Tatami Time Machine Blues

Chapter 1 — August 12th (Part 1)
I hereby declare that I have never spent a meaningful summer.

Summer is generally considered to be a season of personal growth. A man from whom you have been parted a summer is a man you must behold anew! Glorious is the moment in which you reveal your reborn self to your peers, and in order to obtain that glory your plans must be scrupulous, your sleeping habits sound, your physical frame impeccable, your scholarly devotion profound.

But in the third summer of my life at that boarding house, I found myself beset by frustration.

In the heat of the Kyoto summer, my 4½ tatami room is transformed into a hellish wasteland as scorching as the Taklamakan Desert. In that cruel, inhospitable environment, my daily rhythm was thrown askew, my scrupulously laid plans sat abandoned atop my desk, and the wilting heat drove the nail into the coffin of any thoughts of physical training or academic pursuit I might have entertained. Under those circumstances even the Buddha himself would have been hard pressed to do any personal growing. O, tatami room, destroyer of dreams.

My college days, that season of study and learning, have already passed their midpoint. And yet, I have never spent a meaningful summer. I have not forged myself into a useful, productive member of society. If I continue to stand aside listlessly, society itself will no doubt one day shut me out in the cold.

It was in order to escape these desperate straits that I turned to man’s greatest invention: the humble air conditioner.

◯

The afternoon of August twelfth.

I was sitting in my apartment, room 209, face to face with another man.

Tatami Time Machine Blues
Chapter 1 — August 12th (Part 1)
I hereby declare that I have never spent a meaningful summer.

Summer is generally considered to be a season of personal growth. A man from whom you have been parted a summer is a man you must behold anew! Glorious is the moment in which you reveal your reborn self to your peers, and in order to obtain that glory your plans must be scrupulous, your sleeping habits sound, your physical frame impeccable, your scholarly devotion profound.

But in the third summer of my life at that boarding house, I found myself beset by frustration.

In the heat of the Kyoto summer, my 4½ tatami room is transformed into a hellish wasteland as scorching as the Taklamakan Desert. In that cruel, inhospitable environment, my daily rhythm was thrown askew, my scrupulously laid plans sat abandoned atop my desk, and the wilting heat drove the nail into the coffin of any thoughts of physical training or academic pursuit I might have entertained. Under those circumstances even the Buddha himself would have been hard pressed to do any personal growing. O, tatami room, destroyer of dreams.

My college days, that season of study and learning, have already passed their midpoint. And yet, I have never spent a meaningful summer. I have not forged myself into a useful, productive member of society. If I continue to stand aside listlessly, society itself will no doubt one day shut me out in the cold.

It was in order to escape these desperate straits that I turned to man’s greatest invention: the humble air conditioner.

◯

The afternoon of August twelfth.

I was sitting in my apartment, room 209, face to face with another man.

I lived in a boarding house called Shimogamo Yūsuisō, located in Shimogamo Izumigawa-chō. When I first visited this place on the recommendation of the student co-op after enrolling, I thought I had wandered into Kowloon Walled City. The mere sight of its crumbling wooden three-story facade is enough to induce anxiety, and the building is sufficiently dilapidated that it could easily be designated one of Japan’s Important Cultural Properties, yet if it were to burn down I doubt anyone would bat an eye.

There is nothing so unpleasant in this world as the sight of two sweaty male college students in a 4½ tatami room stripped to the waist and glowering at one another. At this particular moment in time the white-hot rays of the sun were beating down on the roof of Shimogamo Yūsuisō, and inside room 209 the mercury was on the verge of shattering the glass.

The windows and door were thrown wide open, heedless of concerns for dignity or discretion; the ancient electric fan I had brought from home creaked and groaned, yet its exertions succeeded only in stirring up a vortex of hot air. I felt my consciousness slipping away. Was the man crouching in front of me real? Or was he simply a grimy mirage, a product of my spotless imagination that only I could see?

Wiping away sweat with a handkerchief I croaked, “Hey, Ozu.”

“You rang?”

“You still alive?”

“Pray concern yourself no more with the likes of me. It is only a matter of time before I shuffle off this mortal coil.”

His eyes were nearly rolled into the back of his head, and his unhealthy grey face was slick with sweat, gleaming like a newborn salamander.

The student apartments this afternoon were quiet. The shrill calling of the cicadas, so noisy in the morning, had stopped abruptly, and everything was still, as if time itself had come to a halt. Many of the residents had gone home for the summer holiday, and few students were foolish enough to be cooped up in their rooms on a midsummer’s day like today.

It was probable that other than Ozu and myself, the only person remaining in these rundown apartments was one Higuchi Seitarō, a perpetual super senior of untold years who resided in room 210 next door. Last night the solemn wake for the air conditioner had

Tatami Time Machine Blues
Chapter 1 — August 12th (Part 1)
I hereby declare that I have never spent a meaningful summer.

Summer is generally considered to be a season of personal growth. A man from whom you have been parted a summer is a man you must behold anew! Glorious is the moment in which you reveal your reborn self to your peers, and in order to obtain that glory your plans must be scrupulous, your sleeping habits sound, your physical frame impeccable, your scholarly devotion profound.

But in the third summer of my life at that boarding house, I found myself beset by frustration.

In the heat of the Kyoto summer, my 4½ tatami room is transformed into a hellish wasteland as scorching as the Taklamakan Desert. In that cruel, inhospitable environment, my daily rhythm was thrown askew, my scrupulously laid plans sat abandoned atop my desk, and the wilting heat drove the nail into the coffin of any thoughts of physical training or academic pursuit I might have entertained. Under those circumstances even the Buddha himself would have been hard pressed to do any personal growing. O, tatami room, destroyer of dreams.

My college days, that season of study and learning, have already passed their midpoint. And yet, I have never spent a meaningful summer. I have not forged myself into a useful, productive member of society. If I continue to stand aside listlessly, society itself will no doubt one day shut me out in the cold.

It was in order to escape these desperate straits that I turned to man’s greatest invention: the humble air conditioner.

◯

The afternoon of August twelfth.

I was sitting in my apartment, room 209, face to face with another man.

I lived in a boarding house called Shimogamo Yūsuisō, located in Shimogamo Izumigawa-chō. When I first visited this place on the recommendation of the student co-op after enrolling, I thought I had wandered into Kowloon Walled City. The mere sight of its crumbling wooden three-story facade is enough to induce anxiety, and the building is sufficiently dilapidated that it could easily be designated one of Japan’s Important Cultural Properties, yet if it were to burn down I doubt anyone would bat an eye.

There is nothing so unpleasant in this world as the sight of two sweaty male college students in a 4½ tatami room stripped to the waist and glowering at one another. At this particular moment in time the white-hot rays of the sun were beating down on the roof of Shimogamo Yūsuisō, and inside room 209 the mercury was on the verge of shattering the glass.

The windows and door were thrown wide open, heedless of concerns for dignity or discretion; the ancient electric fan I had brought from home creaked and groaned, yet its exertions succeeded only in stirring up a vortex of hot air. I felt my consciousness slipping away. Was the man crouching in front of me real? Or was he simply a grimy mirage, a product of my spotless imagination that only I could see?

Wiping away sweat with a handkerchief I croaked, “Hey, Ozu.”

“You rang?”

“You still alive?”

“Pray concern yourself no more with the likes of me. It is only a matter of time before I shuffle off this mortal coil.”

His eyes were nearly rolled into the back of his head, and his unhealthy grey face was slick with sweat, gleaming like a newborn salamander.

The student apartments this afternoon were quiet. The shrill calling of the cicadas, so noisy in the morning, had stopped abruptly, and everything was still, as if time itself had come to a halt. Many of the residents had gone home for the summer holiday, and few students were foolish enough to be cooped up in their rooms on a midsummer’s day like today.

It was probable that other than Ozu and myself, the only person remaining in these rundown apartments was one Higuchi Seitarō, a perpetual super senior of untold years who resided in room 210 next door. Last night the solemn wake for the air conditioner had been held in my room, but come morning, after mumbling his way through a garbled rendition of the Heart Sutra Higuchi proclaimed, “Clear your mind, and even this room shall be as the villas of Karuizawa.1 Ergo!” And before I had even begun to process this inexplicable statement he had retreated to his own room, not coming out even as noon rolled around. It was incredible that he could sleep so soundly in this abominable heat.

Ozu was pining for a mango frappuccino, so I poured him a teacup of brackish barley tea. He sipped the lukewarm liquid like a sickly toad slurping up muddy water.

“Ugh…what horrible, nasty stuff…”

“Shut up and drink!”

“But barley tea is so eighteenth century!”

I paid no heed to his pitiful whining.

Previously I had mentioned the air conditioner’s wake.

No doubt my discerning readers are squinting mistrustfully at that phrase.

The air conditioner on whose account we had spent our night in sorrowful vigil was the legendary unit which had been installed in my room since time immemorial. This modern marvel, so out of place in an old-fashioned 4½ tatami room, had clearly been installed without the permission of the landlady . It was a historical artifact, a legacy bequeathed by the heroic efforts of a former resident of this room. And as the only room in the entire building that had an air conditioner, 209 became the envy of every single resident of the boarding house.

I first heard of the legend of room 209 during the summer of my freshman year from another student, a grizzled old-timer who had been wearing nothing but a pair of briefs when I ran into him in the communal kitchen. At the time, the room that the man (who introduced himself as Higuchi Seitarō) confided to me about had seemed a faraway, illusory place, as mythical as King Arthur’s island of Avalon. I never dreamed that two years later I would actually be moving into room 209, covered in glory.

Tatami Time Machine Blues
Chapter 1 — August 12th (Part 1)
I hereby declare that I have never spent a meaningful summer.

Summer is generally considered to be a season of personal growth. A man from whom you have been parted a summer is a man you must behold anew! Glorious is the moment in which you reveal your reborn self to your peers, and in order to obtain that glory your plans must be scrupulous, your sleeping habits sound, your physical frame impeccable, your scholarly devotion profound.

But in the third summer of my life at that boarding house, I found myself beset by frustration.

In the heat of the Kyoto summer, my 4½ tatami room is transformed into a hellish wasteland as scorching as the Taklamakan Desert. In that cruel, inhospitable environment, my daily rhythm was thrown askew, my scrupulously laid plans sat abandoned atop my desk, and the wilting heat drove the nail into the coffin of any thoughts of physical training or academic pursuit I might have entertained. Under those circumstances even the Buddha himself would have been hard pressed to do any personal growing. O, tatami room, destroyer of dreams.

My college days, that season of study and learning, have already passed their midpoint. And yet, I have never spent a meaningful summer. I have not forged myself into a useful, productive member of society. If I continue to stand aside listlessly, society itself will no doubt one day shut me out in the cold.

It was in order to escape these desperate straits that I turned to man’s greatest invention: the humble air conditioner.

◯

The afternoon of August twelfth.

I was sitting in my apartment, room 209, face to face with another man.

