Things and people change, and hence time passes. It wasn’t long before I was back in Japan. It wasn’t long before I left again. It is always there, always there.
Satomi still lives in her tiny Tokyo apartment. Practically nothing about her has changed except her boyfriends. These days her English is deteriorating through lack of practice. This annoys her, but not enough to dull her spirits or dampen her appetites.
Akiko sent me a letter, decorated with little stars and glitter, saying that she was moving to Dublin, and after that I heard no more of her.
I did meet Miho again. She has left the airline and is pursuing a career in what they call the hospitality industry. She is working long hours, and misses the opportunity to fly overseas.
Maya, the priest’s daughter, is completing a PhD, and looks destined for a career in academia. Now that her father has retired, her parents spend every day at the temple.
I sometimes imagine Kayo, striding through the streets of Kobe, but of course I’ll never see her again.
Friends remember Kyoko from time to time. I don’t know what she is doing these days.
Harumi and Naomi still live in the house in Sugo Valley.
tyger disappeared forever soon after the second no-show at Kansai airport. Occasional Internet searches on her real name have failed to turn up any links.
Emi’s friends all left the Kyoto area. Katsuya went north without telling the others about it. Yoko took a job as a teacher in a small town some distance away at the north end of Lake Biwa. Kasumi became a tour guide and now lives in New Zealand, often travelling overseas with Japanese parties. She remains friends with Yoko, who has visited her in Queenstown.
And Emi herself? She’s married now, Kasumi tells me, and has moved away from our playgrounds around Kyoto. She and her husband live in Gifu prefecture. I wonder – in her evenings alone, waiting for her husband to come home – does she ever recall the night of the torii beside the waters of Lake Biwa?
The three great sumo yokozuna of the day have all now retired; Akebono after winning eleven championships, Musashimaru after twelve, and Takanohana after an astonishing twenty-two. Thus a sumo generation passes into history. Kotomitsuki, the charismatic newcomer, went on to win a championship of his own in September of 2001. Within a year, however, a new yokozuna, Asashoryu, rose up, and has since dominated the sport as thoroughly as the old triumvirate.
I fixed up the old letterbox and each month I find there a large envelope from Segawa-sensei, containing shodo tehon, calligraphy exercises. I do several copies and post the best back to her. She forwards these to her association, Kansai shodo kyukai, for monthly grading. My grades have steadily improved, and I am now within striking distance of first dan.
And I’ve worked on robots, and methods that enable them to construct their own models of reality. There seem to be good reasons to do this.
