As his chest broadened, he grew taller, and birds of all sorts—siskins, starlings, and titmice—began to build nests in his hair. Even birds like the cuckoo that don’t ordinarily build nests of their own, flew around his head and sang along with the others, “Peep peep, chirp chirp, tweet tweet, cuckoo!”
Hachiro woke up early every morning because the birds in his hair would begin chirping at the break of dawn, peeping, chirupping, tweeting, and cuckooing. Their songs were so loud that Hachiro simply couldn’t sleep late. He didn’t want to frighten the birds, so he’d try hard to stay still, even after he awoke.
Soon, though, he would feel the need to grow bigger, to rush down to the shore, yet he struggled against the urge because he loved the little birds so.
But it was no use. From deep in his now cavernous chest would come the burning desire to grow bigger, rising from within like billowing clouds on a summer’s day. And with a great shout he would leap to his feet and race to the shore. At times like these, Hachiro was magnificent. The birds scattered through his hair would instantly take to the air. Their nests remained, so they never flew far, but circled Hachiro’s head like mists surrounding a mountaintop, singing their bird songs: “Cheep cheep, chirp chirp, tweet tweet, cuckoo!” It was a beautiful sight to behold.
When Hachiro reached the shore, he’d plant his feet, each as huge as a cow, deep in the sand. He’d place his gigantic hands, each the size of a camphor tree, upon his hips. Pursing his lips, he’d blow away the clouds hovering around his chest. Then he would yell out toward the sea, “Hoihoi!”—Hey!
But the sea was so much bigger than Hachiro, it would pretend to ignore him, letting its waves pound the shore. Hachiro would have to say, “There’s no helping it. That’s how it is. That’s just how it is,” as he headed back up into the mountains.
One day, when Hachiro arrived at the seashore, he saw a cute little warashi, a tiny boy, crying his eyes out. The little boy would look at the sea and wail, look back at the sea, and just sob away.
Hachiro picked the small child up by his collar and laid him gently on his palm, which was the size of an eight-tatami room, and asked the boy why he was crying. Still heaving with sobs, the little boy explained. Every year, every single year, the sea would rise up and grow mean and rough. It would flood the farmlands of the boy’s father and ruin them. It looked as if this year’s flood was coming soon, perhaps today, and his mother and his father and all the people from the village had gone to try and ward off the waves, leaving him all alone.
Hachiro was a kindly mountain youth and felt sorry for the little boy. He did his best to try and comfort him.
“Don’t cry, little guy. It’s okay. I’ll play with you.”
But the tiny, pea-size boy just looked over to where his parents and the villagers were struggling to dam up the shore against the waves and sobbed loudly. He looked at the dark sea, which laughed nastily and bared its cruel white teeth, and it seemed he might cry his eyes out. He sobbed so sadly that Hachiro, who for all that he was a giant mountain youth, began to feel quite wretched too, and finally shed an enormous tear, huge as a millstone.
“All right, I get it. Hang on, okay?” Hachiro said as he headed out toward the pathetic little embankment where the villagers were shouting and arguing as they tried to bolster it.
“Hey! Hold on there. I’ll take care of that for you,” he said to the farmers, and he peered out at the sea.
By this time, far offshore, the sea had grown dark and ominous. Capped with ragged gray clouds, the sea sent white water splashing and spraying high above like a gigantic fountain.
Hachiro kicked away the menacing waves that snapped at his feet as the water poured over him. Carefully, he placed the little boy in his hand somewhere safe and dry, and then sped back to the foot of the mountains.
“Umph!” he groaned as he tried to lift up a mountain. But a mountain is still a mountain. It may have creaked and shifted a bit, but it remained firmly rooted to the ground.
Hachiro began to wonder if this wasn’t going to work after all. But then, he remembered the little boy crying so hard that his tears flew all around.
“You darned old mountain!” he bellowed.
