TREASURES 3: STORIES & ART BY STUDENTS IN JAPAN AND OREGON Collected by Chris Weber
J-E translations by Wayne Lammers and Clinton D. Morrison Oregon Students Writing and Art Foundation, 1994.

The Fox Who Came for Dinner

by Hiroko Saito

After finishing my bath I went to watch TV in the sitting room. There was a kind of rattling and scraping noise outside. Then again: rattle, rattle. Grandpa, who was sitting next to me, slid open the smoked-glass window, and the outer, clear window reflected everything in the room like a mirror. But I saw one thing that wasn't in the room: a yellowish-brown animal.

"Hey, it's a fox!" I thought. A fox was eating from our cats' food dish, an old cookie tin. Usually the cookie tin is right under the sitting room window, close enough to reach it from inside. Now it was on the gravel a little farther away.

"The fox must have dragged it," Grandpa said. I realized the noise we heard before was the sound of the fox dragging the tin.

"We have to be quiet, or he'll run away," Grandpa whispered. The fox was eating hungrily.

My sister Yoko would like this, I thought, and I went to get her from upstairs very quietly. She was in the bath, so I told Mom and Masayuki instead.

"Mom, there's a fox outside."

"What? You're kidding," she said, smiling.

"Really?" Masayuki said.

"Really, it's true," I said, and Masayuki and I went downstairs very quietly.

We tiptoed to the window, and the fox was still eating as if it couldn't care less about us. Just then a black cat came padding along under the window and went "Meow, meow." The fox was right there, but the cat didn't act scared at all. I thought it was a strange cat. I went to call Mom again, walking softly both up and down the stairs. The fox was still there when I got back. The cat was hiding somewhere.

Mom finally came down. "Well, I'll be!" she said with a smile. "It looks well fed, doesn't it?"

"Compared to the one last summer," I said, remembering the fox we had seen on the Shiretoko Peninsula highway. We were going along, and all of a sudden a fox walked out onto the road. That fox looked like a baby and was skinny as could be. Even its tail was skinny.

"This fox is big, so it must be a mommy or daddy fox," Grandpa said. "I've seen footprints all around, over that way and over there," he added, pointing toward the rice paddies and the river. "They wander here and there looking for food when they don't have anything to eat."

I felt sorry for the fox. I thought of how hard it had to struggle to go on living. I looked at the fox all wrapped in its fluffy, yellowish-brown winter coat, and I really wished I could go touch it. When I looked closer, I noticed that its nose and behind its ears were black. The fox's triangular nose twitched now and then. Several times it looked toward us with its round eyes, but it didn't seem to be afraid and went on eating as before.

"This fox seems to be pretty tame," Grandpa said.

Masayuki went to call Yoko from the bath. A few minutes later she came trotting in with her towel wrapped around her.

"Wow! A fox!" she squealed.

"You might scare it away, so be quiet," I said. She sat down without any more squealing, but she went on whispering things to Mom.

"It's cute," she said. "Can I go out and touch it?"

Mom looked at her wrapped in the towel and said, "It's pretty cold, Yoko. You'd better go back to Dad." Yoko went trotting off down the hall the way she had come in.

We could see the fox's tail, now. I was amazed how big it was. It was the same yellowish-brown, except the tip was dark brown.

"Look how big his tail is," I said.

"It's a beautiful tail," Grandpa said.

"It would make a great muffler," Mom suddenly said.

"Mom! That's not nice!" I said.

"But think how warm it would be," Mom said with a grin. "Shall I go catch it?"

I smiled back and rolled my eyes as if to say "Sure, sure."

"Maybe you should," Grandpa said. For some reason, even he was grinning.

"He can't be serious," I thought, but for a few seconds I wondered. Maybe the fox heard our conversation--it started to walk away. It walked kind of funny, dragging its tail behind.

"Look at that!" we all laughed.

Masayuki and Mom and I watched with our noses to the window. The fox walked slowly toward the road and then stopped. I wondered if it might come back this way, but it just changed direction and went off into the vegetable field. As if they had been waiting for the fox to go, our striped cat and our black cat appeared.

"It's the stripped cat," Grandpa said.

"You mean striped," I said, and we all laughed.

Dad came from the bath just after the fox had gone. The cat meowed as if to say, "You should have come a little sooner."

Hiroko Saito, fourth-grade girl,
Okikawa Elementary School, Kami-iso, Hokkaido Prefecture
Hiroshi Watanabe, teacher

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Heartbeats

by Kunihiko Fukushi

Early this morning
I went to see the horse
As I was watching
Her stomach went
Bump, bump
In a big wavy ripple.

When I put my ear
To the horse's stomach,
I heard a big
THUMP,
The sound of the mother's heartbeat.
And then I heard a tiny
Thump,
The heartbeat of the baby inside.

My cheeks grew hot.
And I could smell
The mother horse's smell.

"I really hope it's a girl," I thought.

Kunihiko Fukushi, second-grade boy,
Hamanaka, Hokkaido Prefecture
Takashi Yoshida, teacher

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Carrying Grandma on My Back

by Chikako Yamazaki

Editor's note: Obon is the Buddhist all-souls festival, when the spirits of ancestors are welcomed home to spend a brief time with their families.

When I was little, my grandma used to carry me in her arms or on her back all the time. When I look at photographs from that time, I see we have lots of pictures with me on her back. But my grandma died from heart disease when I was still small, so I don't remember her very well.

Obon came around again this year. In the evening, we all went to the family grave to welcome back my grandma. At the grave we made offerings of flowers and cookies. And we hung a lantern with a picture drawn on it.

