Short Novel : A Japanese school on the seaside (Chapter 3)

 

1979 — Family and University Entrance Exam Preparations

 

When I returned to the boarding school, another move was waiting for me.

Third-year students were given single rooms.

 

I left the four-bed room I'd been sharing and moved into a single room for senior students in another wing of the residence. The old desk had clearly seen years of use. Its surface was covered with messages and doodles left behind by generations of former occupants.

 

I heard that two of my former roommates had gone back to Japan.

For some reason, quite a number of students seemed to have gone back to Japan after the spring holidays. By the time the first term began, our year group had shrunk from twenty-eight students to just fifteen.

 

Even a few of the friends I'd grown close to had gone.

It felt as though little holes had been left in my heart.

I missed them.

 

Our university entrance preparation began in earnest. The school organised supplementary classes for the five of us who intended to sit the Japanese university entrance examinations. There were only five of us altogether, myself included. Science and arts students studied side by side in the same classroom.

The girls were Maiko, Yukiko and me. The other two were boys.

 

Our Japanese teacher knew the latest trends in university entrance examinations inside out. He gave each of us detailed advice tailored to our individual strengths and weaknesses.

 

"When you're living overseas," he kept reminding us, "it's all too easy for your reading to fall away, and with it your command of kanji and the basics of Japanese”

He never tired of reminding us of this."

“You must make time to read for at least an hour every day. Read newspapers as well. Unless you strengthen your Japanese, every other subject will become harder too.”

 

So I read.

Anything I'd brought from home.

Shinichi Hoshi.

Toyoko Yamasaki.

Sōseki Natsume.

Osamu Dazai.

 

I read all sorts of books, but I became so absorbed in reading that an hour a day was nowhere near enough.

Sometimes I borrowed books from Maiko or Yukiko.

Sometimes they borrowed mine.

Our little reading craze lasted right through the end of the first term.

 

Between novels, I worked through the assignments from our supplementary classes.

Time slipped away with alarming speed.

What worried me most was not knowing whether I was anywhere near the standard my chosen university expected.

 

"It'll be all right," our teacher would reassure us.

"Don't panic. Save your strength for the final push."

 

At night, lying in bed, I could hear the sea pounding against the shore.

Somewhere beyond that dark stretch of water, students across Japan were studying for the very same examinations.

I wasn't going to lose to them.

 

When the end-of-term examinations were over, the summer holidays began.

In reality, only the first two weeks were a proper holiday. The second half was taken up with intensive entrance-exam preparation classes.

It might well be my last summer in Britain.

 

Maiko flew back to Chile.

It was only a temporary goodbye.

 

During the holidays, my family travelled to the Lake District in the north-west of England.

I'd spent so many months shut away between the school, the dormitory and the village that I'd scarcely seen Britain at all.

The time with my family, together with the quiet beauty of the lakes, felt wonderfully restorative.

We took a boat across Lake Windermere, watching the sunlight dance across the water.

We stopped for afternoon tea in little villages tucked among the hills.

For a little while, life felt peaceful again.

 

My younger brother, Takahiko, seemed unusually quiet.

There was a Japanese school in London which children could attend as day students up to junior high.

But Father had insisted on sending him to a local grammar school instead.

That meant he had effectively stepped outside the Japanese education system.

 

One afternoon, almost to himself, he murmured,

"When we go back to Japan... do you think they'll make me start the first year of junior high all over again? Like I've broken some law or something?"

I felt sorry for him, but in a family where Father made all the decisions, there was little either of us could do.

 

Trying to cheer him up, I took him shopping and for long walks, telling him about life at my boarding school.

 

Takahiko stared at me, dumbfounded.

“So… even a Japanese school isn’t necessarily a good place, then.”

He paused.

"What do you think'll happen to those girls?"

 

What would become of them? I hadn't even thought about it.

 

“I suppose they'll manage somehow. There's only another year or so before we all leave school. Surely they've thought about what they'll do afterwards.”

“Oh... I see.”

He paused.

"There are a few Japanese kids like that at my school too."

"What do you mean?"

"They'd already dropped out of school back in Japan before they came here."

He looked down at the path as we walked.

“Sometimes a bunch of those Japanese lads hang around outside the school gates, waiting to see him. They're usually smoking. Bit like the girls in your dorm."

“What? That actually happens?”

I stopped walking.

"They're only thirteen!"

"Yeah."

He shrugged.

"The other day I went into town to buy things for a school trip. I saw them all sitting in a café together. There were loads of them. Most looked a bit older than me."

I fell silent.

“I see... Just don't let yourself get pulled along with them, okay?” I smiled.

“Just do things your own way. I know that’s not always easy, though.”

He nodded.

"I will."

"More importantly... how's the Eleven Plus going?"

He let out a small laugh.

"I'm getting by."

Then his smile faded.

"Even if I work hard for another two years, all I'll have is the equivalent of finishing primary school."

He walked beside me, his eyes fixed somewhere ahead.

"I honestly don't know what's going to happen to me."

 

As it was difficult for all of us to be together very often, the whole family drove me back to the Japanese school that day.

 

I didn't want to go back. Not now.

 

On the journey from home to school, I closed my eyes and tried to put myself in the right frame of mind.

 

Father spoke first.

 

"Takahiko has been a great help to his mother. He's doing a fine job interpreting for her. And then there's you. You've done nothing to help the family, living away at boarding school all this time. When you go back to Japan, you'll be staying with your aunt, so make yourself useful and help around the house. You've done nothing for the past two years. I doubt you even know how to do ordinary housework properly."