Hachiro grabbed the mountain with one hand on the peak and one on its foot. It wobbled and made squeaks, groans, cracks, and all sorts of odd noises, but finally, he managed to get it up off the ground. With his face flushed bright red from the great effort, he staggered right and left as he carried his heavy burden, down toward the shoreline. As he neared the beach, the villagers were awed to see an entire mountain in his arms. But the old sea grew angry and blew a cold, cold wind whistling toward the shore. The mountain on Hachiro’s shoulders began to shudder and tremble as it cried, “Hey Hachiro, it’s cold! I’m freezing!”
Hachiro scolded the mountain, saying, “Cut the noise! Don’t you feel sorry for the poor little boy?” Then he tossed the mountain deep into the sea. “Yah!”
Do you know what the sea did? It broke into two, yes, right into two seas, and the splash from the mountain flew up high enough to blacken the sun. Then, seawater came pouring down from the skies like an afternoon cloudburst, rumbling as it escaped out into the depths, away from the shoreline.
The farmers who had been watching were overjoyed, exclaiming, “We’re so grateful! You’ve stopped the sea from flooding us. Now our fields will be safe. You’re a wonderful mountain lad, Hachiro!” Though the little boy had been crying just moments before, now he clapped his hands, cute as tiny Japanese maple leaves.
Hachiro’s widening grin was just revealing his bright white teeth when the little boy looked toward the sea again and began to wail.
Hachiro turned and saw that the sea was furious. The waters of the ocean had conferred offshore, and gathered in determination to swallow up the farmers’ fields. It surged closer, roiling and whirling. The villagers fell into a frenzied panic, and the little boy was flinging teardrops right and left as he sobbed.
“Don’t cry, little one,” said Hachiro. “You’ll make me want to weep, too. But don’t worry. Watch!” Then he turned and called to the mountain that he’d thrown into the sea, its peak still visible above the waterline. “Hey mountain. Yes, you there complaining of the cold. I’m coming out to join you.”
By now the sea was already sweeping toward the shore with a thunderous roar that threatened to swallow all the fields at once. Hachiro patted the crying little boy on the head before turning toward the sea. He grinned back over his shoulder, said “I’m off!” and charged into the oncoming surf, shouting at the top of his lungs with his arms spread wide, pushing the waves back with his chest as he plunged into the depths of the sea.
The sea shoved Hachiro. Hachiro shoved back. The sea shoved again. The waters reached his belly, then his chest, and then his shoulders. They finally rose to his neck and all the way up to his nose. Hachiro yelled loud enough to topple everything in sight, “Now I know! This is why I always wanted to grow bigger! To be big enough to be of use someday! Right, little warashi?”
The farmers who had gathered at the shore shouted out, “That’s exactly why you grew. You’re absolutely right, and you’ve helped us so much.”
They were crying.
But the little boy, well, he was still very young and didn’t quite understand what was going on. When the waves had covered Hachiro’s head, those birds who nested in his hair flew up all at once, singing, “Cheep cheep, chirp chirp, tweet tweet, cuckoo!” and the boy was so delighted that he began to clap his tiny hands in joy.
After Hachiro had disappeared under the waves, little bubbles twirled and burst above the water where his head had been. It seemed almost as if Hachiro was laughing along with the little boy.
Now that Hachiro had planted himself in its belly and was keeping it firmly at bay, the sea had no choice but to give up and go out deep where it raged to itself, tossing up waves in a temper. That is why even today, the sea throws its tantrums far off shore.
So this is ho
w Hachiro Lake was formed, and Hachiro still protects us from the sea. A mere whistle from Hachiro will have whitecaps speeding away from Kado village out to the Wakimoto coast.
The mountain that Hachiro sank halfway up its belly in the sea, well, it’s still as full of complaints as ever and continues to cry, “It’s so cold! I’m freezing,” as it shivers in the icy Tohoku winds. The villagers tease it with the name Samukaze-yama—Cold Wind Mountain—and when the bitter breeze blows in from the sea, the mountain cowers and whimpers shamelessly.