I lived in a boarding house called Shimogamo Yūsuisō, located in Shimogamo Izumigawa-chō. When I first visited this place on the recommendation of the student co-op after enrolling, I thought I had wandered into Kowloon Walled City. The mere sight of its crumbling wooden three-story facade is enough to induce anxiety, and the building is sufficiently dilapidated that it could easily be designated one of Japan’s Important Cultural Properties, yet if it were to burn down I doubt anyone would bat an eye.

There is nothing so unpleasant in this world as the sight of two sweaty male college students in a 4½ tatami room stripped to the waist and glowering at one another. At this particular moment in time the white-hot rays of the sun were beating down on the roof of Shimogamo Yūsuisō, and inside room 209 the mercury was on the verge of shattering the glass.

The windows and door were thrown wide open, heedless of concerns for dignity or discretion; the ancient electric fan I had brought from home creaked and groaned, yet its exertions succeeded only in stirring up a vortex of hot air. I felt my consciousness slipping away. Was the man crouching in front of me real? Or was he simply a grimy mirage, a product of my spotless imagination that only I could see?

Wiping away sweat with a handkerchief I croaked, “Hey, Ozu.”

“You rang?”

“You still alive?”

“Pray concern yourself no more with the likes of me. It is only a matter of time before I shuffle off this mortal coil.”

His eyes were nearly rolled into the back of his head, and his unhealthy grey face was slick with sweat, gleaming like a newborn salamander.

The student apartments this afternoon were quiet. The shrill calling of the cicadas, so noisy in the morning, had stopped abruptly, and everything was still, as if time itself had come to a halt. Many of the residents had gone home for the summer holiday, and few students were foolish enough to be cooped up in their rooms on a midsummer’s day like today.

It was probable that other than Ozu and myself, the only person remaining in these rundown apartments was one Higuchi Seitarō, a perpetual super senior of untold years who resided in room 210 next door. Last night the solemn wake for the air conditioner had been held in my room, but come morning, after mumbling his way through a garbled rendition of the Heart Sutra Higuchi proclaimed, “Clear your mind, and even this room shall be as the villas of Karuizawa.1 Ergo!” And before I had even begun to process this inexplicable statement he had retreated to his own room, not coming out even as noon rolled around. It was incredible that he could sleep so soundly in this abominable heat.

Ozu was pining for a mango frappuccino, so I poured him a teacup of brackish barley tea. He sipped the lukewarm liquid like a sickly toad slurping up muddy water.

“Ugh…what horrible, nasty stuff…”

“Shut up and drink!”

“But barley tea is so eighteenth century!”

I paid no heed to his pitiful whining.

Previously I had mentioned the air conditioner’s wake.

No doubt my discerning readers are squinting mistrustfully at that phrase.

The air conditioner on whose account we had spent our night in sorrowful vigil was the legendary unit which had been installed in my room since time immemorial. This modern marvel, so out of place in an old-fashioned 4½ tatami room, had clearly been installed without the permission of the landlady . It was a historical artifact, a legacy bequeathed by the heroic efforts of a former resident of this room. And as the only room in the entire building that had an air conditioner, 209 became the envy of every single resident of the boarding house.

I first heard of the legend of room 209 during the summer of my freshman year from another student, a grizzled old-timer who had been wearing nothing but a pair of briefs when I ran into him in the communal kitchen. At the time, the room that the man (who introduced himself as Higuchi Seitarō) confided to me about had seemed a faraway, illusory place, as mythical as King Arthur’s island of Avalon. I never dreamed that two years later I would actually be moving into room 209, covered in glory.

Notwithstanding the trouble I went to moving up from the first floor to the second, I was blessed with the air conditioner for only a few short days. And it was all the fault of the man in front of me: Ozu.

◯

Ozu is in the same year as me. Though he is a member of the electrical engineering department, he hates electricity, electronics and engineering, and his first-year grades were so borderline that it was questionable whether there was any point to him being in university at all.

His hostility towards vegetables and his adherence to a strict diet of fast food had given him the eerie complexion of someone from the dark side of the moon. Eight out of ten people who met him on the street late at night would mistake him for a demon, the remaining two being demons themselves. Scourging the weak and groveling before the strong, he is selfish, arrogant, indolent, perverse; he does not study, has not a shred of pride, and feeds off the misery of others for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There is not a single thing about him that is commendable, and if I had never met him surely my soul would have been the cleaner for it.

“You just had to go and ruin my life, didn’t you?”

“What? All I did was spill a little cola on the remote,” Ozu sniggered, wiping his sweaty face. “Anyhow Akashi’ll take care of it one way or another.”

“Don’t you feel even a little bit sorry?”

“Why should I?” Ozu looked entirely surprised. “It’s a joint responsibility, here. It’s Akashi’s fault for suggesting we film here, and it’s the fault of whoever left the remote there, and then there’s the person who put a half-empty bottle of cola there. And most of all, it’s your fault for announcing that you were going to do a striptease!”

“And when exactly did I say that?”

“Don’t try to wriggle out of it now. You were really getting into it. Besides,” Ozu continued, “a remote control that stops working just because you spill a little cola on it has some serious design flaws. And yet here you are, pinning it all on me and demanding an apology. I’m just the scapegoat here!”

Tatami Time Machine Blues
Chapter 1 — August 12th (Part 1)
I hereby declare that I have never spent a meaningful summer.

Summer is generally considered to be a season of personal growth. A man from whom you have been parted a summer is a man you must behold anew! Glorious is the moment in which you reveal your reborn self to your peers, and in order to obtain that glory your plans must be scrupulous, your sleeping habits sound, your physical frame impeccable, your scholarly devotion profound.

But in the third summer of my life at that boarding house, I found myself beset by frustration.

In the heat of the Kyoto summer, my 4½ tatami room is transformed into a hellish wasteland as scorching as the Taklamakan Desert. In that cruel, inhospitable environment, my daily rhythm was thrown askew, my scrupulously laid plans sat abandoned atop my desk, and the wilting heat drove the nail into the coffin of any thoughts of physical training or academic pursuit I might have entertained. Under those circumstances even the Buddha himself would have been hard pressed to do any personal growing. O, tatami room, destroyer of dreams.

My college days, that season of study and learning, have already passed their midpoint. And yet, I have never spent a meaningful summer. I have not forged myself into a useful, productive member of society. If I continue to stand aside listlessly, society itself will no doubt one day shut me out in the cold.

It was in order to escape these desperate straits that I turned to man’s greatest invention: the humble air conditioner.

◯

The afternoon of August twelfth.

I was sitting in my apartment, room 209, face to face with another man.

I lived in a boarding house called Shimogamo Yūsuisō, located in Shimogamo Izumigawa-chō. When I first visited this place on the recommendation of the student co-op after enrolling, I thought I had wandered into Kowloon Walled City. The mere sight of its crumbling wooden three-story facade is enough to induce anxiety, and the building is sufficiently dilapidated that it could easily be designated one of Japan’s Important Cultural Properties, yet if it were to burn down I doubt anyone would bat an eye.

There is nothing so unpleasant in this world as the sight of two sweaty male college students in a 4½ tatami room stripped to the waist and glowering at one another. At this particular moment in time the white-hot rays of the sun were beating down on the roof of Shimogamo Yūsuisō, and inside room 209 the mercury was on the verge of shattering the glass.

The windows and door were thrown wide open, heedless of concerns for dignity or discretion; the ancient electric fan I had brought from home creaked and groaned, yet its exertions succeeded only in stirring up a vortex of hot air. I felt my consciousness slipping away. Was the man crouching in front of me real? Or was he simply a grimy mirage, a product of my spotless imagination that only I could see?

Wiping away sweat with a handkerchief I croaked, “Hey, Ozu.”

“You rang?”

“You still alive?”

“Pray concern yourself no more with the likes of me. It is only a matter of time before I shuffle off this mortal coil.”

His eyes were nearly rolled into the back of his head, and his unhealthy grey face was slick with sweat, gleaming like a newborn salamander.

The student apartments this afternoon were quiet. The shrill calling of the cicadas, so noisy in the morning, had stopped abruptly, and everything was still, as if time itself had come to a halt. Many of the residents had gone home for the summer holiday, and few students were foolish enough to be cooped up in their rooms on a midsummer’s day like today.

It was probable that other than Ozu and myself, the only person remaining in these rundown apartments was one Higuchi Seitarō, a perpetual super senior of untold years who resided in room 210 next door. Last night the solemn wake for the air conditioner had been held in my room, but come morning, after mumbling his way through a garbled rendition of the Heart Sutra Higuchi proclaimed, “Clear your mind, and even this room shall be as the villas of Karuizawa.1 Ergo!” And before I had even begun to process this inexplicable statement he had retreated to his own room, not coming out even as noon rolled around. It was incredible that he could sleep so soundly in this abominable heat.

Ozu was pining for a mango frappuccino, so I poured him a teacup of brackish barley tea. He sipped the lukewarm liquid like a sickly toad slurping up muddy water.

“Ugh…what horrible, nasty stuff…”

“Shut up and drink!”

“But barley tea is so eighteenth century!”

I paid no heed to his pitiful whining.

Previously I had mentioned the air conditioner’s wake.

No doubt my discerning readers are squinting mistrustfully at that phrase.

The air conditioner on whose account we had spent our night in sorrowful vigil was the legendary unit which had been installed in my room since time immemorial. This modern marvel, so out of place in an old-fashioned 4½ tatami room, had clearly been installed without the permission of the landlady . It was a historical artifact, a legacy bequeathed by the heroic efforts of a former resident of this room. And as the only room in the entire building that had an air conditioner, 209 became the envy of every single resident of the boarding house.

I first heard of the legend of room 209 during the summer of my freshman year from another student, a grizzled old-timer who had been wearing nothing but a pair of briefs when I ran into him in the communal kitchen. At the time, the room that the man (who introduced himself as Higuchi Seitarō) confided to me about had seemed a faraway, illusory place, as mythical as King Arthur’s island of Avalon. I never dreamed that two years later I would actually be moving into room 209, covered in glory.

Notwithstanding the trouble I went to moving up from the first floor to the second, I was blessed with the air conditioner for only a few short days. And it was all the fault of the man in front of me: Ozu.

◯

Ozu is in the same year as me. Though he is a member of the electrical engineering department, he hates electricity, electronics and engineering, and his first-year grades were so borderline that it was questionable whether there was any point to him being in university at all.

His hostility towards vegetables and his adherence to a strict diet of fast food had given him the eerie complexion of someone from the dark side of the moon. Eight out of ten people who met him on the street late at night would mistake him for a demon, the remaining two being demons themselves. Scourging the weak and groveling before the strong, he is selfish, arrogant, indolent, perverse; he does not study, has not a shred of pride, and feeds off the misery of others for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There is not a single thing about him that is commendable, and if I had never met him surely my soul would have been the cleaner for it.

