on the wall, pointed it at the ageing air conditioner mounted to the left of the French windows and pressed the orange rubber button to turn it on. He thought to himself that he should really get around to changing the filter as the first few litres of air that were pulled through the unit smelled musty.

On the low kotatsu heated table, were the two twenty-five litre day rucksacks that he had packed meticulously the night before, using as a guide the suggested inventory provided by the travel agency through which the trip had been booked. Although there was no chance that anything he had put in there with his own hands merely hours earlier would have been removed or fallen out, he still took it upon himself to unpack and repack one more time. At the bottom of the rucksack was a pair of wet-weather trousers and jacket with a spare pair of wool walking socks in case the ones he was going to be wearing got worn or damp. In a draw string bag, he had placed plasters, talcum powder, muscle spray, painkillers and some anti-bacterial handwash. This bag sat upon the items already in the rucksack.

He then carefully folded a fleece jumper that would, the guidebook had said, be invaluable once they reached the summit of Fuji-san in the early hours of the morning. Although it was exceeding thirty-five degrees Celsius at sea level, temperatures fell to a much cooler  fifteen to twenty degrees at the Yoshidaguchi fifth station from where they would start their ascent and could drop to below freezing at the three-thousand-seven-hundred-metre high summit. On top of the fleece he placed a head-mounted light for the early morning part of the hike. Shoichi re-checked that he also had his energy bars, energy drinks and salted onigiri rice balls that would see him and Kimiko through what he anticipated was going to be a tougher hike than many of the other trips they had been on together. In the side pockets of the rucksack, he had stuffed a pair of white gloves dimpled with yellow rubber for grip and three folded plastic bags.

Finally, was a small coin purse containing a plentiful supply of hundred-yen coins for the toilets that got more expensive the higher you go.

He repeated this task with Kimiko’s rucksack, zipped up the pockets, fastened the clips and put the two bags by the front door next to their walking boots and walking poles. Fully satisfied that preparations were complete, Shoichi heated some water on the gas stove and made himself some green tea from leaves given to him by a work colleague who had recently been on a short trip to Shizuoka Prefecture.

From the tatami room, he could hear Kimiko stirring and the gentle click as she pulled the light cord confirmed that she was awake. A few minutes later, she emerged from the room dressed in walking clothes and smoothing down the hair that was sticking up stubbornly from the night’s sleep.

‘Good morning,’ she said, rubbing her eyes. ‘How long have you been awake for?’

‘Ah, ohayō. Not long,’ he replied looking up at the clock that was on the wall above the television. ‘About thirty minutes.’

‘Too excited to sleep, eh?’

‘Not really, just worried that I hadn’t packed everything we are going to need,’ Shoichi said in a clipped tone.

‘And so you’ve unpacked and repacked everything again, I bet,’ Kimiko said, teasing him further now that she had a bite.

Shoichi coloured slightly as he felt embarrassed but equally defensive about his obsessive approach to preparation. 

‘Well, like I said, I wanted to make sure that we were ready,’ he added before taking a sip from his mug.

‘Is that green tea you’re drinking?’ Kimiko asked peering towards the kitchen counter. ‘Pour me a cup will you, please.’

Shoichi reheated the water in the kettle to just below boiling point and poured, from height, the water on top of the green tea leaves that were in a metal mesh basket that sat on the rim of the teapot. The water made a slapping sound as it landed on the leaves and slowly percolated through to the bottom.

‘So, we’ve got to leave by five o’clock at the latest, is there much more that you need to do to get ready?’ Shoichi said as he poured out a cup of tea for Kimiko.

‘Just calm down, there’s plenty of time.’ Kimiko said shaking her head in disbelief and trying not to get too irritated by his impatience. ‘Let me finish this tea and then all I have to do is have a quick wash, clean my teeth and sort out this hair.’‘OK, well I’m going to pack the things in the car while you do that,’ Shoichi said walking past her towards the genkan where their equipment awaited his further attention.