 

"That wouldn't have happened if you'd gone to Britain on your own in the first place, would it?"

 

"What did you say? Say that again!"

 

Father twisted around in his seat and shouted at me. The car swerved dangerously from side to side on the motorway.

 

"How do you think we've paid for your school fees? Your holidays? All the trips we've taken? You could at least show some gratitude to your parents!"

 

"Dear, keep your eyes on the road."

 

"I never thought I'd have such an ungrateful daughter. Who do you think has paid for all the good things you've had? I even had to put money aside at the last minute for that school trip to Rome. If only she'd been able to speak English, we wouldn't have had to waste all that money..."

 

“That's all in the past now.”

 

"That's because she was the one going on about how I should have come here on my own! Who do you think works himself to the bone earning the money? And who do you think negotiated with the company to get them to make an additional contribution to the Japanese school? Me! When you get into university, don't think you're going to spend your time enjoying yourself. I absolutely won't allow it."

 

“Dear, we still have Takahiko to think about.”

 

"He's not going to university."

 

“What? But you don't even know what he wants to do with his future.”

 

“I'll put him through a short vocational course and get him into a job as soon as he's finished.”

 

I stared out of the window and said nothing.

 

When the new term began, our supplementary classes continued.

 

The five of us had now switched to a more focused style of studying, concentrating specifically on the entrance examinations for our chosen universities.

 

Every one of us had chosen a different university.

Three of us hoped to study in Tokyo.

The other two were from Kansai and were aiming for universities in Kyoto or Osaka.

 

It was a suffocating term. Study after study. Once I'd finished my homework and revision, I'd open my university entrance-exam books and start revising all over again.

I went to bed at around two every night.

 

If I got up at eight, I had just enough time to eat breakfast and make it to lessons at eight fifty.

 

Even when I told myself I ought to take the weekends off, I simply couldn't relax. My eyes kept drifting back to the textbooks and practice papers.

 

When I went down to the beach, the autumn sea was calm.

For a little while, it soothed me.

 

Sometimes Maiko and I would visit each other's rooms and chat, just to let off steam.

 

Our rooms were tiny—about four-and-a-half tatami mats' worth of space once you had fitted in a bed, desk and chest of drawers. There was barely enough room to walk around.

We would turn the radio down low and sit together, talking about absolutely nothing in particular. I loved those moments.

 

Maiko's room was piled high with mathematics textbooks and exercise books.

She said she studied from them every day.

 

"I want to go to university and, if I can, go on to postgraduate study afterwards. I'd like to work in a technical field. I'd really like my career to involve South America somehow. I want to use mathematics and work for a company involved in technological development—something that could help build a bridge between South America and Japan. So I’ve got to work just as hard to make it happen.”

 

Maiko was moving straight towards the future she wanted.

I couldn't afford to fall behind her.

 

Yukiko sometimes joined us for a chat.

She was planning to sit her university entrance examinations in Kansai.

 

“I want to go to university in Kyoto, so I'll have to commute from my grandmother's house. My parents' posting doesn't look like it's going to end any time soon, either. So... I dunno when I'll ever get back to Hiroshima.”

 

The three of us fell quiet for a while.

We had all ended up here for different reasons.

 

The second term was going to decide everything.

 

I wanted to reach the standard required by my chosen universities, so I went over everything I'd studied during the past three years, again and again.

The other four students in our supplementary class were working just as hard. I couldn't afford to be the one who fell behind.

 

This might be the last time in my life when I could simply lose myself in studying. With that thought in mind, I worked through one page after another of my practice books.

 

The second term ended, and the winter holidays began.

Christmas and New Year fell during the holidays, and the local caretaker needed time off as well. The supplementary classes were suspended.

 

Then, in January1980, I left Heathrow Airport with a one-way ticket to Narita that Father had bought for me.

 

There were only a few weeks left before the entrance examinations. My aunt, who lived in Chiba, had agreed to take me in until the exams were over.

 

The day before I left the boarding school, I spent the day with Maiko.

 

As always, we walked along the beach. The waves rolled in, breaking into white foam.

It might be the last time we ever walked along this shore together.

 

Maiko's parents had already returned to Japan, and her home wasn't far from my aunt's house.

"I'm going to sit the entrance exams for Zophia University and Kyouo University," she said. "They both have mathematics departments."

"I'm applying to Akagi University and Seiheki University. I think either of them would be good for literature."

"Where will you live if you get in?"

"With my aunt, at least for a while. What about you?"

"Well... my parents are already back in Japan, so I'll be living at home. Come and visit if you have time."

"Thank you!"

 

She was quiet for a moment.

"Honestly, if you hadn't been here, I think I'd have fallen apart somewhere along the way. You kept me going. I can't thank you enough."

"Don't be silly! I'm the one who should be thanking you! I only made it through because you were here."

We caught each other's eye, burst out laughing, and before either of us realised it, we'd broken into a run over the low grassy dunes.

 

We exchanged addresses and promised to write.

 

A flock of gulls circled high in the distant sky.

 

I didn't want these past eighteen months to have been for nothing.

I would pass the entrance examinations.

I would.

And this time, I would find a place for myself that I had earned on my own.

 

With that firmly in my mind, I walked through the departure gate and gave my family one last wave.

 

(Chapter 1 )

(Chapter 2)

(What is Japanese University Entrance Examination like?)