By Tetsuko Kuroyanagi - Translated by Dorothy Britton
The Railroad Station
They got off the Oimachi train at Jiyugaoka Station, and Mother took
Totto-chan by the hand to lead her through the ticket gate. She had hardly ever
been on a train before and was reluctant to give up the precious ticket she was
clutching.
“May 1
keep it!” Totto-chan asked the ticket collector.
“No, you
can't,” he replied, taking it from her.
She
pointed to his box filled with tickets. "Are those all yours!"
“No, they belong to the railroad station,” he replied, as he snatched
away tickets from people going out.
“Oh.” Totto-chan gazed longingly into the box and went on, “When I grow
up I'm going to sell railroad tickets!”
The ticket collector glanced at her for the first time. “My little boy
wants a job in the station, too, so you can work together.”
Totto-chan stepped to one side and took a good look at the ticket
collector. He was plump and wore glasses and seemed rather kind.
“Hmm.” She put her hands on her hips and carefully considered the idea.
"I wouldn't mind at all working with your son,” she said. “I’ll think it
over. But I'm rather busy just now as I'm on my way to a new school."
She ran
to where Mother waited, shouting, “I’m going to be a ticket seller!”
Mother
wasn't surprised, but she said, “I thought you were going to be a spy.”
As Totto-chan began walking along holding Mother's hand, she remembered
that until the day before she had been quite sure she wanted to be a spy.
But what
fun it would be to be in charge of a box full of tickets!
1
“That's it!” A splendid idea occurred to her. She looked up at Mother
and informed her of it at the top of her voice, “Couldn't I be a ticket seller
who's really a spy!”
Mother didn't reply. Under her felt hat with its little flowers, her
lovely face was serious. The fact was Mother was very worried. What if they
wouldn't have Totto-chan at the new school! She looked at Totto-chan skipping
along the road chattering to herself. Totto-chan didn't know Mother was
worried, so when their eyes met, she said gaily, “I've changed my mind. I think
I'll join one of those little bands of street musicians who go about
advertising new stores!”
There was a touch of despair in Mother's voice as she said, “Come on,
we'll be late. We mustn't keep the headmaster waiting. No more chatter. Look
where you're going and walk properly.”
Ahead of them, in the distance, the gate of a small school was gradually
coming into view.
The Little Girl at the Window
The reason Mother was worried was because although Totto-chan had only
just started school, she had already been expelled. Fancy being expelled from
the first grade!
It had happened only a week ago. Mother had been sent for by
Totto-chan's homeroom teacher, who came straight to the point. "Your
daughter disrupts my whole class. I must ask you to take her to another school.”
The pretty young teacher sighed. “I'm really at the end of my tether.”
Mother was completely taken aback. What on earth did Totto-chan do to
disrupt the whole class, she wondered!
Blinking nervously and touching her hair, cut in a short pageboy style,
the teacher started to explain. “Well, to begin with, she opens and shuts her
desk hundreds of times. I've said that no one is to open or shut their desk
unless they have to take something out or put something away. So your daughter
is constantly taking something out and putting something away - taking out or
putting away her notebook, her pencil box, her textbooks, and everything else
in her desk. For instance, say we are going to write the alphabet, your
daughter opens her desk, takes out her notebook, and bangs the top down. Then
she opens her desk again, puts her head inside, gets our a pencil, quickly
shuts the desk, and writes an 'A.' If she's written it badly or made a mistake
she opens the desk again, gets out an eraser, shuts the desk, erases the
letter, then opens and shuts the desk again to put away the eraser--all at top
speed. When she's written the 'A' over again, she puts every single item back
into the desk, one by one. She puts away the pencil, shuts the desk, then opens
it again to put away the notebook. Then, when she gets to the next letter, she
goes through it all again--first the note-book, then the pencil, then the
eraser--opening and shutting her desk every single time. It makes my head spin.
And I can't scold her because she opens and shuts it each time for a reason.”
The teacher's long eyelashes fluttered even more as if she were reliving
the scene in her mind.
2
It suddenly dawned on Mother why Totto-chan opened and shut her desk so
often. She remembered how excited Totto-chan had been when she came home from
her first day at school. She had said, “School's wonderful! My desk at home has
drawers you pull out, but the one at school has a top you lift up. It's like a
box, and you can keep all sorts of things inside. It's super!”
Mother pictured her delightedly opening and shutting the lid of this new
desk. And Mother didn't think it was all that naughty either. Anyway,
Totto-chan would probably stop doing it as soon as the novelty wore off. But
all she said to the teacher was, “I'll speak to her about it.”
The
teacher's voice rose in pitch as she continued, “I wouldn't mind if that was
all."
Mother flinched
as the teacher leaned forward.
“When
she's not making a clatter with her desk, she's standing up. All through class!”
“Standing
up! Where?” asked Mother, surprised.
“At the
window,” the teacher replied crossly.
“Why does
she stand at the window?” Mother asked, puzzled.
“So she
can invite the street musicians over!” she almost shrieked.
The gist of the teacher's story was that after an hour of almost
constantly banging her desk top, Totto-chan would leave her desk and stand by
the window, looking out. Then, just as the teacher was beginning to think that
as long as she was quiet she might just as well stay there, Totto-chan would
suddenly call out to a passing band of garishly dressed street musicians. To
Totto-chan's delight and the teacher's tribulation, the classroom was on the
ground floor looking out on the street. There was only a low hedge in between,
so anyone in the classroom could easily talk to people going by. When
Totto-chan called to them, the street musicians would come right over to the
window. Whereupon, said the teacher, Totto-chan would announce the fact to the
whole room, "Here they are!" and all the children would crowd by the
window and call out to the musicians.
"Play something," Totto-chan would say, and the little band,
which usually passed the school quietly, would put on a rousing performance for
the pupils with their clarinet, gongs, drums, and samisen, while the poor
teacher could do little but wait patiently for the din to stop.
Finally, when the music finished, the musicians would leave and the
students would go back to their seats. All except Totto-chan. When the teacher
asked, "Why are you still at the window?" Totto-chan replied, quite
seriously, "Another band might come by. And, anyway, it would be such a
shame if the others came back and we missed them."
"You can see how disruptive all this is, can't
you?" said the teacher emotionally. Mother was beginning to sympathize
with her when she began again in an even shriller voice, "And then,
besides...
3
"What else?" exclaimed the teacher. “If I could even count the
things she does I wouldn't be asking you to take her away.”
The teacher composed herself a little, and looked straight at Mother.
"Yesterday, Totto-chan was standing at the window as usual, and I went on
with the lesson thinking she was just waiting for the street musicians, when
she suddenly called out to somebody, 'What are you doing!' From where I was I
couldn't see who she was taking to, and I wondered what was going on. Then she
called out again, 'What are you doing!' She wasn't addressing anyone in the
road but somebody high up somewhere. I couldn't help being curious, and tried
to hear the reply, but there wasn't any. In spite of that, your daughter kept
on calling out, 'What are you doing?' so often I couldn't teach, so I went over
to the window to see who your daughter was talking to. When I put my head out
of the window and looked up, I saw it was a pair of swallows making a nest under
the classroom eaves. She was talking to the swallows! Now, I understand
children, and so I'm not saying that talking to swallows is nonsense. It is
just that I feel it is quite unnecessary to ask swallows what they are doing in
the middle of class."
Before Mother could open her mouth to apologize, the teacher went on, “Then
there was the drawing class episode. I asked the children to draw the Japanese
flag, and all the others drew it correctly but your daughter started drawing
the navy flag - you know the one with the rays. Nothing wrong with that, I
thought. But then she suddenly started to draw a fringe all around it. A
fringe! You know, like those fringes on youth group banners. She's probably
seen one somewhere. But before I realized what she was doing, she had drawn a
yellow fringe that went right off the edge of the paper and onto her desk. You
see, her flag took up most of the paper, so there wasn't enough room for the
fringe. She took her yellow crayon and all around her flag she made hundreds of
strokes that extended beyond the paper, so that when she lifted up the paper
her desk was a mass of dreadful yellow marks that wouldn't come off no matter
how hard we rubbed. Fortunately, the lines were only on-three sides."
Puzzled,
Mother asked quickly, "What do you mean, only three sides!"
Although she seemed to be getting tired, the teacher was kind enough to
explain. "She drew a flagpole on the left, so the fringe was only on three
sides of the flag."
Mother
felt somewhat relieved. "I see, only on three sides."
Whereupon the teacher said very slowly, emphasizing each word, “But most
of the flagpole went off the paper, too, and is still on the desk as
well."
Then the teacher got up and said coldly, as a sort of parting shot,
"I’m not the only one who is upset. The teacher in the classroom next door
has also had trouble."
Mother obviously had to do something about it. It wasn't fair to the
other pupils. She'd have to find another school, a school where they would
understand her little girl and teach her how to get along with other people.
4
Mother did not tell Totto-chan she had been expelled. She realized
Totto-chan wouldn't understand what she had done wrong and she didn't want her
to get any complexes, so she decided not to tell Totto-chan until she was
grown-up. All Mother said was, “How would you like to go to a new school! I've
heard of a very nice one.”
"All
right," said Totto-chan, after thinking it over.
“But...”
"What
is it now?" thought Mother. “Does she realize she's been expelled?”
But a moment later Totto-chan was asking joyfully, "Do you think
the street musicians will come to the new school?"
The New School
When she saw the gate of the new school, Totto-chan stopped. The gate of
the school she used to go to had fine concrete pillars with the name of the
school in large characters. But the gate of this new school simply consisted of
two rather short posts that still had twigs and leaves on them.
"This gate's growing," said Totto-chan. "It'll probably
go on growing till it's taller than the telephone poles!"
The two "gateposts" were clearly trees with roots. When she
got closer, she had to put her head to one side to read the name of the school
because the wind had blown the sign askew.
"To-mo-e
Ga-ku-en."