Kimiko shook her head as Shoichi opened the front door and started to carry their things out to the electric car that they would be using for the short drive to the Ōfunato East Community Centre car park from where they would get a coach to Yamanashi Prefecture. He had become more uptight and then had mellowed slightly in the time that they had been married but always seemed to get a little stressed by the preparations for anything more involved than a short drive to the shops. Kimiko could never fully understand why because, as she had always maintained, as long as they had their wallets with them, there was very little that they couldn’t pick up on the way or even once they had arrived at their destination.

The brass bell hanging from the arm of the closing mechanism on the front door rang as Shoichi came back inside for the second wave of loading up and rang again as the door closed behind him. Kimiko finished off her tea, placed the empty cup in the sink, and went through to the washroom to freshen up her face and sort out her hair. By the time she had finished, Shoichi was back in the kitchen washing up the cups and placing them on the drainer by the side of the sink.

‘Right, that’s everything packed,’ he announced. ‘Just the food and drinks and we’re ready to go!’

From the refrigerator, he took out the sandwiches that they had bought the previous night from a convenience store, together with a couple of cans of coffee. Placing these into an insulated bag, he then opened the door to the freezer and got out four five-hundred-millilitre bottles of water and added these to the same bag which he carried out to the car.

‘I’ll be waiting outside,’ Shoichi shouted back through to Kimiko.

‘OK then, I’ll lock up shall I?’ Kimiko muttered under her breath, although in reality she was far from annoyed. Once you’ve been married to someone for long enough you either learn to accept their faults or get so irritated by them that you get divorced.

She walked around their home checking that all the lights were out and windows locked before turning off the air conditioner. She then put on the trainers she would be wearing for comfort on the long coach journey there, pushed open the front door, stepped out and double locked it once it had swung shut.

Pulling into the community centre car park, just after a quarter past five, they were by far the first to arrive. Others booked on the same trip were already standing by the coach, which had also turned up early, and were starting to load their rucksacks into the luggage compartment underneath the main body of the vehicle.

‘Ohayō gozaimasu,’ Shoichi shouted to nobody in particular to announce their arrival. His greeting was returned by those whose hearing was still good enough to have caught his words.

‘And I thought that we had left the house in plenty of time,’ he muttered to Kimiko.

‘What does it matter? We’re here on time aren’t we?’

‘I just hope that we can get a decent seat as it’s a long journey to Yamanashi,’ Shoichi said as he craned his neck towards the coach to get a better look at how quickly it was filling up.

‘Don’t worry, even if we were the last of all the people here to get on the coach we’d still pretty much have our pick of the seats,’ Kimiko reassured him.

However, Shoichi already had his mind on other things and was unloading their kit from the boot of the car to carry over to the coach. Kimiko leaned back into the Toyota to tidy up a few stray bits of paper that she noticed were lying on the back seat and, without looking what they were, put them into the glove compartment. She then grabbed the cool bag that was stored in the footwell and shut the passenger door. Shoichi strode meaningfully back to the car.

‘Have you got the bag with the food and drink?’

‘Yes, it’s right here,’ Kimiko said before adding, ‘honey!’

The playful affection seemed somewhat lost on him as he took the bag from her and ushered Kimiko towards the steep steps that led up to seats.

Once they had sat down towards the back of the coach, Shoichi let out a sigh of relief as the preparations were no longer in his hands, the responsibility for something going wrong no longer his.

‘This is going to be a great trip, Kimiko,’ Shoichi said. ‘I just know it, and what better way to spend our wedding anniversary than climbing up Fuji-san…’ he then paused, turned to Kimiko and, taking her hand, added ‘…with my honey!’ A broad smile appeared on his face.

‘So you had been listening!’ Kimiko said as she drew herself towards Shoichi and placed her head on his chest. Shoichi reached his arm up and around the back of her head to run his fingers through her hair, which, he noticed, was not quite as flat as perhaps Kimiko had thought it was.

The rumble of the coach’s diesel engine disturbed this brief moment of intimacy and they were off.