Tokyo Hearts: A Japanese Love Story by Renae Lucas-Hall Read Free Book Online Page A

levels of shops, it was nice to just sit and listen to the music. He would take time out there; enjoying a cigarette and watching the people pass by. Some days, if he was on his way into Tokyo and he had twenty or thirty minutes to spare before catching his train, he’d enjoy a lunchbox of fresh specialty dumplings for ¥500 or stand and slurp down a delicious bowl of hot ramen soup with a crowd of other commuters at one of the vendors inside the station above the platforms. His favourite soup was Chashu ramen, with three large pieces of thickly sliced pork floating on a bed of noodles.
    That afternoon, Takashi walked slowly to his apartment, situated about ten minutes from the station. He bypassed all the shops and only stopped at the convenience store to buy some ready-made sushi and a cold can of oolong tea.
    Takashi had moved to this part of town because his parents lived in Yokosuka. A few years ago, he’d convinced them that it was too far for him to travel to university from there. His parents would be considered neither rich nor poor. His father had worked as a mid-level salary man at a transportation company in Yokosuka for over twenty years. He grew up provided with all the essentials, but when he was younger, his mother had never bought him the latest designer clothes and they’d never been able to afford overseas holidays.
    There were a few happy memories he fondly looked back on. He remembered the times his parents had taken him to Hokkaido to visit his mother’s side of the family, and they’d also paid for him to go with the rest of his school mates one year on a school trip to Kyoto, which he’d really enjoyed. When he’d been offered a place at a reasonable university a few years ago, his parents had been very proud of him and they’d generously offered to pay his rent while he was studying so that he wouldn’t have to commute long distances to get to his lectures and home again. They even gave him a humble weekly allowance. Takashi was extremely grateful for his apartment and it was his very own six-by-ten foot cosy little kingdom.
    As Takashi approached the stairs leading up to the first floor landing and his front door, a bicycle stem that someone had thrown onto the guttering above him caught his eye, as it had many times before this month. Lowering his gaze, he noticed that the caretaker for his building was standing outside his apartment and Takashi thought that it was as good a time as any to ask him to remove the bike part that was hanging precariously above him.
    ‘Hey caretaker, do you have time to take this bike stem off the guttering? It’s been there for over a month now,’ Takashi yelled.
    ‘Can’t you see that I’m busy, boy?’ he shouted back. ‘I’ve got a list of other things to do before I can fix the guttering.’
    ‘Okay, sorry to bother you,’ Takashi said, a bit taken back. He rushed towards his flat, wishing he hadn’t said a word to the caretaker.
    Takashi’s place was small, even by Japanese standards. He liked it like that. He felt cocooned from the outside world, but not isolated. His apartment was in a block of about twenty other similar-sized units. The door was heavy, with a double lock, and inside was a single bed, a little fridge, a Sony TV, a Panasonic stereo and a Toshiba PC– he’d wanted an Apple iMac, but he’d decided it was too expensive. Takashi was a bit of a brand snob when he bought any kind of technology. His room also contained a mini cooker, a toaster, a Panasonic microwave and a kotatsu. Of course he didn’t use the kotatsu in this weather, but this coffee table enveloped in a futon, with a heater attached underneath to keep his knees warm, was invaluable in winter. Only the bathroom was separate from everything else in this small apartment. Less to clean, he always told himself.
    Attached to the apartment, there was also a balcony where he kept his washing machine and above this, a plastic frame with twelve pastel blue pegs for drying