Totto-chan was about to ask Mother what “Tomoe” meant, when she caught a
glimpse of something that made her think she must be dreaming. She squatted
down and peered through the shrubbery to get a better look, and she couldn't
believe her eyes.
"Mother,
is that really a train! There, in the school grounds!"
For its classrooms, the school had made use of six abandoned railroad
cars. To Totto-chan it seemed something you might dream about. A school in a
train!
The windows of the railroad cars sparkled in the
morning sunlight. But the eyes of the rosy-cheeked little girl gazing at them
through the shrubbery sparkled even more.
“I Like This School!”
A moment later, Totto-chan let out a whoop of joy and started running
toward the "train school," calling out to Mother over her shoulder,
"Come on, hurry, let's get on this train that's standing still."
5
Startled, Mother began to run
after her. Mother had been on a basketball team once, so she was faster than
Totto-chan and caught hold of her dress just as she reached a door.
“You can't go in yet,” said Mother, holding her back. “The cars are
classrooms, and you haven't even been accepted here yet. If you really want to
get on this train, you'll have to be nice and polite to the headmaster. We're
going to call on him now, and if all goes well, you'll be able to go to this
school. Do you understand?”
Totto-chan was awfully disappointed not to get on the "train"
right away, but she decided she had better do as Mother told her.
"All
right," she said. And then added, "I like this school a lot."
Mother felt like telling her it wasn't a matter of whether she liked the
school but of whether the headmaster liked her. But she just let go of
Totto-chan's dress, took hold of her hand, and started walking toward the
headmaster's office.
All the railroad cars were quiet, for the first classes of the day had
begun. Instead of a wall, the not very spacious school grounds were surrounded
by trees, and there were flower beds full of red and yellow flowers.
The headmaster's office wasn't in a railroad car,
but was on the right-hand side of a one-story building that stood at the top of
a semicircular flight of about seven stone steps opposite the gate.
Totto-chan let go of Mother's hand and raced up the steps, then turned
around abruptly, almost causing Mother to run into her.
"What's the matter?" Mother asked, fearing Totto-chan might
have changed her mind about the school.
Standing above her on the top step, Totto-chan whispered to Mother in
all seriousness, "The man we're going to see must be a
stationmaster!"
Mother had plenty of patience as well as a great sense of fun. She put
her face close to Totto-chan's and whispered, “Why?”
Totto-chan whispered back, "You said he was the headmaster, but if
he owns all these trains, he must be a stationmaster."
Mother had to admit it was unusual for a school to make use of old
railroad cars, but there was no time to explain. She simply said, "Why
don't you ask him yourself! And, anyway, what about Daddy? He plays the violin
and owns several violins, but that doesn't make our house a violin shop, does
it?"
"No,
it doesn't," Totto-chan agreed, catching hold of Mother's hand.
The Headmaster
When
Mother and Totto-chan went in, the man in the office got up from his chair.
6
His hair was thin on top and he had a few teeth missing, but his face
was a healthy color. Although he wasn't very tall, he had solid shoulders and
arms and was neatly dressed in a rather shabby black three-piece suit.
With a hasty bow, Totto-chan asked him spiritedly "What are you, a
schoolmaster or a stationmaster?"
Mother was embarrassed, but before she had time to explain, he laughed
and replied, "I'm the head-master of this school."
Totto-chan was delighted. "Oh, I'm so glad," she said, “because
I want to ask you a favor. I'd like to come to your school.”
The headmaster offered her a chair and turned to Mother. "You may
go home now. I want to talk to Totto-chan."
Totto-chan had a moment's uneasiness, but somehow felt she would get
along all right with this man. "Well, then, I’ll leave her with you,"
Mother said bravely, and shut the door behind her as she went out.
The headmaster drew over a chair and put it facing
Totto-chan, and when they were both sitting down close together, he said,
"Now then, tell me all about yourself. Tell me anything at all you want to
talk about."
"Anything I like?" Totto-chan had expected him to ask
questions she would have to answer. When he said she could talk about anything
she wanted, she was so happy she began straight away. It was all a bit
higgledy-piggledy, but she talked for all she was worth. She told the
headmaster how fast the train went that they had come on; how she had asked the
ticket collector but he wouldn't let her keep her ticket; how pretty her
homeroom teacher was at the other school; about the swallows' nest; about their
brown dog, Rocky, who could do all sorts of tricks; how she used to go
snip-snip with the scissors inside her mouth at kindergarten and the teacher
said she mustn't do that because she might cut her tongue off, but she did it
anyway; how she always blew her nose because Mother scolded her if it was
runny; what a good swimmer Daddy was, and how he could dive as well. She went
on and on. The headmaster would laugh, nod, and say, "And then?" And
Totto-chan was so happy she kept right on talking. But finally she ran out of
things to say. She sat with her mouth closed trying hard to think of something.
"Haven't
you anything more you can tell me?" asked the headmaster.
What a
shame to stop now, Totto-chan thought. It was such a wonderful chance.
Wasn't there anything else she could talk about, she wondered, racking
her brains?
Then she had an idea.
She could tell him about the dress she was wearing that day. Mother made
most of her dresses, but this one came from a shop. Her clothes were always
torn when she came home in the late afternoon. Some of the rips were quite bad.
Mother never knew how they got that way. Even her white cotton panties were
sometimes in shreds. She explained to the headmaster that they got torn when
she crossed other people's gardens by crawling under their fences, and when she
burrowed under the
7
barbed wire around vacant lots. So this morning, she said, when she was
getting dressed to come here, all the nice dresses Mother had made were torn so
she had to wear one Mother had bought. It had small dark red and gray checks
and was made of jersey, and it wasn't bad, but Mother thought the red flowers
embroidered on the collar were in bad taste. "Mother doesn't like the
collar," said Totto-chan, holding it up for the headmaster to see.
After that, she could think of nothing more to say no matter how hard
she tried. It made her rather sad. But just then the headmaster got up, placed
his large, warm hand on her head, and said, "Well, now you're a pupil of
this school."
Those were his very words. And at that moment Totto-chan felt she had
met someone she really liked for the very first time in her life. You see, up
till then, no one had ever listened to her for so long. And all that time the
headmaster hadn't yawned once or looked bored, but seemed just as interested in
what she had to say as she was.
Totto-chan hadn't learned how to tell time yet, but it did seem like a
rather long time. If she had been able to, she would have been astonished, and
even more grateful to the headmaster. For, you see, Mother and Totto-chan
arrived at the school at eight, and when she had finished talking and the
headmaster had told her she was a pupil of the school, he looked at his pocket
watch and said, "Ah, it's time for lunch." So the headmaster must
have listened to Totto-chan for four solid hours!
Neither before nor since did any grown-up listen to Totto-chan for as
long as that. And, besides, it would have amazed Mother and her homeroom
teacher to think that a seven-year-old child could find enough to talk about
for four hours nonstop.
Totto-chan had no idea then, of course, that she had been expelled and
that people were at their wit's end to know what to do. Having a naturally
sunny disposition and being a bit absent-minded gave her an air of innocence.
But deep down she felt she was considered different from other children and
slightly strange. The headmaster, however, made her feel safe and warm and
happy. She wanted to stay with him forever.
That's how Totto-chan felt about Headmaster Sosaku Kobayashi that first
day. And, luckily, the head-master felt the same about her.
Lunchtime
The headmaster took Totto-chan to see where the children had lunch.
"We don't have lunch in the train," he explained, "but in the
Assembly Hall." The Assembly Hall was at the top of the stone steps
Totto-chan had come up earlier. When they got there, they found the children
noisily moving desks and chairs about, arranging them in a circle. As they
stood in one corner and watched, Totto-chan tugged at the headmaster's jacket
and asked, "Where are the rest of the children?"
"This
is all there are," he replied.
"All
there are?" Totto-chan couldn't believe it.
There
were as many children as this in just one grade at the other school.
8
"That's
all," said the headmaster.
Everything
about this school was different from the other one, thought Totto-chan.
When everyone was seated, the headmaster asked the pupils if they had
all brought something from the ocean and something from the hills.
"Yes!"
they chorused, opening their various lunch-boxes.
"Let's see what you've got," said the headmaster, strolling
about in the circle of desks and looking into each box while the children
squealed with delight.
"How funny," thought Totto-chan. “I wonder what he means by
'something from the ocean and something from the hills.'” This school was
different. It was fun. She never thought lunch at school could be as much fun
as this. The thought that tomorrow she would be sitting at one of those desks,
showing the headmaster her lunch with "something from the ocean and something
from the hills" made Totto-chan so happy she wanted to jump for joy.
As he inspected the lunchboxes, the headmaster's shoulders were bathed
in the soft noontime light.
Totto-chan Starts School
After the headmaster had said, "Now you're a pupil of this
school," Totto-chan could hardly wait for the next day to dawn. She had
never looked forward to a day so much. Mother usually had trouble getting
Totto-chan out of bed in the morning, but that day she was up before anyone
else, all dressed and waiting with her schoolbag snapped to her back.
The most punctual member of the household--Rocky,
the German shepherd-viewed Totto-chan's unusual behavior with suspicion, but
after a good stretch, he positioned himself close to her, expecting something
to happen.
Mother had a lot to do. She busily made up a box lunch containing
"something from the ocean and something from the hills" while she
gave Totto-chan her breakfast. Mother also put Totto-chan's train pass in a
plastic case and hung it around Totto-chan's neck on a cord so she wouldn't
lose it.
"Be
a good girl," said Daddy, his hair all tousled.
"Of course." Totto-chan put on her shoes and opened the front
door, then turned around, bowed politely, and said, “Goodbye, everybody.”
Tears welled up in Mother's eyes as she watched
Totto-chan go out. It was hard to believe that this vivacious little girl,
setting off so obediently and happily, had just been expelled from school. She
prayed fervently that all would go well this time.
9
A moment later Mother was startled to see Totto-chan remove the train
pass and hang it around Rocky's neck instead. "Oh dear ... " thought
Mother, but she decided to say nothing but wait and see what happened.