“You just had to go and ruin my life, didn’t you?”

“What? All I did was spill a little cola on the remote,” Ozu sniggered, wiping his sweaty face. “Anyhow Akashi’ll take care of it one way or another.”

“Don’t you feel even a little bit sorry?”

“Why should I?” Ozu looked entirely surprised. “It’s a joint responsibility, here. It’s Akashi’s fault for suggesting we film here, and it’s the fault of whoever left the remote there, and then there’s the person who put a half-empty bottle of cola there. And most of all, it’s your fault for announcing that you were going to do a striptease!”

“And when exactly did I say that?”

“Don’t try to wriggle out of it now. You were really getting into it. Besides,” Ozu continued, “a remote control that stops working just because you spill a little cola on it has some serious design flaws. And yet here you are, pinning it all on me and demanding an apology. I’m just the scapegoat here!”

I had to admit that there was some truth to his slippery logic. It was ludicrous that there wasn’t an on button on the AC unit itself. If Akashi was unable to fix the remote, then all hope for starting the AC would be lost forever, and I would have to spend the rest of summer break in this furnace. If I’d known this was going to happen I never would have moved here. At least on the first floor the heat was much more manageable.

I stood up, wrung out the hand towel in the sink, and draped it over my shoulder.

“This year I was finally going to have a meaningful summer! I was finally going to escape this depraved lifestyle and be reborn as a new man! That was the whole point of the AC!”

“Nah, that was never going to happen.”

“Excuse me?”

“I am doing everything I can to corrupt you. You really think an air conditioner would be enough to make your student life meaningful? I certainly hope you don’t think so little of me.”

I plopped down again and glared at him. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“I’ll leave that to your imagination, huehue.”

Ozu and I had met in the spring of our first year in the Keifuku Railroad Research Circle, otherwise known as the Delusion Express. For the next two and a half years, whenever I blundered into some dark, shameful corner of youth, there Ozu was. He was a veritable Mephistopheles, leading a once-promising young student astray into the wilderness. Maybe his spilling cola on the remote was also part of his plan, just another side dish of misery for him to gorge upon.

I slapped Ozu with the drenched towel. “I don’t care if it’s sincere, I just want an apology!”

“I’m sorry, ‘sorry’ is not in my vocabulary.” He cackled and slapped me back with his own towel.

“Why you—!”

“Show me your moves!”

Tatami Time Machine Blues
Chapter 1 — August 12th (Part 1)
I hereby declare that I have never spent a meaningful summer.

Summer is generally considered to be a season of personal growth. A man from whom you have been parted a summer is a man you must behold anew! Glorious is the moment in which you reveal your reborn self to your peers, and in order to obtain that glory your plans must be scrupulous, your sleeping habits sound, your physical frame impeccable, your scholarly devotion profound.

But in the third summer of my life at that boarding house, I found myself beset by frustration.

In the heat of the Kyoto summer, my 4½ tatami room is transformed into a hellish wasteland as scorching as the Taklamakan Desert. In that cruel, inhospitable environment, my daily rhythm was thrown askew, my scrupulously laid plans sat abandoned atop my desk, and the wilting heat drove the nail into the coffin of any thoughts of physical training or academic pursuit I might have entertained. Under those circumstances even the Buddha himself would have been hard pressed to do any personal growing. O, tatami room, destroyer of dreams.

My college days, that season of study and learning, have already passed their midpoint. And yet, I have never spent a meaningful summer. I have not forged myself into a useful, productive member of society. If I continue to stand aside listlessly, society itself will no doubt one day shut me out in the cold.

It was in order to escape these desperate straits that I turned to man’s greatest invention: the humble air conditioner.

◯

The afternoon of August twelfth.

I was sitting in my apartment, room 209, face to face with another man.

I lived in a boarding house called Shimogamo Yūsuisō, located in Shimogamo Izumigawa-chō. When I first visited this place on the recommendation of the student co-op after enrolling, I thought I had wandered into Kowloon Walled City. The mere sight of its crumbling wooden three-story facade is enough to induce anxiety, and the building is sufficiently dilapidated that it could easily be designated one of Japan’s Important Cultural Properties, yet if it were to burn down I doubt anyone would bat an eye.

There is nothing so unpleasant in this world as the sight of two sweaty male college students in a 4½ tatami room stripped to the waist and glowering at one another. At this particular moment in time the white-hot rays of the sun were beating down on the roof of Shimogamo Yūsuisō, and inside room 209 the mercury was on the verge of shattering the glass.

The windows and door were thrown wide open, heedless of concerns for dignity or discretion; the ancient electric fan I had brought from home creaked and groaned, yet its exertions succeeded only in stirring up a vortex of hot air. I felt my consciousness slipping away. Was the man crouching in front of me real? Or was he simply a grimy mirage, a product of my spotless imagination that only I could see?

Wiping away sweat with a handkerchief I croaked, “Hey, Ozu.”

“You rang?”

“You still alive?”

“Pray concern yourself no more with the likes of me. It is only a matter of time before I shuffle off this mortal coil.”

His eyes were nearly rolled into the back of his head, and his unhealthy grey face was slick with sweat, gleaming like a newborn salamander.

The student apartments this afternoon were quiet. The shrill calling of the cicadas, so noisy in the morning, had stopped abruptly, and everything was still, as if time itself had come to a halt. Many of the residents had gone home for the summer holiday, and few students were foolish enough to be cooped up in their rooms on a midsummer’s day like today.

It was probable that other than Ozu and myself, the only person remaining in these rundown apartments was one Higuchi Seitarō, a perpetual super senior of untold years who resided in room 210 next door. Last night the solemn wake for the air conditioner had been held in my room, but come morning, after mumbling his way through a garbled rendition of the Heart Sutra Higuchi proclaimed, “Clear your mind, and even this room shall be as the villas of Karuizawa.1 Ergo!” And before I had even begun to process this inexplicable statement he had retreated to his own room, not coming out even as noon rolled around. It was incredible that he could sleep so soundly in this abominable heat.

Ozu was pining for a mango frappuccino, so I poured him a teacup of brackish barley tea. He sipped the lukewarm liquid like a sickly toad slurping up muddy water.

“Ugh…what horrible, nasty stuff…”

“Shut up and drink!”

“But barley tea is so eighteenth century!”

I paid no heed to his pitiful whining.

Previously I had mentioned the air conditioner’s wake.

No doubt my discerning readers are squinting mistrustfully at that phrase.

The air conditioner on whose account we had spent our night in sorrowful vigil was the legendary unit which had been installed in my room since time immemorial. This modern marvel, so out of place in an old-fashioned 4½ tatami room, had clearly been installed without the permission of the landlady . It was a historical artifact, a legacy bequeathed by the heroic efforts of a former resident of this room. And as the only room in the entire building that had an air conditioner, 209 became the envy of every single resident of the boarding house.

I first heard of the legend of room 209 during the summer of my freshman year from another student, a grizzled old-timer who had been wearing nothing but a pair of briefs when I ran into him in the communal kitchen. At the time, the room that the man (who introduced himself as Higuchi Seitarō) confided to me about had seemed a faraway, illusory place, as mythical as King Arthur’s island of Avalon. I never dreamed that two years later I would actually be moving into room 209, covered in glory.

Notwithstanding the trouble I went to moving up from the first floor to the second, I was blessed with the air conditioner for only a few short days. And it was all the fault of the man in front of me: Ozu.

◯

Ozu is in the same year as me. Though he is a member of the electrical engineering department, he hates electricity, electronics and engineering, and his first-year grades were so borderline that it was questionable whether there was any point to him being in university at all.

His hostility towards vegetables and his adherence to a strict diet of fast food had given him the eerie complexion of someone from the dark side of the moon. Eight out of ten people who met him on the street late at night would mistake him for a demon, the remaining two being demons themselves. Scourging the weak and groveling before the strong, he is selfish, arrogant, indolent, perverse; he does not study, has not a shred of pride, and feeds off the misery of others for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There is not a single thing about him that is commendable, and if I had never met him surely my soul would have been the cleaner for it.

“You just had to go and ruin my life, didn’t you?”

“What? All I did was spill a little cola on the remote,” Ozu sniggered, wiping his sweaty face. “Anyhow Akashi’ll take care of it one way or another.”

“Don’t you feel even a little bit sorry?”

“Why should I?” Ozu looked entirely surprised. “It’s a joint responsibility, here. It’s Akashi’s fault for suggesting we film here, and it’s the fault of whoever left the remote there, and then there’s the person who put a half-empty bottle of cola there. And most of all, it’s your fault for announcing that you were going to do a striptease!”

“And when exactly did I say that?”

“Don’t try to wriggle out of it now. You were really getting into it. Besides,” Ozu continued, “a remote control that stops working just because you spill a little cola on it has some serious design flaws. And yet here you are, pinning it all on me and demanding an apology. I’m just the scapegoat here!”

I had to admit that there was some truth to his slippery logic. It was ludicrous that there wasn’t an on button on the AC unit itself. If Akashi was unable to fix the remote, then all hope for starting the AC would be lost forever, and I would have to spend the rest of summer break in this furnace. If I’d known this was going to happen I never would have moved here. At least on the first floor the heat was much more manageable.

I stood up, wrung out the hand towel in the sink, and draped it over my shoulder.

“This year I was finally going to have a meaningful summer! I was finally going to escape this depraved lifestyle and be reborn as a new man! That was the whole point of the AC!”

“Nah, that was never going to happen.”

“Excuse me?”

“I am doing everything I can to corrupt you. You really think an air conditioner would be enough to make your student life meaningful? I certainly hope you don’t think so little of me.”

I plopped down again and glared at him. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“I’ll leave that to your imagination, huehue.”

Ozu and I had met in the spring of our first year in the Keifuku Railroad Research Circle, otherwise known as the Delusion Express. For the next two and a half years, whenever I blundered into some dark, shameful corner of youth, there Ozu was. He was a veritable Mephistopheles, leading a once-promising young student astray into the wilderness. Maybe his spilling cola on the remote was also part of his plan, just another side dish of misery for him to gorge upon.

I slapped Ozu with the drenched towel. “I don’t care if it’s sincere, I just want an apology!”

“I’m sorry, ‘sorry’ is not in my vocabulary.” He cackled and slapped me back with his own towel.

“Why you—!”

“Show me your moves!”

As we rhythmically traded blows I started to enjoy myself. After we had slapped away for a period, Ozu let out a squeal and curled into a ball.

“What, done already?” I shouted in triumph, continuing to whip his frail body.

Ozu raised his hands. “Wait, ceasefire!” he cried. “We’ve got a visitor!”

I turned around to see Akashi standing at the open door. She had a large bag slung over her left shoulder and a ramune bottle in her right hand, staring at us earnestly like a child diligently sketching a couple of morning glories for art class.

“Friendship is such a stupid thing,” she muttered, taking a swig from her bottle.