Of course you’re wondering what became of that little warashi, right? Well, that boy grew bigger and bigger every day, wanting to be just like Hachiro, to be of use to those in need, and he’s out there now, doing just that, somewhere in the great wide world.
The Lost Property Office
by Marji Napper
“I think this is a waste of time, Mitzi,” said my friend, Maki.
“If you don’t look, you can’t find it,” I said.
“I don’t think I’ll find it even if I do look.”
We had been having this conversation for nearly a week now. I was beginning to get tired of it. But it’s true that you can’t find something if you don’t look. If I’d been Maki I would have tried the lost property office the very next day, in the hope that someone might have handed in my lost homework and books. She had to give her project in by the end of the week, and she’d done so much work on it that she was bound to get an A. I couldn’t understand how she could work so hard on something and then just let it go.
Maki and I had been friends since we had started at the international school a few months earlier. Her family had just returned to Japan after two years in America, and she spoke good English. My father had just finished his posting in Spain and had been transferred to Tokyo, and my mother and I had come too. It wasn’t the constant changing of schools and friends that got to me so much, but the constant change of languages. It was okay at school, because the lessons were in English. It was all the rest that frustrated me. It’s hard to be living in a new country where you are unable to read or even have a proper conversation with the people you meet. And Japanese is so different from English—you can’t even guess at words and their meanings like you can when you are learning Spanish.
We seemed to have been walking through tunnels forever. That’s what the underground railway system is like. You can practically walk from one end of the city to the other through the wide, high-ceilinged tunnels that connect the stations and their exits. Tokyo Station is almost a city itself.
The lost property office was supposed to be near exit C20. We had been looking for ages, and we’d asked at least ten people, none of whom knew. Maki was getting nervous and crabby. I could tell she just wanted to give up and go home, but I didn’t.
Finally we found it. The door was in the middle of a long, blank, white wall. I had spotted the words Lost Property in blocky roman letters beneath the Japanese writing. I began to push open the door.
With a sigh of resignation, Maki followed me in.
Inside the office was a long, white counter with some boxes of pens and two or three piles of forms. Everything was white, and it looked almost like a clinic. There was no one behind the counter though.
“Let’s go,” said Maki.
“I can’t believe you’d come all this way and then go home without even asking!” I said.
“I can’t believe I came all this way,” said Maki.
She turned round and was making for the door when I spotted the bell.
“OK,” I said, “You go if you want to. I’m going to stay and ask.”
“I don’t like it here,” said Maki in a small voice. She looked at me pleadingly.
“Well, you go home and I’ll ask,” I said, in a more kindly voice. I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to ask, because my Japanese still hadn’t progressed beyond the basics.
She said, “Thanks,” in a whisper and shot out the door. I rang the bell.
Immediately a man came in from a door behind the counter. He wasn’t young and he walked with a stick, but his hair was still black, not white—more parent material than grandparent. He had eyes the dark brown of burnt sienna. I liked him instantly.
“Can I help you?” he asked in a helpful voice.
“I hope so,” I replied. “My friend left her homework on the train last Thursday. I was hoping someone had handed it in.”
“Why didn’t your friend come?”
“Well, she did. But she’s shy.”
“I see,” said the man.
He didn’t sound very encouraging, and suddenly I wondered if I had been stupid to come here after all.
“Her homework and some books,” I said. “She left them on the train.”
“I see,” he repeated. “A project on the Aztec civilization? Written by Maki Takeyama?”
“Yes. Yes . . . that’s it!” I agreed excitedly. “Have you got it?”
“We’ve got everything that has been lost,” he said, so solemnly that it made me want to giggle.
“Everything?” I asked, stifling my laughter.
“Yes.”
“The ring of power from ‘The Lord of the Rings’?” I suggested.
“That was destroyed, not lost. Anyway, it was fiction.”
“The Gordian Knot?”
“Cut, not lost,” he pointed out.
“The lost city of Atlantis? The philosophers’ stone?”
“Yes and yes,” he said.
“Uh-huh? How about the kitten I lost when I was eight?” I asked.