After Totto-chan put the cord with the pass around Rocky's neck, she
squatted down and said to him, "You see? This pass doesn't fit you at
all."
The cord
was much too long and the pass dragged on the ground.
"Do you understand? This is my pass, not yours. You won’t be able
to get on the train. I'll ask the headmaster, though, and the man at the
station, and see if they’ll let you come to school, too.”
Rocky listened attentively at first, ears pointed, but after giving the
pass a few licks, he yawned. Totto-chan went on, "The classroom train
doesn't move, so I don't think you'll need a ticket to get on that one, but
today you'll just have to stay home and wait for me.”
Rocky always used to walk with Totto-chan as far as the gate of the
other school and then come back home. Naturally, he was expecting to do the
same today.
Totto-chan took the cord with the pass off Rocky's neck and carefully
hung it around her own. She called out once more to Mother and Daddy,
"Good-bye!"
Then she
ran off, without a backward glance, her bag flapping against her back.
Rocky bounded along happily beside her.
The way to the station was almost the same as to the old school, so
Totto-chan passed dogs and cats she knew, as well as children from her former
class.
Should she show them her pass and impress them, Totto-chan wondered? But
she didn't want to be late, so she decided not to that day, and hurried on.
When Totto-chan turned right at the station instead of left as usual,
poor Rocky stopped and looked around anxiously. Totto-chan was already at the
ticket gate, but she went back to Rocky, who stood, looking mystified.
"I’m
not going to the other school any more. I'm going to a new one now.”
Totto-chan put her face against Rocky's. His ears were smelly, as usual,
but to Totto-chan it was a nice smell.
"Bye-bye," she said and, showing the man her pass, she started
climbing up the steep station stairs. Rocky whimpered softly and watched until
Totto-chan was out of sight.
The Classroom in the Train
No one had arrived yet when Totto-chan got to the door of the railroad
car the headmaster had told her would be her classroom. It was an old-fashioned
car, one that still had a door handle on the outside. You took hold of the
handle with both
10
hands and slid the door to the right. Totto-chan's heart was beating
fast with excitement as she peeped inside.
"Ooh!"
Studying here would be like going on a perpetual journey. The windows
still had baggage racks above them. The only difference was that there was a
blackboard at the front of the car, and the lengthwise seats had been replaced
by school desks and chairs all facing forward. The hand straps had gone, too,
but everything else had been left just as it was. Totto-chan went in and sat
down at someone's desk. The wooden chairs resembled those at the other school,
but they were so much more comfortable she could sit on them all day.
Totto-chan was so happy and liked the school so much, she made a firm decision
to come to school every day and never take any holidays.
Totto-chan looked out of the window. She knew the train was stationary, but--was
it because the flowers and trees in the school grounds were swaying slightly in
the breeze!--it seemed to be moving.
"I'm so happy!" she finally said out loud. Then she pressed
her face against the window and made up a song just as she always did whenever
she was happy.
I'm so
happy,
So happy
am I!
Why am I
happy!
Because
...
Just at
that moment someone got on. It was a girl. She took her notebook and pencil box
out of her schoolbag and put them on her desk. Then she stood on tiptoe and put
the bag on the rack. She put her shoe bag up there, too. Totto-chan stopped
singing and quickly did the same. After that a boy got on. He stood at the door
and threw his bag on the baggage rack as if he were playing basketball. It
bounced off and fell on the floor. "Bad shot!" said the boy, taking
aim again from the same place. This time it stayed on. "Nice shot!"
he shouted followed by "No, bad shot," as he scrambled onto the desk
and opened his bag to get out his notebook and pencil box. His failure to do this
first evidently made it count as a miss.
Eventually there were nine pupils in the car. They comprised the first
grade at Tomoe Gakuen.
They
would all be traveling together on the same train.
Lessons at Tomoe
Going to school in a railroad car seemed unusual enough, but the seating
arrangements turned our to be unusual, too. At the other school each pupil was
assigned a specific desk. But here they were allowed to sit anywhere they liked
at any time.
11
After a lot of thought and a good look around, Totto-chan decided to sit
next to the girl who had come after her that morning because the girl was
wearing a pinafore with a long-eared rabbit on it.
The most unusual thing of all about this school, however, was the
lessons themselves.
Schools normally schedule one subject, for example, Japanese, the first
period, when you just do Japanese; then, say, arithmetic the second period,
when you just do arithmetic. But here it was quite different. At the beginning
of the first period, the teacher made a list of all the problems and questions
in the subjects to be studied that day. Then she would say, "Now, start
with any of these you like."
So whether you started on Japanese or arithmetic or something else
didn't matter at all. Someone who liked composition might be writing something,
while behind you someone who liked physics might be boiling something in a
flask over an alcohol burner, so that a small explosion was liable to occur in
any of the classrooms.
This method of teaching enabled the teachers to observe--as the children
progressed to higher grades --what they were interested in as well as their way
of thinking and their character. It was an ideal way for teachers to really get
to know their pupils.
As for the pupils, they loved being able to start with their favorite
subject, and the fact that they had all day to cope with the subjects they
disliked meant they could usually manage them somehow. So study was mostly
independent, with pupils free to go and consult the teacher whenever necessary.
The teacher would come to them, too, if they wanted, and explain any problem
until it was thoroughly understood. Then pupils would be given further
exercises to work at alone. It was study in the truest sense of the word, and
it meant there were no pupils just sitting inattentively while the teacher
talked and explained.
The first grade pupils hadn't quite reached the stage of independent
study, but even they were allowed to start with any subject they wanted.
Some copied letters of the alphabet, some drew pictures, some read
books, and some even did calisthenics. The girl next to Totto-chan already knew
all her alphabet and was writing it into her notebook. It was all so unfamiliar
that Totto-chan was a bit nervous and unsure what to do.
Just then the boy sitting behind her got up and walked toward the
blackboard with his notebook, apparently to consult the teacher. She sat at a
desk beside the blackboard and was explaining something to another pupil.
Totto-chan stopped looking around the room and, with her chin cupped in her
hands, fixed her eyes on his back as he walked. The boy dragged his leg, and
his whole body swayed dreadfully. Totto-chan wondered at first if he was doing
it on purpose, but she soon realized the boy couldn't help it.
Totto-chan went on watching him as the boy came back to his desk. Their
eyes met. The boy smiled. Totto-chan hurriedly smiled back. When he sat down at
the desk behind her--it took him longer than other children to sit down--she
turned around and asked, "Why do you walk like that?"
12
"Polio?"
Totto-chan repeated, never having heard the word before.
"Yes, polio," he whispered. "It's not only my leg, but my
hand, too." He held it out. Totto-chan looked at his left hand. His long
fingers were bent and looked as if they were stuck together.
“Can't they do anything about it?" she asked,
concerned. He didn't reply, and Totto-chan became embarrassed, wishing she
hadn't asked. But the boy said brightly, "My name's Yasuaki Yamamoto.
What's yours?"
She was so glad to hear him speak in such a cheerful voice that she
replied loudly, "I'm Totto-chan."
That's
how Yasuaki Yamamoto and Totto-chan became friends.
The sun made it quite hot inside the train. Someone opened a window. The
fresh spring breeze blew through the car and tossed the children's hair about
with carefree abandon.
In this
way Totto-chan's first day at Tomoe began.
Sea Food and Land Food
Now it was time for "something from the ocean and something from
the hills," the lunch hour Totto-chan had looked forward to so eagerly.
The headmaster had adopted the phrase to describe a balanced meal--the
kind of food he expected you to bring for lunch in addition to your rice.
Instead of the usual "Train your children to eat everything," and
"Please see that they bring a nutritiously balanced lunch," this
headmaster asked parents to include in their children's lunchboxes
"something from the ocean and something from the hills."
"Something from the ocean" meant sea food-- things such as
fish and tsukuda-ni (tiny
crustaceans and the like boiled in soy sauce and sweet sake), while
"something from the hills" meant food from the land--like vegetables,
beef, pork, and chicken.
Mother was very impressed by this and thought that few headmasters were
capable of expressing such an important rule so simply. Oddly enough, just
having to choose from two categories made preparing lunch seem simpler. And
besides, the headmaster pointed out that one did not have to think too hard or
be extravagant to fulfill the two requirements. The land food could be just kinpira gobo (spicy burdock) or an omelette,
and the sea food merely flakes of dried bonito. Or simpler still, you could
have nori (a kind
of seaweed) for "ocean" and a pickled plum for "hills."
Just as the day before, when Totto-chan had watched so enviously, the
headmaster came and looked in all the lunchboxes.
13
"Have you something from the ocean and something from the
hills?" he asked, checking each one. It was so exciting to discover what
each had brought from the ocean and from the hills.
Sometimes a mother had been too busy and her child had only something
from the hills, or only something from the ocean. But never mind. As the
headmaster made his round of inspection, his wife followed him, wearing a
cook's white apron and holding a pan in each hand. If the headmaster stopped in
front of a pupil saying, "Ocean," she would dole out a couple of
boiled chikuwa (fish
rolls) from the "Ocean" saucepan, and if the headmaster said,
"Hills," out would come some chunks of soy-simmered potato from the
"Hills" saucepan.
No one would have dreamed of saying, "I don't like fish
rolls," any more than thinking what a fine lunch so-and-so has or what a
miserable lunch poor so-and-so always brings. The children's only concern was
whether they had satisfied the two requirements - the ocean and the hills--and
if so their joy was complete and they were all in good spirits.
Beginning to understand what "something from the ocean and
something from the hills" was all about, Totto-chan had doubts whether the
lunch her mother had so hastily prepared that morning would be approved. But
when she opened the lunchbox, she found such a marvelous lunch inside, it was all
she could do to stop herself shouting, "Oh, goody, goody!"
Totto-chan's lunch contained bright yellow scrambled eggs, green peas,
brown denbu, and pink naked cod roe. It was as colorful as a newer garden.