◯

Akashi is one year younger than us. She is a member of the Misogi Movie Circle, and though her demeanor may be cool, behind it lies an adorably uncool cinephile with a passion for churning out clunky homemade flicks. According to Ozu, who is also a member of that circle, Director Akashi had somewhat of a mixed reputation. Everyone praised her work ethic, given her ability to pump out three movies in the span of time that it took others to make one, but they tended to be more reserved when it came to the topic of their quality.

This summer found Akashi once again in a frenzy of filming, like Honoré de Balzac reincarnated as a C-movie auteur, indifferent to the hazy reputation that swirled about her. She had spent the previous day from the crack of dawn to just past 3 in the afternoon at the landlord’s house behind these apartments, shooting a sci-fi period drama.

Akashi placed the bag down at the doorway.

“And just what were you two up to?”

“Erm, nothing…”

“This heat’s driving us loopy as loons, huehue!”

“For a second I thought I was witnessing something sexual. I wasn’t sure if I should look away, but the door was open.”

Tatami Time Machine Blues
Chapter 1 — August 12th (Part 1)
I hereby declare that I have never spent a meaningful summer.

Summer is generally considered to be a season of personal growth. A man from whom you have been parted a summer is a man you must behold anew! Glorious is the moment in which you reveal your reborn self to your peers, and in order to obtain that glory your plans must be scrupulous, your sleeping habits sound, your physical frame impeccable, your scholarly devotion profound.

But in the third summer of my life at that boarding house, I found myself beset by frustration.

In the heat of the Kyoto summer, my 4½ tatami room is transformed into a hellish wasteland as scorching as the Taklamakan Desert. In that cruel, inhospitable environment, my daily rhythm was thrown askew, my scrupulously laid plans sat abandoned atop my desk, and the wilting heat drove the nail into the coffin of any thoughts of physical training or academic pursuit I might have entertained. Under those circumstances even the Buddha himself would have been hard pressed to do any personal growing. O, tatami room, destroyer of dreams.

My college days, that season of study and learning, have already passed their midpoint. And yet, I have never spent a meaningful summer. I have not forged myself into a useful, productive member of society. If I continue to stand aside listlessly, society itself will no doubt one day shut me out in the cold.

It was in order to escape these desperate straits that I turned to man’s greatest invention: the humble air conditioner.

◯

The afternoon of August twelfth.

I was sitting in my apartment, room 209, face to face with another man.

I lived in a boarding house called Shimogamo Yūsuisō, located in Shimogamo Izumigawa-chō. When I first visited this place on the recommendation of the student co-op after enrolling, I thought I had wandered into Kowloon Walled City. The mere sight of its crumbling wooden three-story facade is enough to induce anxiety, and the building is sufficiently dilapidated that it could easily be designated one of Japan’s Important Cultural Properties, yet if it were to burn down I doubt anyone would bat an eye.

There is nothing so unpleasant in this world as the sight of two sweaty male college students in a 4½ tatami room stripped to the waist and glowering at one another. At this particular moment in time the white-hot rays of the sun were beating down on the roof of Shimogamo Yūsuisō, and inside room 209 the mercury was on the verge of shattering the glass.

The windows and door were thrown wide open, heedless of concerns for dignity or discretion; the ancient electric fan I had brought from home creaked and groaned, yet its exertions succeeded only in stirring up a vortex of hot air. I felt my consciousness slipping away. Was the man crouching in front of me real? Or was he simply a grimy mirage, a product of my spotless imagination that only I could see?

Wiping away sweat with a handkerchief I croaked, “Hey, Ozu.”

“You rang?”

“You still alive?”

“Pray concern yourself no more with the likes of me. It is only a matter of time before I shuffle off this mortal coil.”

His eyes were nearly rolled into the back of his head, and his unhealthy grey face was slick with sweat, gleaming like a newborn salamander.

The student apartments this afternoon were quiet. The shrill calling of the cicadas, so noisy in the morning, had stopped abruptly, and everything was still, as if time itself had come to a halt. Many of the residents had gone home for the summer holiday, and few students were foolish enough to be cooped up in their rooms on a midsummer’s day like today.

It was probable that other than Ozu and myself, the only person remaining in these rundown apartments was one Higuchi Seitarō, a perpetual super senior of untold years who resided in room 210 next door. Last night the solemn wake for the air conditioner had been held in my room, but come morning, after mumbling his way through a garbled rendition of the Heart Sutra Higuchi proclaimed, “Clear your mind, and even this room shall be as the villas of Karuizawa.1 Ergo!” And before I had even begun to process this inexplicable statement he had retreated to his own room, not coming out even as noon rolled around. It was incredible that he could sleep so soundly in this abominable heat.

Ozu was pining for a mango frappuccino, so I poured him a teacup of brackish barley tea. He sipped the lukewarm liquid like a sickly toad slurping up muddy water.

“Ugh…what horrible, nasty stuff…”

“Shut up and drink!”

“But barley tea is so eighteenth century!”

I paid no heed to his pitiful whining.

Previously I had mentioned the air conditioner’s wake.

No doubt my discerning readers are squinting mistrustfully at that phrase.

The air conditioner on whose account we had spent our night in sorrowful vigil was the legendary unit which had been installed in my room since time immemorial. This modern marvel, so out of place in an old-fashioned 4½ tatami room, had clearly been installed without the permission of the landlady . It was a historical artifact, a legacy bequeathed by the heroic efforts of a former resident of this room. And as the only room in the entire building that had an air conditioner, 209 became the envy of every single resident of the boarding house.

I first heard of the legend of room 209 during the summer of my freshman year from another student, a grizzled old-timer who had been wearing nothing but a pair of briefs when I ran into him in the communal kitchen. At the time, the room that the man (who introduced himself as Higuchi Seitarō) confided to me about had seemed a faraway, illusory place, as mythical as King Arthur’s island of Avalon. I never dreamed that two years later I would actually be moving into room 209, covered in glory.

Notwithstanding the trouble I went to moving up from the first floor to the second, I was blessed with the air conditioner for only a few short days. And it was all the fault of the man in front of me: Ozu.

◯

Ozu is in the same year as me. Though he is a member of the electrical engineering department, he hates electricity, electronics and engineering, and his first-year grades were so borderline that it was questionable whether there was any point to him being in university at all.

His hostility towards vegetables and his adherence to a strict diet of fast food had given him the eerie complexion of someone from the dark side of the moon. Eight out of ten people who met him on the street late at night would mistake him for a demon, the remaining two being demons themselves. Scourging the weak and groveling before the strong, he is selfish, arrogant, indolent, perverse; he does not study, has not a shred of pride, and feeds off the misery of others for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There is not a single thing about him that is commendable, and if I had never met him surely my soul would have been the cleaner for it.

“You just had to go and ruin my life, didn’t you?”

“What? All I did was spill a little cola on the remote,” Ozu sniggered, wiping his sweaty face. “Anyhow Akashi’ll take care of it one way or another.”

“Don’t you feel even a little bit sorry?”

“Why should I?” Ozu looked entirely surprised. “It’s a joint responsibility, here. It’s Akashi’s fault for suggesting we film here, and it’s the fault of whoever left the remote there, and then there’s the person who put a half-empty bottle of cola there. And most of all, it’s your fault for announcing that you were going to do a striptease!”

“And when exactly did I say that?”

“Don’t try to wriggle out of it now. You were really getting into it. Besides,” Ozu continued, “a remote control that stops working just because you spill a little cola on it has some serious design flaws. And yet here you are, pinning it all on me and demanding an apology. I’m just the scapegoat here!”

I had to admit that there was some truth to his slippery logic. It was ludicrous that there wasn’t an on button on the AC unit itself. If Akashi was unable to fix the remote, then all hope for starting the AC would be lost forever, and I would have to spend the rest of summer break in this furnace. If I’d known this was going to happen I never would have moved here. At least on the first floor the heat was much more manageable.

I stood up, wrung out the hand towel in the sink, and draped it over my shoulder.

“This year I was finally going to have a meaningful summer! I was finally going to escape this depraved lifestyle and be reborn as a new man! That was the whole point of the AC!”

“Nah, that was never going to happen.”

“Excuse me?”

“I am doing everything I can to corrupt you. You really think an air conditioner would be enough to make your student life meaningful? I certainly hope you don’t think so little of me.”

I plopped down again and glared at him. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“I’ll leave that to your imagination, huehue.”

Ozu and I had met in the spring of our first year in the Keifuku Railroad Research Circle, otherwise known as the Delusion Express. For the next two and a half years, whenever I blundered into some dark, shameful corner of youth, there Ozu was. He was a veritable Mephistopheles, leading a once-promising young student astray into the wilderness. Maybe his spilling cola on the remote was also part of his plan, just another side dish of misery for him to gorge upon.

I slapped Ozu with the drenched towel. “I don’t care if it’s sincere, I just want an apology!”

“I’m sorry, ‘sorry’ is not in my vocabulary.” He cackled and slapped me back with his own towel.

“Why you—!”

“Show me your moves!”

As we rhythmically traded blows I started to enjoy myself. After we had slapped away for a period, Ozu let out a squeal and curled into a ball.

“What, done already?” I shouted in triumph, continuing to whip his frail body.

Ozu raised his hands. “Wait, ceasefire!” he cried. “We’ve got a visitor!”

I turned around to see Akashi standing at the open door. She had a large bag slung over her left shoulder and a ramune bottle in her right hand, staring at us earnestly like a child diligently sketching a couple of morning glories for art class.

“Friendship is such a stupid thing,” she muttered, taking a swig from her bottle.

◯

Akashi is one year younger than us. She is a member of the Misogi Movie Circle, and though her demeanor may be cool, behind it lies an adorably uncool cinephile with a passion for churning out clunky homemade flicks. According to Ozu, who is also a member of that circle, Director Akashi had somewhat of a mixed reputation. Everyone praised her work ethic, given her ability to pump out three movies in the span of time that it took others to make one, but they tended to be more reserved when it came to the topic of their quality.

This summer found Akashi once again in a frenzy of filming, like Honoré de Balzac reincarnated as a C-movie auteur, indifferent to the hazy reputation that swirled about her. She had spent the previous day from the crack of dawn to just past 3 in the afternoon at the landlord’s house behind these apartments, shooting a sci-fi period drama.

Akashi placed the bag down at the doorway.

“And just what were you two up to?”

“Erm, nothing…”

“This heat’s driving us loopy as loons, huehue!”

“For a second I thought I was witnessing something sexual. I wasn’t sure if I should look away, but the door was open.”

“Oh, there was some kind of tension in the air, all right!”

“J-just pretend you never saw it, Akashi.”

“Understood. I’ll forget about it. Alright, forgotten.”

Akashi entered the room serenely as Ozu and I scrambled to put our clothes on.

Had the old man at the electronics shop managed to undo the remote control’s sticky baptism? We waited with bated breath.

Akashi sat down primly on the floor and said, “My heartfelt condolences,” pressing her hands together in prayer.