He seemed to be as amused as I was.
“The tabby kitten you had for your birthday? It disappeared the next morning. You searched for it everywhere. You cried for weeks because you didn’t know if it was okay.”
“Yes, that one,” I said, my voice just a whisper threaded with fright, because this was personal, and how could he know?
He bent down then and rummaged behind the counter. When he straightened up he had a tabby kitten with white paws, which he placed carefully on the countertop. The kitten opened its mouth in a small pink mew, just as it had on my birthday five years ago. And I felt exactly the same rush of excitement and delight I’d felt five years ago. All my oh-yeah-ness dribbled away. I had absolutely no doubt that it was the same kitten. It even had the red-and-green bow that my father had bought for it in the market in Seville and had tied around its neck. I picked it up. It was small and soft and solid. It moved uneasily and I could feel its heart beating against my palms.
“Can I keep it?” I asked in a small voice.
“Technically, yes. It was given to you.”
“But?” I asked.
“But a small boy, who has loved this cat for five years, will wake up tomorrow morning and find that his pet has died.”
“Cats have nine lives,” I protested.
“Yes, but they have to stay with the animal. They’re not that divisible.”
I remembered all the misery and anxiety I had felt when it got lost. I almost felt it all over again. Then I thought that was exactly how that little boy would feel if I took my kitten back. I stroked its stripy head, and reluctantly, I handed it back to the lost property man. He held it cupped in his hands for a moment, and then suddenly the kitten disappeared.
“What happened?” I asked.
“It isn’t lost property anymore,” he said. “You’ve found it.”
“So now it’s the little boy’s cat?”
“Exactly. Case closed. That’s how it works.”
He rummaged behind the counter again and brought out a red folder with a map of Peru on the front and three new, expensive-looking books.
I was about to take them when another man came in. He nodded to the lost property man and then to me. He pulled out a large bag from his pocket. It only occurred to me much later that the bag was far too big to fit into his pocket. From the bag he withdrew a necklace that seemed to be made of diamonds, but perhaps it was only imitation. There were also two
rings. He then produced a notebook computer, two briefcases, and a bag of peaches. “The computer and briefcases won’t be a problem,” he said. “But we can’t do much about the jewelry unless people come in to claim it. Is that your homework?” he added, turning to me. “I hope you don’t mind, but I read it. I really liked it.”
“Um, it’s my friend’s. But I don’t think she’d mind.”
“Oh good.” Then he turned back to the older man and said, “We’re going to have to get some more Finders, uncle. We can’t keep up, you know.”
And looking at the two of them, one on each side of the counter, I suddenly realized that of course they were related. The younger man was taller, but he was more or less the same build and they had the same beautiful eyes. The younger man looked like a less time-battered version of the older.
“I’m good at finding things,” I said.
The older man bent over the counter to look more closely at me. Then he gave me a tremendously friendly smile.
“I rather think you are,” he said. “Would you like a job for summer break?”
“Yes!” I said, without even pausing to consider it.
My father was on a business trip and my mother had gone with him. I was staying with my Aunt Jane, who had been living in Tokyo for as long as I could remember and who was so engrossed in her job that she didn’t notice what I did. The summer break was starting in a week and Maki was going away with her parents. Until this moment I hadn’t been looking forward to the summer, but if I had a job . . .
“Take this home and ask your mother to sign it,” he said. “If she has any questions, she can phone me on the number at the top of the form. My name is Motomeru and this is Yuki, my assistant and also my nephew.”
On the train going home I was really excited. I’d found Maki’s homework and I had something interesting to do for summer break. I didn’t think then how strange it was that I, who could only speak the most basic Japanese, had had such a long conversation and hadn’t missed a word.
When I got home there was a note from my Aunt Jane. It said that she was at a meeting but that she would be home in time to cook dinner. A likely story! I clipped Marmaduke’s leash to his collar and then we walked round to Maki’s house, which is only a few streets away from Aunt Jane’s.
Tomo Page 17