"How
very pretty," said the headmaster.
Totto-chan
was thrilled. "Mother's a very good cook," she said.
"She
is, is she?" said the headmaster. Then he pointed to the denbu.
"All right.
What's this! Is it from the ocean or the hills?"
Totto-chan looked at it, wondering which was right. It was the color of earth,
so maybe it was from the hills. But she couldn't be sure.
"I
don't know," she said.
The headmaster then addressed the whole school, "Where does denbu come from, the ocean or the
hills?"
After a pause, while they thought about it, some shouted, "Hills,"
and others shouted, "Ocean," but no one seemed to know for certain.
"All
right. I’ll tell you," said the headmaster. “Denbu is from
the ocean.”
"Why?"
asked a fat boy.
Standing in the middle of the circle of desks, the headmaster explained,
“Denbu is made
by scraping the flesh of cooked fish off the bones, lightly roasting and
crushing it into fine pieces, which are then dried and flavored.”
14
"Certainly," said the headmaster, and the whole school trooped
over to look at Totto-chan's denbu. There must have been children who knew what
denbu was but
whose interest had been aroused, as well as those who wanted to see if
Totto-chan's denbu was any different from the kind they had at home. So many children
sniffed at Totto-chan's denbu that she was afraid the bits might get blown
away.
Totto-chan was a little nervous that first day at lunch, but it was fun.
It was fascinating wondering what was sea food and what was land food, and she
learned that denbu was made of fish, and Mother had remembered to include
something from the ocean and something from the hills, so all in all everything
had been all right, she thought contentedly.
And the next thing that made Totto-chan happy was that when she started
to eat the lunch Mother had made, it was delicious.
“Chew It Well!”
Normally one starts a meal by saying, "Iradokimasu" (I gratefully partake), but another thing that was different at
Tomoe Gakuen was that first of all everybody sang a song. The headmaster was a
musician and he had made up a special "Song to Sing before Lunch."
Actually, he just made up the words and set them to the tune of the well-known
round "Row, Row, Row Your Boat." The words the headmaster made up
went like this:
Chew,
chew, chew it well,
Everything
you eat;
Chew it
and chew it and chew it and chew it,
Your rice
and fish and meat!
It wasn't until they had finished singing this song that the children
all said "ltadakimasu."
The words fitted the tune of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" so well
that even years later many of the pupils firmly believed it had always been a
song you sang before eating.
The headmaster may have made up the song because he had lost some of his
teeth, but he was always telling the children to ear slowly and take plenty of
time over meals while enjoying pleasant conversation, so it is more likely he
made up this song to remind them of that.
After
they had sung the song at the tops of their voices, the children all said
"Itadakimasu" and settled down to "something from the ocean and something
from the hills."
15
School Walks
After lunch Totto-chan played in the school grounds with the others
before returning to the classroom, where the teacher was waiting for them.
"You all worked hard this morning," she said, "so what
would you like to do this afternoon?"
Before Totto-chan could even begin to think about what she wanted to do,
there was a unanimous shout.
"A
walk!"
"All right," said the teacher, and the children all began
rushing to the doors and dashing out. Totto-chan used to go for walks with
Daddy and Rocky, but she had never heard of a school walk and was astounded.
She loved walks, however, so she could hardly wait.
As she was to find out later, if they worked hard in the morning and
completed all the tasks the teacher had listed on the blackboard, they were
generally allowed to go for a walk in the afternoon. It was the same whether
you were in the first grade or the sixth grade.
Out of the gate they went--all nine first grade pupils with their
teacher in their midst--and began walking along the edge of a stream. Both
banks of the stream were lined with large cherry trees that had only recently
been in full bloom. Fields of yellow mustard flowers stretched as far as the
eve could see. The stream has long since disappeared, and apartment buildings
and stores now crowd the area. But in those days Jiyugaoka was mostly fields.
"We go as far as Kuhonbutsu Temple," said the girl with the
rabbit on her pinafore dress. Her name was Sakko-chan.
"We saw a snake by the pond there last time," said Sakko-chan.
"There's an old well in the temple grounds which they say a shooting star
fell into once.
The children chatted away about anything they liked as they walked
along. The sky was blue and the air was filled with the fluttering of
butterflies.
After they had walked for about ten minutes, the teacher stopped. She
pointed to some yellow flowers, and said, "Look at these mustard flowers.
Do you know why flowers bloom?"
She explained about pistils and stamens while the children crouched by
the road and examined the flowers. The teacher told them how butterflies helped
flowers bloom. And, indeed, the butterflies seemed very busy helping.
Then the teacher set off again, so the children stopped inspecting the
flowers and stood up. Someone said, "They don't look like pistols, do
they?"
16
Totto-chan didn't think so either, but like the other children, she was
sure that pistils and stamens were very important.
After they had walked for about another ten minutes, a thickly wooded
park came into view. It surrounded the temple called Kuhonbutsu. As they
entered the grounds the children scattered in various directions.
"Want to see the shooting-star well?" asked Sakko-chan, and
naturally Totto-chan agreed and ran after her.
The well looked as if it was made of stone and came up to their chests.
It had a wooden lid. They lifted the lid and peered in. It was pitch dark, and
Totto-chan could see something like a lump of concrete or stone, but nothing
whatsoever resembling the twinkling star she had imagined. After staring inside
for a long time, she asked, "Have you seen the star?"
Sakko-chan
shook her head. “No, never.”
Totto-chan wondered why it didn't shine. After thinking about it for a
while, she said, "Maybe it's asleep."
Opening
her big round eyes even wider, Sakko-chan asked, "Do stars sleep?"
"I think they must sleep in the daytime and then wake up at night
and shine," said Totto-chan quickly because she wasn't really sure.
Then the children gathered together and walked around the temple
grounds. They laughed at the bare bellies of the two Deva Kings that stood on
either side of the gate, guarding the temple, and gazed with awe at the statue
of Buddha in the semi-darkness of the Main Hall. They placed their feet in the
great footprint in a stone said to have been made by a Tengu - a long-nosed
goblin. They strolled around the pond, calling out “Hello!” to the people in
rowboats. And they played hopscotch to their hearts' content with the glossy
black pebbles around the graves. Everything was new to Totto-chan, and she
greeted each discovery with an excited shout.
"Time to go back!" said the teacher, as the sun began to dip,
and the children set off for the school along the road between the mustard
blossoms and the cherry trees.
Little did the children realize then that these walks--a time of freedom
and play for them--were in reality precious lessons in science, history, and
biology.
Totto-chan had already made friends with all the children and felt she
had known them all her life.
"Let's
go for a walk again tomorrow!" she shouted to them all on the way back.
"Yes,
let's!" they shouted back, hopping and skipping.
The butterflies were still going busily about their business, and the
song of birds filled the air. Totto-chan's heart was bursting with joy.
17
Each day at Tomoe Gakuen was filled with surprises for Totto-chan. So
eager was she to go to school that mornings never dawned soon enough. And when
she got home she couldn't stop talking—telling Rocky and Mother and Daddy all
about what she had done at school that day and what fun it had been, and all
the surprises. Mother would finally have to say, "That's enough, dear.
Stop talking and have your afternoon snack."
Even when Totto-chan was quite accustomed to the new school, she still
had mountains of things to talk about every day. And Mother rejoiced to think
that this was so.
One day, on her way to school in the train, Totto-chan suddenly began
wondering whether Tomoe had a school song. Wanting to find out as soon as
possible, she could hardly wait to get there. Although there were still two
more stations to go, she went and stood by the door, ready to jump out as soon
as the train pulled into Jiyugaoka. A lady getting on at the station before saw
the little girl at the door and naturally thought she was getting off. When the
child remained motionless--poised like a runner, all set and "on your
marks"- the lady muttered, “I wonder what's the matter with her.”
When the train arrived at the station, Totto-chan was off it in a flash.
By the time the young conductor was calling out, "Jiyugaoka!
Jiyugaoka!"--one foot smartly on the platform before the train had come to
a proper halt-Totto-chan had already disappeared through the exit.
The moment she was inside the railroad-car classroom, Totto-chan asked
Taiji Yamanouchi, who was already there, "Tai-chan, does this school have
a song?"
Tai-chan,
who liked physics, replied after some thought, "I don't think it
has."
"Oh," said Totto-chan, pensively. "Well, I think it ought
to. We had a lovely one at my other school."
She began
singing it at the top of her voice:
Tho'
shallow the waters of Senzoku Pond,
Deep is
our learning of vistas beyond ...
Totto-chan had only gone to the school a short time, and the words were
difficult, but she had no trouble remembering the song. That part, at any rate.
Tai-chan seemed impressed. By this time other pupils had arrived, and
they, too, seemed impressed by the big words she used.
"Let's
get the headmaster to make up a school song!" said Totto-chan.
"Yes,
let's!" agreed the others, and they all trooped over to the headmaster's
office.
18
After listening to Totto-chan sing the song from the other school and
after considering the children's request, the headmaster said, “All right, I'll
have a school song for you by tomorrow morning.”
"Promise you will!" chorused the children, and they filed out
to return to their classroom.
Next morning, there was a notice in each classroom requiring everyone to
assemble in the school grounds. Totto-chan joined the others, all agog.
Bringing a blackboard out into the center of the grounds, the headmaster said,
"Now then, here's a song for Tomoe, your school." He drew five
parallel lines on the blackboard and wrote out the
following
notes:
Then he raised both his arms like a conductor, saying, "Now let's
try and sing it, all together!"
While the headmaster beat time and led the singing, the whole school,
all fifty students, joined in:
To-mo-e,
To-mo-e, To-mo-e!
"Is
that all there is?" asked Totto-chan, after a brief pause.
"Yes,
that's all," said the headmaster, proudly.