After we had all prayed and were getting ready to go home, my grandpa said, "Chikako, Grandma was always carrying you on her back, so how would you like to carry her on your back now?"

I asked, "What do you mean, carry her on my back?" Grandpa took Grandma's memorial tablet from the grave and handed it to me.

"Oh, okay," I said.

The tablet had mold and dirt on it. It had gotten that way from being out in the rain and wind for all these years. You could hardly read the writing on it.

"All right, Grandma," I said. "This time it's my turn to carry you." I put Grandma on my back. She was very light.

On the way home in the van, I sat in the seat way at the back. I figured if I sat up front and leaned on the seat, Grandma would get squashed, and I felt sorry for her. So I carried her all the way home on my back like that.

"We're home, Grandma," I said, and set her down on a sitting-cushion.

Grandpa said, "Chikako carried you home on her back, Grandma," and he put the tablet in front of Grandma's picture on the family altar. We made offerings of flowers and fruit, and we rang the bell and lighted incense and prayed all together. Grandma must really be happy, I thought.

Dinner time came. My mother hadn't gone with us to the grave, so I told her, "I carried Grandma home on my back."

My mother said, "That's really nice. Especially since she was always carrying you on her back. I'll bet she's really happy."

Grandpa looked up at Grandma's picture and told her with a big smile, "Tomorrow, the kids from Ibaragi and Haramachi will be here, too."

Grandpa's so kind and thoughtful, I thought.

The next day was Sunday. My aunts and uncles from Ibaragi and Haramachi came, bringing my cousins. They all came to light incense for Grandma. And they brought lots of presents for us, too.

When my aunt from Ibaragi was lighting incense, she saw the tablet and said in surprise, "What in the world is this dirty tablet doing here?"

I explained: "I brought Grandma home on my back when we all visited her grave."

"I see. That was a nice thing to do, Chikako," she said.

For lunch we had a feast of sushi. There were lots of people and it was like a big happy party. I felt like Grandma had really come home this Obon.

When Obon was over, I walked back to the grave with Grandpa to return Grandma's memorial tablet to its place. This time I carried her in my arms.

As we walked, Grandpa said, "It sure was a nice Obon. The kids and everyone from Ibaragi and Haramachi all came, and we had a really nice Obon. And Chikako got to carry Grandma on her back, too."

On the way, we found a pretty bellflower. We picked it and took it to Grandma's grave.

Chikako Yamazaki, third-grade girl,
Kanebusa Elementary School, Odaka, Fukushima Prefecture
Kunio Sato, teacher.

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Grandpa Remembers the War

by Takenobu Higuchi

Grandpa was watching TV.
Leaning closer,
His eyes filled with tears,
A tissue in his hand.
A middle-aged man was talking on the screen,
With tears streaming down his face.
It was a program about the war orphans
Who were left behind in China.

Grandpa went to war
With a heavy machine-gun unit,
And they invaded China.
As they fought,
They trampled farmers' fields,
Burned houses and villages,
And even killed people.
Sometimes they were surrounded by huge armies
And faced terrible danger.
When he tells of these things now,
His forehead beads with sweat.

Sometimes Grandpa shows me his pictures from the war.
"This was my regiment," he says,
"And this was my commander."
He says it proudly,
With a strangely bright smile
Spread across his face.

When he watches TV
With tears in his eyes,
Grandpa says,
"War is no good."
But when he tells his own war stories,
It sounds a little
Like he's remembering good times.
It's hard for me to understand
How Grandpa feels about the war.
Because war is no good--
No matter what.

Takenobu Higuchi, sixth-grade boy,
Shiozaki Elementary School, Nagano, Nagano Prefecture
Chitaru Kubota, teacher.

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Sunset Over Uzuragi Island

by Yoshiko Nakayama

November 20, 4:30 p.m.,
The music festival came to an end.
In our chartered boat, we left Katashima behind.

Over Uzuragi, so small in the distance,
The sun seems bigger than usual.
It is blinding.
Five of us sit huddled at the bow.
Hands made into fists,
We stretch them out to the sun
And pretend to catch it.
"Such silliness!"
Startled, I turn to look at my teacher.
But somehow, it feels good.

My face begins to feel the chill,
And my hands begin to stiffen.
Katsu sniffles and sniffles,
But his nose keeps on running.
We all stay, trying our best to ignore the cold:
We want to watch the sun go down.

Splash! Splash! over tall waves the small boat goes,
Spreading its wake behind.
The island grows larger and larger,
And the sun sinks lower and lower.
It's about to fall on Dragonhead Mountain.
When I squint my eyes, I can see its sharp rays.
Yellow, pink, red, blue, violet:
They change color, so pretty.

The top of Dragonhead Mountain is bright.
We race toward it as if chasing the setting sun,
And I feel like both the boat and I
Will be sucked right up into it.
I see my first sunset over the sea,
And I am twice as content.

Now only the edge of the mountain glows softly red.
Soon we'll reach Uzuragi Island.

Yoshiko Nakayama, fifth-grade girl,
Uzuragi Elementary School, Sukuge, Kochi Prefecture.
Hidehiro Hamazaki, teacher.

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1. The Fox Who Came for Dinner, by Hiroko Saito [story]
2. Heartbeats, by Kunihiko Fukushi [poem]
3. Carrying Grandma on My Back, by Chikako Yamazaki [story]
4. Grandpa Remembers the War, by Takenobu Higuchi [poem]
5. Sunset Over Uzuragi Island, by Yoshiko Nakayama [poem]

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