Chapter 3
Tinplate Toys
My nephew’s family are all away on holiday, so I don’t have anywhere to go this New Year. I don’t know anyone here in Ibaraki, having moved here simply to be close to my nephew. None of the people I knew back up north where I’m from are alive now, and I can’t summon any enthusiasm to go to Tokyo.
I made a simple soup with rice cakes to eat by myself, but that was my only nod to New Year tradition. The soup was made the way we do up north, with a lot of burdock root, and the added rice cake was toasted in the Tokyo style. I suppose I was the only person in Japan eating the traditional New Year dish prepared this way.
With Takeshi away, it would be a good time to write down more of my recollections, I thought. For some reason, though, when he was reading it behind
