What should I buy? It’s their birthday next month so I should get them something. During the hour-long ride we never stopped talking. Until junior high I’d walked to school every day, then ridden a bicycle, so the only time I’d taken a train was a couple of times a year when I went with friends or family to a neighboring town to a department store or shopping mall. Occasionally I’d hear someone laugh or people talking, but those were usually foreigners, not Japanese. Passengers hardly ever talked to each other, even when they’d gotten on board with others. I was surprised, too, when I got on the subway. Even as I wandered around, stopping to check the signs to take the subway, I was able to arrive at my destination without colliding with anyone. But what surprised me even more was how people managed to walk without bumping into each other. There were probably more people in the station alone than in the whole town I’d just come from. When I got off the Shinkansen train the first time, the station was packed-people as far as the eye could see. I’d never been to Tokyo in my life and found it a totally different world. They’d allow me to go to Tokyo, but on one condition: that I didn’t live alone in an apartment, but in the dorm. Once I said this, they stopped their objections. “Rest easy? Are you kidding? You’re the ones who know best how petrified I’ve been the last eight years living here.” And if anything happens, you can always come home. If it’s too much to commute to school from home, apartments are cheaper here. “There are other colleges in our prefecture that offer the major you’re interested in. “What’s so special about Tokyo?” my father shot back. Still, I desperately wanted to go to Tokyo. “You watch too much 24 City,” I countered, naming one of my parents’ favorite TV shows, but the truth is I’d often imagined the same kind of frightening scenario.

You were raised in the city, Asako, so I’m sure you’ll laugh when you read this, wondering what could possibly lead them to these ideas. Then what? What’ll you do if you get hooked on drugs? Or get killed? Some lowlife might trick you, they argued, and force you into prostitution. When I told my parents I wanted to go to Tokyo for college, both of them were dead set against it. I lived in the college dorm for four years. The first time I realized this-that besides the clean air the town had little else to recommend it-was seven years ago, after I’d graduated from high school and gone on to a women’s college in Tokyo. The only good thing about that town I grew up in is the sparkling clean air. They never seem aware of how rude they are sometimes. I was worried all through the ceremony that when you saw the crowd of my relatives who’d come from that country town you’d remember the events that took place back then, back in that town, and be upset. Thank you so much for attending my wedding the other day.

Minato kanae penance