I felt the air go out of me. “So no dice then.”

“I left the remote with him, just in case, but it’s not looking good. Apparently it’s a very old model; he was surprised to see that anyone was still using one of these. He recommended you buy a new one.”

“If I could do that I wouldn’t have sent it over in the first place!”

“I’m sure.”

“You disappoint me, Akashi, I expected better from you!”

“Shut up Ozu, don’t you ever open your mouth again!”

“No, he’s right. I’m terribly sorry about this.”

Akashi was already halfway through a productive summer day. She had risen at seven to greet the sun, and after a hearty, nutritious breakfast had traipsed off to the campus library, which opened early, for two hours of concentrated studying, before swinging by the electronics shop, even managing to spend some time perusing the Evening Breeze Used Book Fair in the Tadasu Forest on the grounds of the Shimogamo Shrine.

And what had we been doing while Akashi was having such a productive morning? Sitting half-naked in this sultry 4½ tatami room, glaring at each other and sweating our asses off, in a meaningless, idiotic purgatory. My precious summer was melting away like a

Tatami Time Machine Blues
Chapter 1 — August 12th (Part 1)
I hereby declare that I have never spent a meaningful summer.

Summer is generally considered to be a season of personal growth. A man from whom you have been parted a summer is a man you must behold anew! Glorious is the moment in which you reveal your reborn self to your peers, and in order to obtain that glory your plans must be scrupulous, your sleeping habits sound, your physical frame impeccable, your scholarly devotion profound.

But in the third summer of my life at that boarding house, I found myself beset by frustration.

In the heat of the Kyoto summer, my 4½ tatami room is transformed into a hellish wasteland as scorching as the Taklamakan Desert. In that cruel, inhospitable environment, my daily rhythm was thrown askew, my scrupulously laid plans sat abandoned atop my desk, and the wilting heat drove the nail into the coffin of any thoughts of physical training or academic pursuit I might have entertained. Under those circumstances even the Buddha himself would have been hard pressed to do any personal growing. O, tatami room, destroyer of dreams.

My college days, that season of study and learning, have already passed their midpoint. And yet, I have never spent a meaningful summer. I have not forged myself into a useful, productive member of society. If I continue to stand aside listlessly, society itself will no doubt one day shut me out in the cold.

It was in order to escape these desperate straits that I turned to man’s greatest invention: the humble air conditioner.

◯

The afternoon of August twelfth.

I was sitting in my apartment, room 209, face to face with another man.

I lived in a boarding house called Shimogamo Yūsuisō, located in Shimogamo Izumigawa-chō. When I first visited this place on the recommendation of the student co-op after enrolling, I thought I had wandered into Kowloon Walled City. The mere sight of its crumbling wooden three-story facade is enough to induce anxiety, and the building is sufficiently dilapidated that it could easily be designated one of Japan’s Important Cultural Properties, yet if it were to burn down I doubt anyone would bat an eye.

There is nothing so unpleasant in this world as the sight of two sweaty male college students in a 4½ tatami room stripped to the waist and glowering at one another. At this particular moment in time the white-hot rays of the sun were beating down on the roof of Shimogamo Yūsuisō, and inside room 209 the mercury was on the verge of shattering the glass.

The windows and door were thrown wide open, heedless of concerns for dignity or discretion; the ancient electric fan I had brought from home creaked and groaned, yet its exertions succeeded only in stirring up a vortex of hot air. I felt my consciousness slipping away. Was the man crouching in front of me real? Or was he simply a grimy mirage, a product of my spotless imagination that only I could see?

Wiping away sweat with a handkerchief I croaked, “Hey, Ozu.”

“You rang?”

“You still alive?”

“Pray concern yourself no more with the likes of me. It is only a matter of time before I shuffle off this mortal coil.”

His eyes were nearly rolled into the back of his head, and his unhealthy grey face was slick with sweat, gleaming like a newborn salamander.

The student apartments this afternoon were quiet. The shrill calling of the cicadas, so noisy in the morning, had stopped abruptly, and everything was still, as if time itself had come to a halt. Many of the residents had gone home for the summer holiday, and few students were foolish enough to be cooped up in their rooms on a midsummer’s day like today.

It was probable that other than Ozu and myself, the only person remaining in these rundown apartments was one Higuchi Seitarō, a perpetual super senior of untold years who resided in room 210 next door. Last night the solemn wake for the air conditioner had been held in my room, but come morning, after mumbling his way through a garbled rendition of the Heart Sutra Higuchi proclaimed, “Clear your mind, and even this room shall be as the villas of Karuizawa.1 Ergo!” And before I had even begun to process this inexplicable statement he had retreated to his own room, not coming out even as noon rolled around. It was incredible that he could sleep so soundly in this abominable heat.

Ozu was pining for a mango frappuccino, so I poured him a teacup of brackish barley tea. He sipped the lukewarm liquid like a sickly toad slurping up muddy water.

“Ugh…what horrible, nasty stuff…”

“Shut up and drink!”

“But barley tea is so eighteenth century!”

I paid no heed to his pitiful whining.

Previously I had mentioned the air conditioner’s wake.

No doubt my discerning readers are squinting mistrustfully at that phrase.

The air conditioner on whose account we had spent our night in sorrowful vigil was the legendary unit which had been installed in my room since time immemorial. This modern marvel, so out of place in an old-fashioned 4½ tatami room, had clearly been installed without the permission of the landlady . It was a historical artifact, a legacy bequeathed by the heroic efforts of a former resident of this room. And as the only room in the entire building that had an air conditioner, 209 became the envy of every single resident of the boarding house.

I first heard of the legend of room 209 during the summer of my freshman year from another student, a grizzled old-timer who had been wearing nothing but a pair of briefs when I ran into him in the communal kitchen. At the time, the room that the man (who introduced himself as Higuchi Seitarō) confided to me about had seemed a faraway, illusory place, as mythical as King Arthur’s island of Avalon. I never dreamed that two years later I would actually be moving into room 209, covered in glory.

Notwithstanding the trouble I went to moving up from the first floor to the second, I was blessed with the air conditioner for only a few short days. And it was all the fault of the man in front of me: Ozu.

◯

Ozu is in the same year as me. Though he is a member of the electrical engineering department, he hates electricity, electronics and engineering, and his first-year grades were so borderline that it was questionable whether there was any point to him being in university at all.

His hostility towards vegetables and his adherence to a strict diet of fast food had given him the eerie complexion of someone from the dark side of the moon. Eight out of ten people who met him on the street late at night would mistake him for a demon, the remaining two being demons themselves. Scourging the weak and groveling before the strong, he is selfish, arrogant, indolent, perverse; he does not study, has not a shred of pride, and feeds off the misery of others for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There is not a single thing about him that is commendable, and if I had never met him surely my soul would have been the cleaner for it.

“You just had to go and ruin my life, didn’t you?”

“What? All I did was spill a little cola on the remote,” Ozu sniggered, wiping his sweaty face. “Anyhow Akashi’ll take care of it one way or another.”

“Don’t you feel even a little bit sorry?”

“Why should I?” Ozu looked entirely surprised. “It’s a joint responsibility, here. It’s Akashi’s fault for suggesting we film here, and it’s the fault of whoever left the remote there, and then there’s the person who put a half-empty bottle of cola there. And most of all, it’s your fault for announcing that you were going to do a striptease!”

“And when exactly did I say that?”

“Don’t try to wriggle out of it now. You were really getting into it. Besides,” Ozu continued, “a remote control that stops working just because you spill a little cola on it has some serious design flaws. And yet here you are, pinning it all on me and demanding an apology. I’m just the scapegoat here!”

I had to admit that there was some truth to his slippery logic. It was ludicrous that there wasn’t an on button on the AC unit itself. If Akashi was unable to fix the remote, then all hope for starting the AC would be lost forever, and I would have to spend the rest of summer break in this furnace. If I’d known this was going to happen I never would have moved here. At least on the first floor the heat was much more manageable.

I stood up, wrung out the hand towel in the sink, and draped it over my shoulder.

“This year I was finally going to have a meaningful summer! I was finally going to escape this depraved lifestyle and be reborn as a new man! That was the whole point of the AC!”

“Nah, that was never going to happen.”

“Excuse me?”

“I am doing everything I can to corrupt you. You really think an air conditioner would be enough to make your student life meaningful? I certainly hope you don’t think so little of me.”

I plopped down again and glared at him. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“I’ll leave that to your imagination, huehue.”

Ozu and I had met in the spring of our first year in the Keifuku Railroad Research Circle, otherwise known as the Delusion Express. For the next two and a half years, whenever I blundered into some dark, shameful corner of youth, there Ozu was. He was a veritable Mephistopheles, leading a once-promising young student astray into the wilderness. Maybe his spilling cola on the remote was also part of his plan, just another side dish of misery for him to gorge upon.

I slapped Ozu with the drenched towel. “I don’t care if it’s sincere, I just want an apology!”

“I’m sorry, ‘sorry’ is not in my vocabulary.” He cackled and slapped me back with his own towel.

“Why you—!”

“Show me your moves!”

As we rhythmically traded blows I started to enjoy myself. After we had slapped away for a period, Ozu let out a squeal and curled into a ball.

“What, done already?” I shouted in triumph, continuing to whip his frail body.

Ozu raised his hands. “Wait, ceasefire!” he cried. “We’ve got a visitor!”

I turned around to see Akashi standing at the open door. She had a large bag slung over her left shoulder and a ramune bottle in her right hand, staring at us earnestly like a child diligently sketching a couple of morning glories for art class.

“Friendship is such a stupid thing,” she muttered, taking a swig from her bottle.

◯

Akashi is one year younger than us. She is a member of the Misogi Movie Circle, and though her demeanor may be cool, behind it lies an adorably uncool cinephile with a passion for churning out clunky homemade flicks. According to Ozu, who is also a member of that circle, Director Akashi had somewhat of a mixed reputation. Everyone praised her work ethic, given her ability to pump out three movies in the span of time that it took others to make one, but they tended to be more reserved when it came to the topic of their quality.

This summer found Akashi once again in a frenzy of filming, like Honoré de Balzac reincarnated as a C-movie auteur, indifferent to the hazy reputation that swirled about her. She had spent the previous day from the crack of dawn to just past 3 in the afternoon at the landlord’s house behind these apartments, shooting a sci-fi period drama.

Akashi placed the bag down at the doorway.

“And just what were you two up to?”

“Erm, nothing…”

“This heat’s driving us loopy as loons, huehue!”

“For a second I thought I was witnessing something sexual. I wasn’t sure if I should look away, but the door was open.”

“Oh, there was some kind of tension in the air, all right!”

“J-just pretend you never saw it, Akashi.”

“Understood. I’ll forget about it. Alright, forgotten.”

Akashi entered the room serenely as Ozu and I scrambled to put our clothes on.

Had the old man at the electronics shop managed to undo the remote control’s sticky baptism? We waited with bated breath.