"Something with fancy words would have been nicer," said
Totto-chan in a terribly disappointed voice. "Something like 'Tho' shallow
the waters of Senzoku Pond.' "
"Don't you like it?" asked the headmaster, flushed but
smiling. "I thought it was rather good."
Nobody liked it. It was far too simple. They'd rather have no song at
all, it appeared, than anything as simple as that.
The headmaster seemed rather sorry, but he wasn't angry, and proceeded
to wipe it off the blackboard. Totto-chan felt that they had been rather rude,
but after all she had something a bit more impressive in mind.
The truth was that nothing could have expressed the headmaster's love
for the children and the school more, but the children weren't old enough to
realize that. They soon forgot about wanting a school song, and the headmaster
probably never considered one necessary in the first place. So when the tune
had been rubbed off the blackboard, that was the end of the matter, and Tomoe
Gakuen never did have a school song.
“Put It All Back!"
Totto-chan had never labored so hard in her life. What a day that was
when she dropped her favorite purse down the toilet! It had no money in it, but
Totto-chan loved the purse so much she even took it to the toilet with her. It
was a truly beautiful
19
purse made of red, yellow, and green checked taffeta. It was square and
flat, with a silver Scotch terrier rather like a brooch over the triangular
flap of the fastening.
Now Totto-chan had a curious habit. Ever since she was small, whenever
she went to the toilet, she made it a point to peer down the hole after she had
finished. Consequently, even before she started going to elementary school, she
had already lost several hats, including a straw one and a white lace one.
Toilets, in those days, had no flush systems, only a sort of cesspool
underneath, so the hats were usually left floating there. Mother was always
telling Totto-chan not to peer down the hole after she had finished using the
toilet.
That day, when Totto-chan went to the toilet before school started, she
forgot Mother's warning, and before she knew it, she found herself peering down
the hole. She must have Loosened her hold on the purse at that moment, for it
slipped out of her hand and dropped down the hole with a splash. Totto-chan let
out a cry as it disappeared into the darkness below.
But Totto-chan refused to shed tears or give up the purse as lost. She
went to the janitor's shed and got a large, long-handled wooden ladle used for
watering the garden. The handle was almost twice as long as she was, but that
did not deter her in the least. She went around with it to the back of the
school and tried to find the opening through which the cesspool was emptied.
She imagined it would be on the outside wall of the toilet, but after searching
in vain she finally noticed a round concrete manhole cover about a yard away.
Lifting it off with difficulty, she discovered an opening that was undoubtedly
the one she was looking for. She put her head inside.
"Why,
it's as big as the pond at Kuhonbutsu!" she exclaimed.
Then she began her task. She started ladling out the contents of the
cesspool. At first she tried the area in which she had dropped the purse. But
the tank was deep and dark and quite extensive, since it served three separate
toilets. Moreover, she was in danger of falling in herself if she put her head
in too far, so she decided to just keep on ladling and hope for the best,
emptying her ladle onto the ground around the hole.
She inspected each ladleful, of course, to see if
it contained the purse. She hadn't thought it would take her long to find, but
there was no sign of the purse. Where could it be? The bell rang for the
beginning of class.
What
should she do, she wondered, but having gone so far she decided to continue.
She ladled with renewed vigor.
There was
quite a pile on the ground when the headmaster happened to pass by.
"What
are you doing?" he asked Totto-chan.
"I dropped my purse," she replied, as she went on ladling, not
wanting to waste a moment.
"I see," said the headmaster, and walked away, his hands
clasped behind his back as was his habit when he went for a stroll.
20
The
foul-smelling pile was getting higher and higher.
The
headmaster came by again. "Have you found it?" he inquired.
"No," replied Totto-chan, from the center of the pile,
sweating profusely, her cheeks flushed.
The headmaster came closer and said in a friendly tone, "You'll put
it all back when you've finished, won't you?" Then he went off again, as
he had done before.
"Yes," Totto-chan replied cheerfully, as she went on with her
work. Suddenly a thought struck her. She looked at the pile. "When I've
finished I can put all the solid stuff back, but what do I do about the
water?"
The liquid portion was disappearing fast into the earth. Totto-chan
stopped working and tried to figure out how she could get that part back into
the tank, too, since she had promised the headmaster to put it all back. She
finally decided the thing to do was to put in some of the wet earth.
The pile was a real mountain by now and the tank was almost empty, but
there was still no sign of the purse. Maybe it had stuck to the rim of the tank
or to the bottom. But Totto-chan didn't care. She was satisfied she had done
all she could. Totto-chan's satisfaction was undoubtedly due in part to the
self-respect the headmaster made her feel by not scolding her and by trusting
her. But that was too complicated for Totto-chan to realize then.
Most adults, on discovering Totto-chan in such a situation, would have
reacted by exclaiming, "What on earth are you doing!" or "Stop
that, it's dangerous!" or, alternatively, offering to help.
Imagine just saying, “You'll put it all back when you've finished, won't
you?” What a marvelous headmaster, thought Mother when she heard the story from
Totto-chan.
After the incident, Totto-chan never peered down the hole any more after
using the toilet. And she felt the headmaster was someone she could trust
completely, and she liked him more than ever.
Totto-chan kept her promise and put everything back into the tank. It
was a terrible job getting it out, but putting it back was much quicker. She
put some of the wet earth in, too. Then she smoothed the ground, put the cover
back properly, and took the ladle back to the janitor's shed.
That night before she went to bed Totto-chan thought about the beautiful
purse she had dropped into the darkness. She was sad about losing it, but the
day's exertion had made her so tired it was not long before she was fast
asleep.
Meanwhile, at the scene of her toil, the damp earth shimmered in the
moonlight like some beautiful thing.
And
somewhere the purse rested quietly.
21
Totto-chan's real name was Tetsuko. Before she was born all Mother's and
Daddy's friends and relatives said they were sure the baby would be a boy. It
was their first child, and they believed it. So they decided to name the baby
Toru. When the baby turned out to be a girl, they were a bit disappointed, but
they both liked the Chinese character for toru (which means to penetrate, to carry far, to be clear and resonant, as a
voice) so they made it into a girl's name by using its Chinese-derived
pronunciation tetsu and adding the suffix ko often used for girls' names.
So everybody called her Tetsuko-chan (chan is the familiar form of the
san used after a person's name). But it didn't sound quite like Tetsuko-chan to
her. Whenever anyone asked her what her name was, she would answer,
"Totto-chan." She even thought that chan was part of her name, too.
Daddy sometimes called her Totsky, as if she were a boy. He'd say,
"Totsky! Come and help me take these bugs off the roses!" But except
for Daddy and Rocky everybody else called her Totto-chan, and although she
wrote her name as Tetsuko in her notebooks at school, she still went on
thinking of herself as Totto-chan.
Radio Comedians
Yesterday Totto-chan was very upset. Mother had said, "You mustn't
listen to any more comedians on the radio."
When Totto-chan was a little girl, radios were
large and made of wood. They were very elegant. Theirs was rectangular with a
rounded top, and a big speaker in front covered with pink silk and carved
arabesques. It had two control knobs.
Even before she started school, Totto-chan liked to listen to rakugo comedians, pressing her ear
against the pink silk. She thought their jokes were terribly funny. Mother had
never objected to her listening to them until yesterday.
Last night some of Daddy's friends from the orchestra came to their
house to practice string quartets in the living room.
"Mr.
Tsunesada Tachibana, who plays the cello, has brought you some bananas,"
said Mother.
Totto-chan was thrilled. She bowed politely to Mr. Tachibana, and by way
of thanks exclaimed to her mother, "Hey, Ma, this is pretty goddam
good!"
After that Totto-chan had to listen in secret when Mother and Daddy were
out. When the comedians were good, she would laugh uproariously. If any
grown-ups had been watching, they might well have wondered how such a small
girl could understand such difficult jokes. But there's no doubt that children
have an innate sense of humor. No matter how young they are, they always know
when something's really funny.
Railroad Car Arrives
"There's a new railroad car coming tonight," said Miyo-chan
during the lunchtime break. Miyo-chan was the headmaster's third daughter and
was in Totto-chan's class.
22
There were already six cars lined
up together as classrooms, but one more was coming. Miyo-chan said it was going
to be a library car. They were all terribly excited.
"I
wonder what route it will take to get to the school," someone said.
It was a
challenging topic. There was a momentary hush.
"Maybe it will come along the Oimachi Line tracks and then branch
off this way at that level crossing," someone suggested.
"Then
it would have to derail," said someone else.
"Maybe
they'll just bring it on a cart," said another.
"There wouldn't be a cart big enough to hold one of those
cars," someone pointed out immediately.
“I
suppose not...”
Ideas petered out. The children realized a railroad car certainly
wouldn't fit on a cart or even a truck.
"Rails!"
said Totto-chan after much thought.
"You
know, they're probably going to lay some rails right here to the school!"
"From
where?" asked someone.
"Where? From wherever the train is now," said Totto-chan,
beginning to think her idea wasn't such a good one, after all. She had no idea
where the car was coming from, and, anyway, they wouldn't pull down houses and
things in order to lay tracks in a straight line to the school.
After much fruitless discussion of one possibility after another, the
children finally decided not to go home that afternoon but to wait and see the
car arrive. Miyo-chan was elected to go and ask her father, the headmaster, if
they could all remain at school until that night. It was some while before she
came back.
"The car is arriving terribly late tonight," she said,
"after all the other trains have stopped running. Anybody who really wants
to see it will have to go home first and ask permission. Then they can come
back if they like with their pajamas and a blanket after they've had their
dinner.
"Wow!"
The children were more excited than ever.
"He
said to bring our pajamas?"
"And
blankets?"
23
That afternoon no one could
concentrate on the lessons. After school, the children in Totto-chan's class
went straight home, all hoping they'd be lucky enough to see each other again
that night complete with pajamas and blankets.
As soon as she reached home, Totto-chan said to Mother, "A train's
coming. We don't know how it's going to get there. Pajamas and a blanket. May I
go?"
What mother could grasp the situation with that kind of explanation!
