brothers and friends

It didn’t take us long to make friends with the kids in the neighbourhood. Kids are kids wherever you are; no preconceptions, no barriers, always up for some fun. In this picture, my bros, Mook and Rich (centre) are hanging out with some of our neighbours. At the back are the Arai girls,  daughters of our landlords (top left) who we were friendly with but were already too old to run around and play. In the top right is Mrs. Tomotake, the Mum of Zenta and Mari, closer to our ages. Mr. Tomotake was a bit of a TV celebrity - with his own cooking show and quite a charismatic character. He also did some singing and general stage cavorting from memory. Mr. Tomotake was more grass roots, earthy, wholesome. She had a strong sense of self and place in the world and a kind heart. She would not be out of place in Mullumbimby the ‘arty, hippy, alternative’ town that I live in now in Australia (pop. 3,300). So, she was quite a rare character at the time.

I like this photo because of Richie’s look: the clarity and the purity is striking. He was the most quietly thoughtful of the three of us. Mook was the showman, wildcat. I was the main scheme conceiver and adventure leader. The three of us used to do everything together, go everywhere together and were a real trio. Rich is three and a half years younger than me, Mook in the middle two years below me. Being the youngest, Rich, would go along with his older brother’s plans but he always had his own sense of being and would make up his own mind about things. Fairness was an important quality instilled in us by our parents and we always shared small bounties equally and made decisions by consensus. A quick best of three game of jun-ken-poi! (rock-scissors-paper; something we had never heard of in Australia) resolved any minor disputes.

Because we were all always ravenous, I remember a particular procedure we thought up and used to do with potato chips. First, we would pour the entire pack out onto the table. Then, once we said go you would pick up a single chip. With it, using dexterity, you would punch out a tiny hole in the middle and hold it up for the other two to approve. You could then devour it immediately or put it in your own growing side pile for later consumption. It was a fun game and worked well. Usually we would mostly save them, peppered with the occasional quick reward single munch.

For the first three yeas of our Tokyo life, we all shared the same room, Mook and Rich in a bunk. We had a tiny tap and sink in the corner of our room but didn’t use it much. We also used to climb out of our second floor window and drop down to the top ledge of a two metre fence, then climb down to the back alley from there. Some of our neighbourhood kid friends lived in that little back alley. An old man on a bike used to come by every afternoon around five and blow a funny, wailing horn. From a special box mounted on the back of his bike, he sold fresh blocks of tofu. ​