Akashi sat down primly on the floor and said, “My heartfelt condolences,” pressing her hands together in prayer.

I felt the air go out of me. “So no dice then.”

“I left the remote with him, just in case, but it’s not looking good. Apparently it’s a very old model; he was surprised to see that anyone was still using one of these. He recommended you buy a new one.”

“If I could do that I wouldn’t have sent it over in the first place!”

“I’m sure.”

“You disappoint me, Akashi, I expected better from you!”

“Shut up Ozu, don’t you ever open your mouth again!”

“No, he’s right. I’m terribly sorry about this.”

Akashi was already halfway through a productive summer day. She had risen at seven to greet the sun, and after a hearty, nutritious breakfast had traipsed off to the campus library, which opened early, for two hours of concentrated studying, before swinging by the electronics shop, even managing to spend some time perusing the Evening Breeze Used Book Fair in the Tadasu Forest on the grounds of the Shimogamo Shrine.

And what had we been doing while Akashi was having such a productive morning? Sitting half-naked in this sultry 4½ tatami room, glaring at each other and sweating our asses off, in a meaningless, idiotic purgatory. My precious summer was melting away like a popsicle left out in the sun, never to return. There were no words to describe how empty I felt.

“So you ended up staying the night here, Ozu?” asked Akashi, sounding a little surprised.

“I was up until dawn observing the wake for the AC,” Ozu answered superciliously. “Every single person who lives in the building has been after this room, so they all came over to give us a silent piece of their minds. I didn’t mind it too much.”

“That’s because you’re a headcase.”

“That’s my girl. I knew you’d get me.”

“Well all I get is that you’re ruining my life!”

“Your life might be pointless, but it’s interesting, right? What more do you want?”

While I was wringing Ozu’s neck, a squealing staticky noise echoed outside in the corridor.

Shimogamo Yūsuisō is equipped with a speaker system that connected directly to the landlady’s house. The speakers are located at the end of the hallway on each floor above the glass doors that lead out to the drying racks on the balcony, bestowing upon the residents the wisdom of the landlady from her estate. The crackly speakers gave a sort of dignity to her voice as it descended on us from above, so everyone called those broadcasts the Voice of God. They usually involved demands to pay up on rent.

“Higuchi, Higuchi Seitarō of room 210!” The landlady’s stern voice rang throughout the hallway. “I know you’re in there. Come here at once to pay your rent!”

But there were no signs of stirring from the adjacent room. After repeating the demand fruitlessly several more times, the Voice of God vanished, and the building was silent once more.

“Huh, I don’t hear anything from next door.”

“Behold! the Master, as immovable as the mountain!”

“The Master must still be resting. How very like him.”

Tatami Time Machine Blues
Chapter 1 — August 12th (Part 1)
I hereby declare that I have never spent a meaningful summer.

Summer is generally considered to be a season of personal growth. A man from whom you have been parted a summer is a man you must behold anew! Glorious is the moment in which you reveal your reborn self to your peers, and in order to obtain that glory your plans must be scrupulous, your sleeping habits sound, your physical frame impeccable, your scholarly devotion profound.

But in the third summer of my life at that boarding house, I found myself beset by frustration.

In the heat of the Kyoto summer, my 4½ tatami room is transformed into a hellish wasteland as scorching as the Taklamakan Desert. In that cruel, inhospitable environment, my daily rhythm was thrown askew, my scrupulously laid plans sat abandoned atop my desk, and the wilting heat drove the nail into the coffin of any thoughts of physical training or academic pursuit I might have entertained. Under those circumstances even the Buddha himself would have been hard pressed to do any personal growing. O, tatami room, destroyer of dreams.

My college days, that season of study and learning, have already passed their midpoint. And yet, I have never spent a meaningful summer. I have not forged myself into a useful, productive member of society. If I continue to stand aside listlessly, society itself will no doubt one day shut me out in the cold.

It was in order to escape these desperate straits that I turned to man’s greatest invention: the humble air conditioner.

◯

The afternoon of August twelfth.

I was sitting in my apartment, room 209, face to face with another man.

I lived in a boarding house called Shimogamo Yūsuisō, located in Shimogamo Izumigawa-chō. When I first visited this place on the recommendation of the student co-op after enrolling, I thought I had wandered into Kowloon Walled City. The mere sight of its crumbling wooden three-story facade is enough to induce anxiety, and the building is sufficiently dilapidated that it could easily be designated one of Japan’s Important Cultural Properties, yet if it were to burn down I doubt anyone would bat an eye.

There is nothing so unpleasant in this world as the sight of two sweaty male college students in a 4½ tatami room stripped to the waist and glowering at one another. At this particular moment in time the white-hot rays of the sun were beating down on the roof of Shimogamo Yūsuisō, and inside room 209 the mercury was on the verge of shattering the glass.

The windows and door were thrown wide open, heedless of concerns for dignity or discretion; the ancient electric fan I had brought from home creaked and groaned, yet its exertions succeeded only in stirring up a vortex of hot air. I felt my consciousness slipping away. Was the man crouching in front of me real? Or was he simply a grimy mirage, a product of my spotless imagination that only I could see?

Wiping away sweat with a handkerchief I croaked, “Hey, Ozu.”

“You rang?”

“You still alive?”

“Pray concern yourself no more with the likes of me. It is only a matter of time before I shuffle off this mortal coil.”

His eyes were nearly rolled into the back of his head, and his unhealthy grey face was slick with sweat, gleaming like a newborn salamander.

The student apartments this afternoon were quiet. The shrill calling of the cicadas, so noisy in the morning, had stopped abruptly, and everything was still, as if time itself had come to a halt. Many of the residents had gone home for the summer holiday, and few students were foolish enough to be cooped up in their rooms on a midsummer’s day like today.

It was probable that other than Ozu and myself, the only person remaining in these rundown apartments was one Higuchi Seitarō, a perpetual super senior of untold years who resided in room 210 next door. Last night the solemn wake for the air conditioner had been held in my room, but come morning, after mumbling his way through a garbled rendition of the Heart Sutra Higuchi proclaimed, “Clear your mind, and even this room shall be as the villas of Karuizawa.1 Ergo!” And before I had even begun to process this inexplicable statement he had retreated to his own room, not coming out even as noon rolled around. It was incredible that he could sleep so soundly in this abominable heat.

Ozu was pining for a mango frappuccino, so I poured him a teacup of brackish barley tea. He sipped the lukewarm liquid like a sickly toad slurping up muddy water.

“Ugh…what horrible, nasty stuff…”

“Shut up and drink!”

“But barley tea is so eighteenth century!”

I paid no heed to his pitiful whining.

Previously I had mentioned the air conditioner’s wake.

No doubt my discerning readers are squinting mistrustfully at that phrase.

The air conditioner on whose account we had spent our night in sorrowful vigil was the legendary unit which had been installed in my room since time immemorial. This modern marvel, so out of place in an old-fashioned 4½ tatami room, had clearly been installed without the permission of the landlady . It was a historical artifact, a legacy bequeathed by the heroic efforts of a former resident of this room. And as the only room in the entire building that had an air conditioner, 209 became the envy of every single resident of the boarding house.

I first heard of the legend of room 209 during the summer of my freshman year from another student, a grizzled old-timer who had been wearing nothing but a pair of briefs when I ran into him in the communal kitchen. At the time, the room that the man (who introduced himself as Higuchi Seitarō) confided to me about had seemed a faraway, illusory place, as mythical as King Arthur’s island of Avalon. I never dreamed that two years later I would actually be moving into room 209, covered in glory.

Notwithstanding the trouble I went to moving up from the first floor to the second, I was blessed with the air conditioner for only a few short days. And it was all the fault of the man in front of me: Ozu.

◯

Ozu is in the same year as me. Though he is a member of the electrical engineering department, he hates electricity, electronics and engineering, and his first-year grades were so borderline that it was questionable whether there was any point to him being in university at all.

His hostility towards vegetables and his adherence to a strict diet of fast food had given him the eerie complexion of someone from the dark side of the moon. Eight out of ten people who met him on the street late at night would mistake him for a demon, the remaining two being demons themselves. Scourging the weak and groveling before the strong, he is selfish, arrogant, indolent, perverse; he does not study, has not a shred of pride, and feeds off the misery of others for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There is not a single thing about him that is commendable, and if I had never met him surely my soul would have been the cleaner for it.

“You just had to go and ruin my life, didn’t you?”

“What? All I did was spill a little cola on the remote,” Ozu sniggered, wiping his sweaty face. “Anyhow Akashi’ll take care of it one way or another.”

“Don’t you feel even a little bit sorry?”

“Why should I?” Ozu looked entirely surprised. “It’s a joint responsibility, here. It’s Akashi’s fault for suggesting we film here, and it’s the fault of whoever left the remote there, and then there’s the person who put a half-empty bottle of cola there. And most of all, it’s your fault for announcing that you were going to do a striptease!”

“And when exactly did I say that?”

“Don’t try to wriggle out of it now. You were really getting into it. Besides,” Ozu continued, “a remote control that stops working just because you spill a little cola on it has some serious design flaws. And yet here you are, pinning it all on me and demanding an apology. I’m just the scapegoat here!”

I had to admit that there was some truth to his slippery logic. It was ludicrous that there wasn’t an on button on the AC unit itself. If Akashi was unable to fix the remote, then all hope for starting the AC would be lost forever, and I would have to spend the rest of summer break in this furnace. If I’d known this was going to happen I never would have moved here. At least on the first floor the heat was much more manageable.

I stood up, wrung out the hand towel in the sink, and draped it over my shoulder.

“This year I was finally going to have a meaningful summer! I was finally going to escape this depraved lifestyle and be reborn as a new man! That was the whole point of the AC!”

“Nah, that was never going to happen.”

“Excuse me?”

“I am doing everything I can to corrupt you. You really think an air conditioner would be enough to make your student life meaningful? I certainly hope you don’t think so little of me.”

I plopped down again and glared at him. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“I’ll leave that to your imagination, huehue.”

Ozu and I had met in the spring of our first year in the Keifuku Railroad Research Circle, otherwise known as the Delusion Express. For the next two and a half years, whenever I blundered into some dark, shameful corner of youth, there Ozu was. He was a veritable Mephistopheles, leading a once-promising young student astray into the wilderness. Maybe his spilling cola on the remote was also part of his plan, just another side dish of misery for him to gorge upon.

I slapped Ozu with the drenched towel. “I don’t care if it’s sincere, I just want an apology!”

“I’m sorry, ‘sorry’ is not in my vocabulary.” He cackled and slapped me back with his own towel.

“Why you—!”

“Show me your moves!”

As we rhythmically traded blows I started to enjoy myself. After we had slapped away for a period, Ozu let out a squeal and curled into a ball.

“What, done already?” I shouted in triumph, continuing to whip his frail body.