Totto-chan's mother had no idea what she meant. But judging by the serious look
on her daughter's face, she guessed something unusual was afoot.
Mother asked Totto-chan all sorts of questions. She
finally discovered what it was all about and what exactly was going to happen.
She thought Totto-chan ought to see it, as she wouldn't have many such
opportunities. She even thought she'd like to see the car arrive herself.
Mother got out Totto-chan's pajamas and a blanket, and after dinner she
took her to the school. About ten children were there. They included some of
the older students who had heard of the event. A couple of other mothers, too,
had come with their children. They looked as if they would like to stay, but
after entrusting their children to the head-master's care, they went home.
"I’ll wake you up when it comes," the children were assured by
the headmaster as they lay down in the Assembly Hall wrapped in their blankets.
The children thought they wouldn't be able to sleep for wondering how
the train would get there.
But after so much excitement, they were tired and soon became drowsy.
Before they could say, "Be sure and wake me up," most of them fell
fast asleep.
"It's
here! It's here!"
Awakened by a babble of voices, Totto-chan jumped up and ran through the
school grounds and out the gate. A great big railroad car was just visible in
the morning haze. It was like a dream--a train coming along the road without
tracks making no sound.
It had come on a large trailer pulled by a tractor from the Oimachi Line
depot. Totto-chan and the others learned something they didn't know
before--that there was something called a tractor that could pull a trailer,
which was much bigger than a cart. They were impressed.
The car
moved slowly along the deserted morning road mounted on the trailer.
Soon there was a great commotion. There were no giant cranes in those
days, so to get the car off the trailer and to its destination in the school
grounds was a tremendous operation. The men who brought it had to lay several
big logs under the car and gradually roll it off the trailer onto the
schoolyard.
"Watch carefully," said the headmaster, "they're called
rollers. Rolling power is being used to move that big car.”
24
"Heave-ho, heave-ho," chanted the workmen as they toiled, and
the sun itself seemed to be rising in time to their rhythmic cries.
Like the other six already at the school, this car,
which had carried so many people, had its wheels removed. Its traveling life
was over. From now on it would carry the sound of children's laughter.
As the boys and girls stood there in the morning
sunshine in their pajamas, they were so happy they couldn't contain their joy
and kept jumping up and down, clasping the headmaster around the neck and
swinging from his arms.
Staggering under the onslaught, the headmaster smiled happily. Seeing
his joy, the children smiled, too.
And none
of them ever forgot how happy they were.
The Swimming Pool
That was a red-letter day for Totto-chan. It was the first time she had
ever swum in a pool. And without a stitch on!
It happened in the morning. The headmaster said to them all, "It's
become quite hot all of a sudden, so I think I'll fill the pool."
"Wow!" everybody cried, jumping up and down. Totto-chan and
the first grade children cried "Wow" too, and jumped up and down with
even greater excitement than the older students. The pool at Tomoe was not
rectangular like most pools, as one end was narrower than the other. It was
shaped pretty much like a boat. The lay of the land probably had something to
do with it. But nonetheless; the pool was a large and splendid one. It was
situated between the classrooms and the Assembly Hall.
All during their lessons, Totto-chan and the others kept stealing
glances out of the windows at the pool. When empty it had been littered with
fallen leaves just like the playground. But now that it was clean and beginning
to fill up, it started to look like a real swimming pool.
Lunchtime finally arrived, and when the children were all gathered
around the pool, the headmaster said, “We'll do some exercises and then have a swim.”
"Don't I need a swimsuit to go swimming?"
thought Totto-chan. When she went to Kamakura with Mother and Daddy, she took a
swimsuit, a rubber ring, and all sorts of things. She tried to remember if the
teacher had asked them to bring swimsuits.
Then, just as if he had read her thoughts, the headmaster said,
"Don't worry about swimsuits. Go and look in the Assembly Hall."
When Totto-chan and the other first graders got to the Assembly Hall the
bigger children were taking off their clothes with shrieks of delight as if
they were going to have a bath. They ran our, one after the other, stark naked,
into the school grounds.
25
Totto-chan and her friends hurriedly followed them. In the warm breeze
it felt wonderful not to have any clothes on. When they got to the top of the
steps outside the Assembly Hall they found the others already doing warm-up
exercises. Totto-chan and
her
classmates ran down the steps in their bare feet.
The swimming instructor was Miyo-chan's elder brother--the headmaster's
son and an expert in gymnastics. He wasn't a teacher at Tomoe but he was on the
swimming team of a university. His name was the same as the school's--Tomoe.
Tomoe-san wore swimming trunks.
After their exercises, the children let out screams as cold water was
poured over them, and then they jumped into the pool. Totto-chan didn't go in
until she had watched some of the others and satisfied herself they could
stand. It wasn't hot, like a bath but it was lovely and big, and as far as you
could stretch your arms there was nothing but water.
Thin children, plump children, boys, girls - they were all laughing and
shouting and splashing in their birthday suits.
What fun, thought Totto-chan, and what a lovely feeling! She was only
sorry Rocky couldn't come to school. She was sure that if he knew he could go
in without a swimsuit he'd be in the pool, too.
You might wonder why the headmaster allowed the children to swim naked.
There were no rules about it. If you brought your suit and wanted to wear it,
that was perfectly all right. On the other hand, like today, when you suddenly
decided to go in and hadn't a suit, that was perfectly all right, too. And why
did he let them swim in the nude! Because he thought it wasn't right for boys
and girls to be morbidly curious about the differences in their bodies, and he
thought it was unnatural for people to take such pains to hide their bodies
from other people.
He wanted to teach the children that all bodies are beautiful. Among the
pupils at Tomoe were some who had had polio, like Yasuaki-chan, or were very
small, or otherwise handicapped, and he felt if they bared their bodies and
played together it would rid them of feelings of shame and help to prevent them
developing an inferiority complex. As it turned out, while the handicapped
children were shy at first, they soon began to enjoy themselves, and finally
they got over their shyness completely.
Some parents were worried about the idea and provided their offspring
with swimsuits which they insisted should always be worn. Little did they know
how seldom the suits were used. Observing children like Totto-chan-who right
from the start decided swimming naked was best--and those who said they had
forgotten to bring their suits and went in anyway, most of them became convinced
it was much more fun swimming naked like the others, so all they did was make
sure they took wet swimsuits home! Consequently, almost all the children at
Tomoe became as brown as berries all over, and there were hardly any with white
swimsuit marks.
26
Looking neither right nor left, her bag flapping against her back,
Totto-chan ran all the way home from the station. Anyone seeing her would have
thought something terrible had happened. She had started running as soon as she
was out of the school gate.
Once home, she opened the front door and called out, "I'm
back!" and went to look for Rocky. He was lying on the porch, cooling off,
with his belly flat against the floor. Totto-chan didn't say a word. She sat
down in front of Rocky, took her bag off her back, and took out a report card.
It was her very first report card. She opened it so Rocky could clearly see her
marks.
"Look!" she said proudly. There were A's and B's and other
characters. Naturally, Totto-chan didn't know yet whether A was better than B
or whether B was better than A, so it would have been even harder for Rocky to
know. But Totto-chan wanted to show her very first report card to Rocky before
anyone else, and she was sure Rocky would be delighted.
When Rocky saw the paper in front of his face, he sniffed it, then gazed
up at Totto-chan.
"You're impressed, aren't you?" said Totto-chan. "But
it's full of difficult words so you probably can't read all of it."
Rocky tilted his head as if he was having another good look at the card.
Then he licked Totto-chan's hand.
"Good,"
she said with satisfaction, getting up. “Now I'll go and show it to Mother.”
After Totto-chan had gone, Rocky got up and found himself a cooler spot.
Then he let himself down again slowly, and closed his eyes. It wasn't only
Totto-chan who would have said that the way his eyes were closed it really
seemed as if he was thinking about that report card.
Summer Vacation Begins
"We are going camping tomorrow. Please come to the school in the
evening with blankets and pajamas," said the note from the headmaster that
Totto-chan took home and showed to Mother. Summer vacation began the following
day.
"What
does camping mean?" asked Totto-chan.
Mother was wondering, too, but she replied, "Doesn't it mean you're
probably going to put up tents somewhere outdoors and sleep in them? Sleeping
in a tent you can see the moon and the stars. I wonder where they'll set up the
tents. There's no mention of fares so it's probably somewhere near the
school."
That night, after Totto-chan had gone to bed, she couldn't get to sleep
for ages. The idea of going camping sounded rather scary--a tremendous
adventure-and her heart beat very fast.
27
The following morning she started packing as soon as she woke up. But
that evening, as her blanket was placed on top of the knapsack that held her
pajamas and she said goodbye and set off, she felt very small and frightened.
When the children were gathered at the school, the
headmaster said, "Now then, all of you, come to the Assembly Hall."
When they got there he went up onto the small stage carrying something stiff
and starchy. It was a green tent.
"I'm going to show you how to pitch a
tent," he said, spreading it out. "Please watch carefully.”
All alone, puffing and blowing, he pulled ropes this way and set up
poles that way, and before you could say "Jack Robinson," there stood
a beautiful tent!
"Come on, then," he said. "Now you're going to set up
tents all over the Assembly Hall and start camping."
Mother imagined, as anyone would have, that they
would put up the tents outdoors, but the head-master had other ideas. In the
Assembly Hall the children would be all right even if it rained in the night or
got a bit cold.
With delighted shouts of “We're camping, we're camping!” the children
divided into groups, and, with the help of the teachers, they finally managed
to set up the required number of tents. One tent could sleep about three
children. Totto-chan quickly got into her pajamas, and soon children were
happily crawling in and out of this tent and that one. There was much visiting
to and fro.
When everyone was in pajamas, the headmaster sat down in the middle
where they could all see him and talked to them about his travels abroad.
