“I'll let you have her for an hour—but no more. After that I'll walk her home,” Yoshihiro said. Then he went into the living room to watch TV.

“Sorry to spoil your date like this,” I said in my rather wobbly English, and Sarah replied, “Hey, no problem. It'll take me about five minutes to get this done, and while I'm doing it you can be finishing up your work for some other subject, right?”—or words to that effect. Her English was smooth and easy, her voice was lovely, her blond hair seemed to be streaming down her head. She grinned.

“Well then—I guess if you could just make up something about ‘A Day in My Life’ and write it out, that would be terrific. If you make the sentences too complicated it'll be obvious that I got someone else to write it for me, so I'd appreciate it if you could make it more or less like the sample they give here,” I said, struggling desperately to form these sentences, to make her understand.

“Okay. So what time do you get up every day? Do you have a Japanese-style breakfast? Or do you have bread? And what do you do in the afternoon?” She asked these and a few other questions, and suddenly we were finished.

I looked at the essay she'd written.

“Oh no! I can't turn it in like this—your handwriting is too good!” I cried. “I'll have to copy it out in my own ugly scrawl.”

Sarah burst out laughing.

Thus, little by little, we began to loosen up, to start feeling comfortable with each other, and we spoke openly about all sorts of different things. The evening was slightly chilly, and the night air shivered with the shrilling of crickets. Sarah sat with one of her elbows propped up on a low table that I'd set out in the middle of my room, continuing to help with my homework. I found myself in a world of wonderful colors—colors that made it seem as if the entire room had been suddenly flooded with light. Blue and gold. Her white, almost transparent skin. The sharp line of her jaw as she gazed straight at me and nodded.

I thought of the black boat Commodore Perry arrived on when he came to “open” Japan. It was the first time I'd ever talked with someone from a foreign country at such close range, and she'd come whirling into my room so suddenly, so completely unexpectedly. I could hear the thump of drums and the sounds of flutes and a few other instruments out at the festival, ballooning along on the wind. Off in the distance a round moon drifted weightlessly up through the black sky. Every so often a soft breeze would slip in through the open window.

“Do you like Japan?”

“Yeah, I'm having a great time. And I've made lots of friends. Friends at school, and then Yoshihiro's friends. I don't think I'll ever forget this year.”