Ozu raised his hands. “Wait, ceasefire!” he cried. “We’ve got a visitor!”

I turned around to see Akashi standing at the open door. She had a large bag slung over her left shoulder and a ramune bottle in her right hand, staring at us earnestly like a child diligently sketching a couple of morning glories for art class.

“Friendship is such a stupid thing,” she muttered, taking a swig from her bottle.

◯

Akashi is one year younger than us. She is a member of the Misogi Movie Circle, and though her demeanor may be cool, behind it lies an adorably uncool cinephile with a passion for churning out clunky homemade flicks. According to Ozu, who is also a member of that circle, Director Akashi had somewhat of a mixed reputation. Everyone praised her work ethic, given her ability to pump out three movies in the span of time that it took others to make one, but they tended to be more reserved when it came to the topic of their quality.

This summer found Akashi once again in a frenzy of filming, like Honoré de Balzac reincarnated as a C-movie auteur, indifferent to the hazy reputation that swirled about her. She had spent the previous day from the crack of dawn to just past 3 in the afternoon at the landlord’s house behind these apartments, shooting a sci-fi period drama.

Akashi placed the bag down at the doorway.

“And just what were you two up to?”

“Erm, nothing…”

“This heat’s driving us loopy as loons, huehue!”

“For a second I thought I was witnessing something sexual. I wasn’t sure if I should look away, but the door was open.”

“Oh, there was some kind of tension in the air, all right!”

“J-just pretend you never saw it, Akashi.”

“Understood. I’ll forget about it. Alright, forgotten.”

Akashi entered the room serenely as Ozu and I scrambled to put our clothes on.

Had the old man at the electronics shop managed to undo the remote control’s sticky baptism? We waited with bated breath.

Akashi sat down primly on the floor and said, “My heartfelt condolences,” pressing her hands together in prayer.

I felt the air go out of me. “So no dice then.”

“I left the remote with him, just in case, but it’s not looking good. Apparently it’s a very old model; he was surprised to see that anyone was still using one of these. He recommended you buy a new one.”

“If I could do that I wouldn’t have sent it over in the first place!”

“I’m sure.”

“You disappoint me, Akashi, I expected better from you!”

“Shut up Ozu, don’t you ever open your mouth again!”

“No, he’s right. I’m terribly sorry about this.”

Akashi was already halfway through a productive summer day. She had risen at seven to greet the sun, and after a hearty, nutritious breakfast had traipsed off to the campus library, which opened early, for two hours of concentrated studying, before swinging by the electronics shop, even managing to spend some time perusing the Evening Breeze Used Book Fair in the Tadasu Forest on the grounds of the Shimogamo Shrine.

And what had we been doing while Akashi was having such a productive morning? Sitting half-naked in this sultry 4½ tatami room, glaring at each other and sweating our asses off, in a meaningless, idiotic purgatory. My precious summer was melting away like a popsicle left out in the sun, never to return. There were no words to describe how empty I felt.

“So you ended up staying the night here, Ozu?” asked Akashi, sounding a little surprised.

“I was up until dawn observing the wake for the AC,” Ozu answered superciliously. “Every single person who lives in the building has been after this room, so they all came over to give us a silent piece of their minds. I didn’t mind it too much.”

“That’s because you’re a headcase.”

“That’s my girl. I knew you’d get me.”

“Well all I get is that you’re ruining my life!”

“Your life might be pointless, but it’s interesting, right? What more do you want?”

While I was wringing Ozu’s neck, a squealing staticky noise echoed outside in the corridor.

Shimogamo Yūsuisō is equipped with a speaker system that connected directly to the landlady’s house. The speakers are located at the end of the hallway on each floor above the glass doors that lead out to the drying racks on the balcony, bestowing upon the residents the wisdom of the landlady from her estate. The crackly speakers gave a sort of dignity to her voice as it descended on us from above, so everyone called those broadcasts the Voice of God. They usually involved demands to pay up on rent.

“Higuchi, Higuchi Seitarō of room 210!” The landlady’s stern voice rang throughout the hallway. “I know you’re in there. Come here at once to pay your rent!”

But there were no signs of stirring from the adjacent room. After repeating the demand fruitlessly several more times, the Voice of God vanished, and the building was silent once more.

“Huh, I don’t hear anything from next door.”

“Behold! the Master, as immovable as the mountain!”

“The Master must still be resting. How very like him.”

As difficult as it is to believe, Akashi was, along with Ozu, a disciple of Higuchi’s, and had been making calls on his room since the end of last year. All of the residents regarded him as the lord of these apartments and treated him with a sort of reverence, and even the landlady had once afforded him a degree of respect.

But I’d observed him carefully over the last two and a half years, and if you asked me he was nothing more than the sum of every stereotype you’d ever heard about super seniors coalesced into a dull blue yukata; he was the pilot of a boat about to run aground on the shoals of life. While I thought it regrettable for her to fritter away her youth seeking the teachings of such a fishy fellow, privately I was pleased that it gave her a reason to visit this rubbish heap of an apartment building. Hence I had spent the past six months watching over this state of affairs with decidedly mixed feelings.

I drained the rest of my barley tea and asked, “So what exactly is Higuchi a master of, anyways?”

“A very profound question, there. Haven’t got a clue.”

“If I had to say, I’d call him a Master of Life.”

“Ooh, very good, Akashi!” Ozu nodded. “If you’re just going to faff about alone in your room, you’d be better off becoming a disciple yourself. Not like you’ve had anything to do since you got kicked out of the Keifuku Railroad Research Circle, right? See, the other day I counseled the Master to admit you as a disciple, and he seemed pretty keen on the idea.That means that you’re already one of us!”

“Don’t try to drag me into your crap!”

When I said this Akashi looked at me. “It’s a lot of fun. Why don’t you give it a try?”

Even my iron will crumbled at that melodic phrase.

If I were to become Higuchi’s disciple, then I would also become fellow disciples with Akashi. With Akashi! How sweet the sound, sweeter and more luscious than any red bean mochi could ever be.

But I wasn’t looking for fate to set me up with Akashi, nor did I wish to learn about Life at the foot of some kook. What I wanted was to seize a meaningful student life with my own two hands, ne’er to return to these barren, unprofitable days again. And once I had reestablished myself as a new man—

Tatami Time Machine Blues
Chapter 1 — August 12th (Part 1)
I hereby declare that I have never spent a meaningful summer.

Summer is generally considered to be a season of personal growth. A man from whom you have been parted a summer is a man you must behold anew! Glorious is the moment in which you reveal your reborn self to your peers, and in order to obtain that glory your plans must be scrupulous, your sleeping habits sound, your physical frame impeccable, your scholarly devotion profound.

But in the third summer of my life at that boarding house, I found myself beset by frustration.

In the heat of the Kyoto summer, my 4½ tatami room is transformed into a hellish wasteland as scorching as the Taklamakan Desert. In that cruel, inhospitable environment, my daily rhythm was thrown askew, my scrupulously laid plans sat abandoned atop my desk, and the wilting heat drove the nail into the coffin of any thoughts of physical training or academic pursuit I might have entertained. Under those circumstances even the Buddha himself would have been hard pressed to do any personal growing. O, tatami room, destroyer of dreams.

My college days, that season of study and learning, have already passed their midpoint. And yet, I have never spent a meaningful summer. I have not forged myself into a useful, productive member of society. If I continue to stand aside listlessly, society itself will no doubt one day shut me out in the cold.

It was in order to escape these desperate straits that I turned to man’s greatest invention: the humble air conditioner.

◯

The afternoon of August twelfth.

I was sitting in my apartment, room 209, face to face with another man.

I lived in a boarding house called Shimogamo Yūsuisō, located in Shimogamo Izumigawa-chō. When I first visited this place on the recommendation of the student co-op after enrolling, I thought I had wandered into Kowloon Walled City. The mere sight of its crumbling wooden three-story facade is enough to induce anxiety, and the building is sufficiently dilapidated that it could easily be designated one of Japan’s Important Cultural Properties, yet if it were to burn down I doubt anyone would bat an eye.

There is nothing so unpleasant in this world as the sight of two sweaty male college students in a 4½ tatami room stripped to the waist and glowering at one another. At this particular moment in time the white-hot rays of the sun were beating down on the roof of Shimogamo Yūsuisō, and inside room 209 the mercury was on the verge of shattering the glass.

The windows and door were thrown wide open, heedless of concerns for dignity or discretion; the ancient electric fan I had brought from home creaked and groaned, yet its exertions succeeded only in stirring up a vortex of hot air. I felt my consciousness slipping away. Was the man crouching in front of me real? Or was he simply a grimy mirage, a product of my spotless imagination that only I could see?

Wiping away sweat with a handkerchief I croaked, “Hey, Ozu.”

“You rang?”

“You still alive?”

“Pray concern yourself no more with the likes of me. It is only a matter of time before I shuffle off this mortal coil.”

His eyes were nearly rolled into the back of his head, and his unhealthy grey face was slick with sweat, gleaming like a newborn salamander.

The student apartments this afternoon were quiet. The shrill calling of the cicadas, so noisy in the morning, had stopped abruptly, and everything was still, as if time itself had come to a halt. Many of the residents had gone home for the summer holiday, and few students were foolish enough to be cooped up in their rooms on a midsummer’s day like today.

It was probable that other than Ozu and myself, the only person remaining in these rundown apartments was one Higuchi Seitarō, a perpetual super senior of untold years who resided in room 210 next door. Last night the solemn wake for the air conditioner had been held in my room, but come morning, after mumbling his way through a garbled rendition of the Heart Sutra Higuchi proclaimed, “Clear your mind, and even this room shall be as the villas of Karuizawa.1 Ergo!” And before I had even begun to process this inexplicable statement he had retreated to his own room, not coming out even as noon rolled around. It was incredible that he could sleep so soundly in this abominable heat.

Ozu was pining for a mango frappuccino, so I poured him a teacup of brackish barley tea. He sipped the lukewarm liquid like a sickly toad slurping up muddy water.

“Ugh…what horrible, nasty stuff…”

“Shut up and drink!”

“But barley tea is so eighteenth century!”

I paid no heed to his pitiful whining.

Previously I had mentioned the air conditioner’s wake.

No doubt my discerning readers are squinting mistrustfully at that phrase.

The air conditioner on whose account we had spent our night in sorrowful vigil was the legendary unit which had been installed in my room since time immemorial. This modern marvel, so out of place in an old-fashioned 4½ tatami room, had clearly been installed without the permission of the landlady . It was a historical artifact, a legacy bequeathed by the heroic efforts of a former resident of this room. And as the only room in the entire building that had an air conditioner, 209 became the envy of every single resident of the boarding house.

I first heard of the legend of room 209 during the summer of my freshman year from another student, a grizzled old-timer who had been wearing nothing but a pair of briefs when I ran into him in the communal kitchen. At the time, the room that the man (who introduced himself as Higuchi Seitarō) confided to me about had seemed a faraway, illusory place, as mythical as King Arthur’s island of Avalon. I never dreamed that two years later I would actually be moving into room 209, covered in glory.