Some of the children lay in their tents with just their heads showing,
while others sat up properly, and some lay with their heads on older children's
laps, all listening to his tales of foreign countries they had never seen and
sometimes never even heard of. The headmaster's stories were fascinating, and
at times they felt as if the children described in lands across the sea were
friends.
And so it happened that this simple event--sleeping
in tents in the Assembly Hall-- became for the children a happy and valuable
experience they would never forget. The headmaster certainly knew how to make
children happy.
When the headmaster finished speaking and the light in the Assembly Hall
had been turned out, all the children went into their own tents. Laughter could
be heard from some; whispers from others; while from a tent at the far end came
the sound of a scuffle. Gradually silence fell.
It was camping without any moon or stars, but the children enjoyed it
thoroughly. To them that little Assembly Hall seemed like a real camping
ground, and memory wrapped that night in moonbeams and starlight forever.
28
Two days after they camped in the Assembly Hall, the day of Totto-chan's
great adventure finally came to pass. It was the day of her appointment with
Yasuaki-chan. And it was a secret that neither Mother nor Daddy nor
Yasuaki-chan's parents knew. She had invited Yasuaki-chan to her tree.
The students at Tomoe each had a tree in the school grounds they
considered their own climbing tree. Totto-chan's tree was at the edge of the
grounds near the fence beside the lane leading to Kuhonbutsu. It was a large
tree and slippery to climb, but if you climbed it skillfully you could get to a
fork about six feet from the ground. The fork was as comfortable as a hammock.
Totto-chan used to go there during recess and after school and sit and look off
into the distance or up at the sky, or watch the people going by below.
The children considered "their" trees their own private
property, so if you wanted to climb someone else's tree you had to ask their
permission very politely, saying, "Excuse me, may I come in!"
Because Yasuaki-chan had had polio he had never
climbed a tree, and couldn't claim one as his own. That's why Totto-chan
decided to invite him to her tree. They kept it a secret because they thought
people were sure to make a fuss if they knew.
When she left home, Totto-chan told her mother she was going to visit
Yasuaki-chan at his home in Denenchofu. She was telling a lie, so she tried not
to look at Mother but kept her eyes on her shoelaces. But Rocky followed her to
the station, so when they parted company, she told him the truth.
"I'm
going to let Yasuaki-chan climb my tree!" she said.
When Totto-chan reached the school, her train pass flapping around her
neck, she found Yasuaki-chan waiting by the flower beds in the grounds that
were deserted now that it was summer vacation. He was only a year older than
Totto-chan, but he always sounded much older when he spoke.
When Yasuaki-chan saw Totto-chan, he hurried toward her, dragging his
leg and holding his arms out in front to steady himself. Totto-chan was
thrilled to think they were going to do something secret, and she giggled.
Yasuaki-chan giggled, too.
Totto-chan led Yasuaki-chan to her tree, and then, just as she had thought
it out the night before, she ran to the janitor's shed and got a ladder, which
she dragged over to the tree and leaned against the trunk so that it reached
the fork. She climbed up quickly and, holding the top of the ladder, called
down, "All right, try climbing up!"
Yasuaki-chan's arms and legs were so weak it seemed he could not even
get on the first rung without help. So Totto-chan hurried down the ladder
backward and tried pushing Yasuaki-chan up from behind. But Totto-chan was so
small and slender that it was all she could do to hold onto Yasuaki-chan, let
alone keep the ladder steady. Yasuaki-chan took his foot off the bottom rung
and stood beside the ladder, his head bowed. Totto-chan realized for the first
time that it was going to be more difficult than she had thought. What should
she do?
29
She wanted so badly to have Yasuaki-chan climb her tree, and he had been
looking forward to it so much. She went around and faced him. He looked so
disconsolate that she puffed out her cheeks and made a funny face to cheer him
up.
"Wait!
I've got an idea!"
She ran back to the janitor's shed and pulled out
one thing after another to see if she could find something that would help. She
finally discovered a stepladder. It would remain steady so she wouldn't have to
hold it.
She dragged the stepladder over, amazed at her own strength, and was
delighted to find that it almost reached the fork.
"Now,
don't be afraid," she said in a big-sisterly voice. "This isn't going
to wobble."
Yasuaki-chan looked nervously at the stepladder. Then he looked at
Totto-chan, drenched in perspiration. Yasuaki-chan was sweating profusely, too.
He looked up at the tree. Then, with determination, he placed a foot on the
first rung.
Neither of them was conscious of the time it took Yasuaki-chan to reach
the top of the stepladder. The hot summer sun beat down, but they had no
thoughts for anything except getting Yasuaki-chan to the top of the stepladder.
Totto-chan got underneath him and lifted his feet up while steadying his bottom
with her head. Yasuaki-chan struggled with all his might, and finally reached
the top.
“Hooray!”
But from there it was hopeless. Totto-chan jumped onto the fork, but no
matter how she tried, she couldn't get Yasuaki-chan onto the tree from the stepladder.
Clutching the stepladder Yasuaki-chan looked at Totto-chan. She suddenly felt
like crying. She had wanted so badly to invite Yasuaki-chan on to her tree and
show him all sorts of things.
But she didn't cry. She was afraid that if she did,
Yasuaki-chan might start crying, too.
Instead she took hold of his hand, with its fingers
all stuck together because of the polio. It was bigger than hers and his
fingers were longer. She held his hand for a long time. Then she said,
"Lie down and I’ll try and pull you over.”
If any grown-ups had seen her standing on the fork of the tree starting
to pull Yasuaki-chan--who was lying on his stomach on the stepladder--onto the
tree, they would have let out a scream. It must have looked terribly
precarious.
But Yasuaki-chan trusted Totto-chan completely. And
Totto-chan was risking her life for him. With her tiny hands clutching his, she
pulled with all her might. From time to rime a large cloud would mercifully
protect them from the blistering sun.
At long last, the two stood face to face on the tree. Brushing her damp
hair back, Totto-chan bowed politely and said, "Welcome to my tree."
30
Yasuaki-chan was able to see vistas he had never glimpsed before.
"So this is what it's like to climb a tree," he said happily.
They
stayed on the tree for a long time and talked about all sorts of things.
"My sister in America says they've got something there called
television," said Yasuaki-chan with enthusiasm. "She says that when
it comes to Japan we'll be able to sit at home and watch sumo wrestling. She
says it's like a box."
Totto-chan didn't understand yet how much it would mean to Yasuaki-chan,
who couldn't go very far afield, to be able to watch all sorts of things at
home.
She simply wondered how sumo wrestlers could get inside a box in your
own house. Sumo wrestlers were so big! But it was fascinating all the same. In
those days nobody knew about television. Yasuaki-chan was the first to tell
Totto-chan about it.
The cicadas were singing and the two children were so happy. And for
Yasuaki-chan it was the first and last time he ever climbed a tree.
The Bravery Test
"What's
scary, smells bad, and tastes good?"
They liked this riddle so much that even though they knew the answer,
Totto-chan and her friends never tired of saying to one another, "Ask me
the riddle about what's scary and smells bad!"
The
answer was, "A demon in the toilet eating a bean-jam bun!"
The way the Tomoe Bravery Test ended would have made a good riddle too.
"What's scary, itches, and makes you laugh?"
The night they set up tents in the Assembly Hall and went camping, the
headmaster announced, "We're going to hold a Bravery Test one night at
Kuhonbutsu Temple. Hands up if you want to be a ghost."
About seven boys vied for the privilege. When the children assembled at
the school on the appointed evening, the boys who were going to be ghosts
brought costumes they had made themselves and went off to hide in the temple
grounds.
"We'll
scare you to death!" they said as they left.
The remaining thirty or so children divided themselves into small groups
of about five and set off for Kuhonbutsu at staggered intervals. They were
supposed to walk right around the temple grounds and the graveyard and then
come back to the school.
The headmaster explained that although this was a test to see how brave
they were, it would be perfectly all right if anybody wanted to come back
without finishing the course.
31
"Don't
lose it," Mother had said.
Some of the boys said they were going to catch the ghosts and brought
butterfly nets, while others brought string saying they were going to tie them
up.
It was dark by the time the headmaster had explained what they were to
do, and groups had been formed by playing "stone, paper, scissors."
Squealing with excitement, the first group set off out of the school gate.
Finally it was time for Totto-chan's group to go.
The headmaster said no ghosts would appear before they got to Kuhonbutsu
Temple, but the children weren't too sure about that and proceeded nervously
until they reached the entrance to the temple, from where they could see the
guardian Deva Kings. The temple grounds seemed pitch dark in spite of the moon
being out. It was pleasant and spacious there by day, but now, not knowing when
they would encounter one of the ghosts, the children were so terrified they
could hardly bear it. "Eee!" someone would scream as a tree rustled
in the breeze, or "Here's a ghost!" as someone's leg touched
something soft. In the end it seemed as if even the friend whose hand one was
holding might be a ghost. Totto-chan made up her mind not to go all the way to
the graveyard. That's where the ghosts were bound to be waiting, and anyway she
felt she now knew all about bravery tests and could go back. The others in her
group made the same decision at the same time--it was reassuring not to be the
only one--and they all ran back as fast as their legs could carry them.
When they got to the school they found the groups that had left before
them already there. It seemed that almost everybody had been too scared to go
as far as the graveyard.
Just then, a boy with a white cloth over his head came through the gate
crying, accompanied by a teacher. He was one of the ghosts and had been
crouching in the graveyard the whole time, but nobody had come and he got more
and more scared and finally went outside and was found crying in the road by
the patrolling teacher who brought him back. While they were all trying to
cheer the boy up, a second ghost came back crying with another boy who was also
crying. The one who was the ghost had also been hiding in the graveyard and
when he heard someone running toward it, he leaped out to try and scare him and
they collided head-on. Hurt, and frightened to death, the two of them came
running back together. It was so funny, and with the great relief that came
after being so scared, the children laughed their heads off. The ghosts laughed
and cried at the same time. Soon one of Totto-chan's classmates, whose surname
was Migita, arrived back. He was wearing a ghost's hood made of newspaper and
he was furious because nobody had come into the graveyard.