Notwithstanding the trouble I went to moving up from the first floor to the second, I was blessed with the air conditioner for only a few short days. And it was all the fault of the man in front of me: Ozu.

◯

Ozu is in the same year as me. Though he is a member of the electrical engineering department, he hates electricity, electronics and engineering, and his first-year grades were so borderline that it was questionable whether there was any point to him being in university at all.

His hostility towards vegetables and his adherence to a strict diet of fast food had given him the eerie complexion of someone from the dark side of the moon. Eight out of ten people who met him on the street late at night would mistake him for a demon, the remaining two being demons themselves. Scourging the weak and groveling before the strong, he is selfish, arrogant, indolent, perverse; he does not study, has not a shred of pride, and feeds off the misery of others for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There is not a single thing about him that is commendable, and if I had never met him surely my soul would have been the cleaner for it.

“You just had to go and ruin my life, didn’t you?”

“What? All I did was spill a little cola on the remote,” Ozu sniggered, wiping his sweaty face. “Anyhow Akashi’ll take care of it one way or another.”

“Don’t you feel even a little bit sorry?”

“Why should I?” Ozu looked entirely surprised. “It’s a joint responsibility, here. It’s Akashi’s fault for suggesting we film here, and it’s the fault of whoever left the remote there, and then there’s the person who put a half-empty bottle of cola there. And most of all, it’s your fault for announcing that you were going to do a striptease!”

“And when exactly did I say that?”

“Don’t try to wriggle out of it now. You were really getting into it. Besides,” Ozu continued, “a remote control that stops working just because you spill a little cola on it has some serious design flaws. And yet here you are, pinning it all on me and demanding an apology. I’m just the scapegoat here!”

I had to admit that there was some truth to his slippery logic. It was ludicrous that there wasn’t an on button on the AC unit itself. If Akashi was unable to fix the remote, then all hope for starting the AC would be lost forever, and I would have to spend the rest of summer break in this furnace. If I’d known this was going to happen I never would have moved here. At least on the first floor the heat was much more manageable.

I stood up, wrung out the hand towel in the sink, and draped it over my shoulder.

“This year I was finally going to have a meaningful summer! I was finally going to escape this depraved lifestyle and be reborn as a new man! That was the whole point of the AC!”

“Nah, that was never going to happen.”

“Excuse me?”

“I am doing everything I can to corrupt you. You really think an air conditioner would be enough to make your student life meaningful? I certainly hope you don’t think so little of me.”

I plopped down again and glared at him. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“I’ll leave that to your imagination, huehue.”

Ozu and I had met in the spring of our first year in the Keifuku Railroad Research Circle, otherwise known as the Delusion Express. For the next two and a half years, whenever I blundered into some dark, shameful corner of youth, there Ozu was. He was a veritable Mephistopheles, leading a once-promising young student astray into the wilderness. Maybe his spilling cola on the remote was also part of his plan, just another side dish of misery for him to gorge upon.

I slapped Ozu with the drenched towel. “I don’t care if it’s sincere, I just want an apology!”

“I’m sorry, ‘sorry’ is not in my vocabulary.” He cackled and slapped me back with his own towel.

“Why you—!”

“Show me your moves!”

As we rhythmically traded blows I started to enjoy myself. After we had slapped away for a period, Ozu let out a squeal and curled into a ball.

“What, done already?” I shouted in triumph, continuing to whip his frail body.

Ozu raised his hands. “Wait, ceasefire!” he cried. “We’ve got a visitor!”

I turned around to see Akashi standing at the open door. She had a large bag slung over her left shoulder and a ramune bottle in her right hand, staring at us earnestly like a child diligently sketching a couple of morning glories for art class.

“Friendship is such a stupid thing,” she muttered, taking a swig from her bottle.

◯

Akashi is one year younger than us. She is a member of the Misogi Movie Circle, and though her demeanor may be cool, behind it lies an adorably uncool cinephile with a passion for churning out clunky homemade flicks. According to Ozu, who is also a member of that circle, Director Akashi had somewhat of a mixed reputation. Everyone praised her work ethic, given her ability to pump out three movies in the span of time that it took others to make one, but they tended to be more reserved when it came to the topic of their quality.

This summer found Akashi once again in a frenzy of filming, like Honoré de Balzac reincarnated as a C-movie auteur, indifferent to the hazy reputation that swirled about her. She had spent the previous day from the crack of dawn to just past 3 in the afternoon at the landlord’s house behind these apartments, shooting a sci-fi period drama.

Akashi placed the bag down at the doorway.

“And just what were you two up to?”

“Erm, nothing…”

“This heat’s driving us loopy as loons, huehue!”

“For a second I thought I was witnessing something sexual. I wasn’t sure if I should look away, but the door was open.”

“Oh, there was some kind of tension in the air, all right!”

“J-just pretend you never saw it, Akashi.”

“Understood. I’ll forget about it. Alright, forgotten.”

Akashi entered the room serenely as Ozu and I scrambled to put our clothes on.

Had the old man at the electronics shop managed to undo the remote control’s sticky baptism? We waited with bated breath.

Akashi sat down primly on the floor and said, “My heartfelt condolences,” pressing her hands together in prayer.

I felt the air go out of me. “So no dice then.”

“I left the remote with him, just in case, but it’s not looking good. Apparently it’s a very old model; he was surprised to see that anyone was still using one of these. He recommended you buy a new one.”

“If I could do that I wouldn’t have sent it over in the first place!”

“I’m sure.”

“You disappoint me, Akashi, I expected better from you!”

“Shut up Ozu, don’t you ever open your mouth again!”

“No, he’s right. I’m terribly sorry about this.”

Akashi was already halfway through a productive summer day. She had risen at seven to greet the sun, and after a hearty, nutritious breakfast had traipsed off to the campus library, which opened early, for two hours of concentrated studying, before swinging by the electronics shop, even managing to spend some time perusing the Evening Breeze Used Book Fair in the Tadasu Forest on the grounds of the Shimogamo Shrine.

And what had we been doing while Akashi was having such a productive morning? Sitting half-naked in this sultry 4½ tatami room, glaring at each other and sweating our asses off, in a meaningless, idiotic purgatory. My precious summer was melting away like a popsicle left out in the sun, never to return. There were no words to describe how empty I felt.

“So you ended up staying the night here, Ozu?” asked Akashi, sounding a little surprised.

“I was up until dawn observing the wake for the AC,” Ozu answered superciliously. “Every single person who lives in the building has been after this room, so they all came over to give us a silent piece of their minds. I didn’t mind it too much.”

“That’s because you’re a headcase.”

“That’s my girl. I knew you’d get me.”

“Well all I get is that you’re ruining my life!”

“Your life might be pointless, but it’s interesting, right? What more do you want?”

While I was wringing Ozu’s neck, a squealing staticky noise echoed outside in the corridor.

Shimogamo Yūsuisō is equipped with a speaker system that connected directly to the landlady’s house. The speakers are located at the end of the hallway on each floor above the glass doors that lead out to the drying racks on the balcony, bestowing upon the residents the wisdom of the landlady from her estate. The crackly speakers gave a sort of dignity to her voice as it descended on us from above, so everyone called those broadcasts the Voice of God. They usually involved demands to pay up on rent.

“Higuchi, Higuchi Seitarō of room 210!” The landlady’s stern voice rang throughout the hallway. “I know you’re in there. Come here at once to pay your rent!”

But there were no signs of stirring from the adjacent room. After repeating the demand fruitlessly several more times, the Voice of God vanished, and the building was silent once more.

“Huh, I don’t hear anything from next door.”

“Behold! the Master, as immovable as the mountain!”

“The Master must still be resting. How very like him.”

As difficult as it is to believe, Akashi was, along with Ozu, a disciple of Higuchi’s, and had been making calls on his room since the end of last year. All of the residents regarded him as the lord of these apartments and treated him with a sort of reverence, and even the landlady had once afforded him a degree of respect.

But I’d observed him carefully over the last two and a half years, and if you asked me he was nothing more than the sum of every stereotype you’d ever heard about super seniors coalesced into a dull blue yukata; he was the pilot of a boat about to run aground on the shoals of life. While I thought it regrettable for her to fritter away her youth seeking the teachings of such a fishy fellow, privately I was pleased that it gave her a reason to visit this rubbish heap of an apartment building. Hence I had spent the past six months watching over this state of affairs with decidedly mixed feelings.

I drained the rest of my barley tea and asked, “So what exactly is Higuchi a master of, anyways?”

“A very profound question, there. Haven’t got a clue.”

“If I had to say, I’d call him a Master of Life.”

“Ooh, very good, Akashi!” Ozu nodded. “If you’re just going to faff about alone in your room, you’d be better off becoming a disciple yourself. Not like you’ve had anything to do since you got kicked out of the Keifuku Railroad Research Circle, right? See, the other day I counseled the Master to admit you as a disciple, and he seemed pretty keen on the idea.That means that you’re already one of us!”

“Don’t try to drag me into your crap!”

When I said this Akashi looked at me. “It’s a lot of fun. Why don’t you give it a try?”

Even my iron will crumbled at that melodic phrase.

If I were to become Higuchi’s disciple, then I would also become fellow disciples with Akashi. With Akashi! How sweet the sound, sweeter and more luscious than any red bean mochi could ever be.

But I wasn’t looking for fate to set me up with Akashi, nor did I wish to learn about Life at the foot of some kook. What I wanted was to seize a meaningful student life with my own two hands, ne’er to return to these barren, unprofitable days again. And once I had reestablished myself as a new man—

I glanced at Akashi only briefly before answering, “I’m going to pass on the disciple thing for now.”

“What a shame,” Ozu said, heaving a dramatic sigh. “And here I was going to extend an invitation to see the Gozan no Okuribi on the 16th. The Master would have taken you to a secret spot with the most incredible view. But no matter. You can just curl up into a ball and watch it in TV in here all by your lonesome. Akashi, don’t forget to clear your schedule.”

“I’m not going,” Akashi replied.

“Huh? Wha? Why?”

“I’ve already made plans to go with someone else.”

“You never mentioned that yesterday! Who are you going with?”

“Why should I have to report that to you?” she said bluntly, looking squarely at Ozu.

Even Ozu couldn’t find the words to respond to that. I should have felt a deep satisfying schadenfreude at seeing Ozu knocked on his ass like that, yet I felt like I had been knocked down myself.

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Akashi was going to see the Okuribi on August 16th—but with whom?

I stole a glance at her and noted that her face seemed quite cool. It was as though she was standing in the Tadasu Forest in the dead of winter: I didn’t see a single drop of sweat on her face.

“Aren’t you hot, Akashi?” I inquired.

“Absolutely sweltering,” she replied, downing the rest of her ramune.

A famous mountain resort town in central Japan.