"I've been waiting there all this time," he complained,
scratching the mosquito bites on his arms and less.
"A ghost's been bitten by mosquitoes," someone said, and
everyone began laughing again.
32
"Well; I'd better go and bring back the rest of the ghosts,"
said Mr. Maruyama, the fifth grade home-room teacher, setting off. He rounded
up ghosts he found standing bewildered under street lights, and ghosts who had
been so frightened they had gone home. He brought them all back to the school.
After that night Tomoe students weren't frightened of ghosts any more.
For, after all, even ghosts themselves get frightened, don't they?
The Rehearsal Hall
Totto-chan walked sedately. Rocky walked sedately, too, looking up at
Totto-chan from time to time. That could only mean one thing: they were on
their way to peek in at Daddy's rehearsal hall. Normally, Totto-chan would be
running as fast as she could, or walking this way and that looking for
something he had dropped, or going across other people's gardens, one after the
other, ducking under their fences.
Daddy's rehearsal hall was about a five-minute walk from their house. He
was the concertmaster of an orchestra, and being a concertmaster meant he
played the violin. Once when she was taken to a concert, what had intrigued
Totto-chan was that after the people had all finished clapping, the perspiring
conductor turned toward the audience, got down from his podium, and shook hands
with Daddy who had been playing the violin, Then Daddy stood up, and all the rest
of the orchestra stood up, tool
"Why
did they shake hands?" Totto-chan had whispered.
"The conductor wants to thank the orchestra for having played so
well, so he shook hands with Daddy as the representative of the orchestra as a
way of saying thank you," explained Mother.
The reason Totto-chan liked going to the rehearsal hall was that, unlike
school, where there were mostly children, here they were all grown-ups, and
they played all sorts of instruments. Besides, the conductor, Mr. Rosenstock,
spoke such funny Japanese.
Josef Rosenstock, Daddy had told her, was a very famous conductor in
Europe, but a man called Hitler was starting to do terrible things there, so
Mr. Rosenstock had to escape and come all the way to Japan in order to continue
to make music. Daddy said he greatly admired Mr. Rosenstock. Totto-chan didn't
understand the world situation, but just at that time Hitler had started
persecuting Jews. If it hadn't been for that, Rosenstock would never have come
to Japan, and the orchestra that composer Koscak Yamada had founded would
probably never have made such progress in the short time it did, through the
efforts of this conductor of international standing. Rosenstock demanded of the
orchestra the same level of performance he would have expected from a
first-class orchestra in Europe. That's why Rosenstock always wept at the end
of rehearsals.
"I
try so hard and you don't respond."
33
Hideo Saito, the cellist, who
used to conduct while Rosenstock was resting, spoke the best German and would
reply for them all, "We are doing the best we can. Our technique is still
not good enough. I assure you our failure is not deliberate."
The intricacies of the situation escaped her, but sometimes Mr.
Rosenstock would get so red in the face it seemed as if steam should be coming
out of his head, and he began shouting in German. At times like that,
Totto-chan would retire from her favorite window where she had been
watching--chin in hands--and would crouch on the ground with Rocky, hardly
daring to breathe, and wait for the music to begin again.
But
normally Mr. Rosenstock was very nice and his Japanese was quite amusing.
"Very good, Kuroyanagi-san," he would say with a funny accent
when they had played well. Or, "Wonderful!"
Totto-chan had never been inside the rehearsal hall. She liked to peek
in at the window and listen to the music. So when they stopped for a break and
the musicians came outside to have a smoke, Daddy often found her there.
"Oh,
there you are, Totsky!" he would say.
If Mr. Rosenstock spotted her he'd say, “Good
morning" or "Good day" in his funny accent, and although she was
big now, he would pick her up as he did when she was little and put his cheek
against hers. It embarrassed her a bit, but she liked Mr.
Rosenstock. He wore glasses with thin silver rims
and had a large nose and was not very tall. But he had a fine handsome face
that you could immediately recognize as an artist's.
Totto-chan liked the rehearsal hall. It was rather Western in style, and
a bit dilapidated.
The wind that blew from Senzoku Pond carried the
sound of the music far beyond the rehearsal hall. Sometimes the call of the
goldfish (kingyo) vendor
would blend with the music:
kin-gyo ee kin-gyo
A Trip to a Hot Spring
Summer vacation came to an end, and the day of the trip to the hot
spring resort finally arrived. It was considered by the students to be Tomoe's
main event. Not many things surprised Mother, but when Totto-chan came home
from school one day and asked, "May I go on the hot spring trip with the
others?" she was flabbergasted. She had heard of old people visiting hot
springs in groups but not first graders. But after she read the headmaster's
letter carefully, she thought it was an excellent idea and was filled with
admiration for his plan. The trip was to be a "Seaside School" at a
place called Toi on the Izu Peninsula in Shizuoka. There was a hot spring right
in the sea, where the children could both swim and take hot baths. The trip
would last three days and two nights. The father of one of the Tomoe students
had a vacation home there, where all fifty of the Tomoe students from first
through sixth grades could stay. Mother, of course, agreed.
34
"Now then," said the headmaster when they were all together.
"We're traveling by train and by ship, and I don't want any of you to get
lost. Do you understand! All right, off we go!"
That was the only instruction he gave, yet when they got on the Toyoko
train at Jiyugaoka, the children were amazingly well behaved. Nobody ran up and
down the cars, and the only talking was done quietly among those sitting next
to each other. The Tomoe pupils had never once been told they should get in
line and walk properly and keep quiet on the train and not drop litter on the
floor when they ate their food. Their daily school life had somehow instilled
into them that they mustn't push people smaller or weaker than themselves; that
unruly behavior was something to be ashamed of; that whenever they came across
litter they should pick it up; and that they should try not to do anything that
annoyed or disturbed others. Strangest of all was that Totto-chan, who only a
few months before had been upsetting her whole school by talking to street
musicians out of the window in the middle of class, stayed at her desk and did
her lessons properly from the very day she started at Tomoe. If any of the
teachers from the other school could have seen her now, sitting properly with
the others in the train, they would have said, "It must be someone
else!"
At Numazu they embarked on a ship that was just like what they had all
dreamed about. It wasn't a big ship, but they were all so excited that they
inspected every corner of the deck, feeling this or hanging from that. When it
finally sailed, the children waved to the townsfolk on the pier. They hadn't
gone far before it started to rain, however, and they had to go inside. Soon
the sea became very rough. Totto-chan began to feel ill, as did some others.
But just then, one of the older boys got up and stood amidships, pretending to
be a stabilizer. When the ship rolled he would run to one side, saying
"Oops!" Then he would run the other way with another
"Oops!" It was so funny the children couldn't help laughing even
though they felt so seasick, and they were still laughing when the ship arrived
at Toi. The curious thing was that after they disembarked, the poor
"Oops" boy began to feel sick just when everyone else had recovered
and was feeling fine!
Toi Spa was in a quiet, beautiful village on the sea surrounded by
wooded hills. After a short rest the teachers took the children down to the
sea. It wasn't like the swimming pool at school so they wore their swimsuits.
The hot spring in the sea was most unusual. It was not enclosed so there
was no line to set off the hot spring from the rest of the sea. If you crouched
down where you were told was the hot spring, the hot water came up to your neck
and it felt lovely, just like being in a hot bath. If you wanted to go into the
sea from the hot spring, all you had to do was move about fifteen feet
sideways, and the water gradually got cooler. The further you went, the colder
it got, and you knew you were in the sea. So, after you had been swimming about
in the sea and began to feel cold, all you had to do was to hurry back to the
hot spring and have a hot bath right up to your neck! I was just like at home.
And it looked so funny. While the bathing-capped children were swimming about
normally in the regular sea, the ones in the hot spring part were relaxing in a
circle chatting just as if they were in a bath. Anyone watching would have
thought, "Why even youngsters act just like old people when they get in a
hot spring bath."
35
In those days the seashore was so deserted it was like being on their
own private beach, and the children enjoyed this unusual hot spring sea-bathing
to the utmost. When they got back to the house in the evening after staying in
the water so long, their fingers were a mass of wrinkles.
Each night, once they were tucked into their quilts, the children took
turns telling ghost stories. Totto-chan and the other first graders got so
frightened they cried. But in spite of their tears, they would ask, "And
then what happened?"
Unlike camping inside the school and the Bravery Test, the three-day
stay at Toi Spa was a real-life experience. For example, they were sent in
turns to buy vegetables and fish for dinner, and when strangers asked them what
school they went to and where they were from, they had to answer politely. Some
of the children nearly got lost in the woods. Others swam so far they couldn't
get back and had everyone worried. Others cut their feet on broken glass on the
beach. In each case everyone had to do their best to help.
But mostly it was all fun. There was a forest full of cicadas and a shop
where you could buy popsicles. And they met a man on the beach who was building
a big wooden boat all by himself. It was already boat-shaped, and the first
thing each morning they ran down to the beach to see how much more he had done.
The man gave Totto-chan a very long and curly wood shaving.
"How about a souvenir photograph?" asked the headmaster on the
day they were to leave. They had never had a photograph taken of them all together
and the children were excited at the idea. But no sooner was the teacher ready
with her camera than someone had gone to the toilet; then someone else had his
gym shoes on the wrong feet and had to change them around. When the teacher
finally said, "Is everyone ready?" one or two of the children were
lying on the ground, having become tired of holding their poses so long. The
whole process took a very long time.
But that photograph, with the sea in the background and each child
posing according to his or her fancy, became a treasured possession of each of
them. One look at it and memories would flood back -- the boat trip, the hot
spring, the ghost stories, and the "Oops" boy. Totto-chan never
forgot that first happy summer vacation.
Those were the days when you could still find crayfish in the pond near
their house in Tokyo, and the garbage man's cart was pulled by a great big ox.
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