My grandmother had been born in a poverty-stricken village, married young, and had settled in the mountains. She’d made a living in the lumber business, but had always been poor. Others who’d settled in the mountains at the same time had, one by one, left and moved to towns, leaving only a scattering of families behind. The lumber business failed after her husband died young, in his thirties, and she went to work for a friend who’d gone into livestock farming, and there she raised her son and daughter. Her daughter left the mountains after middle school and the end of compulsory education and later got married in town. Her son, my father, left to attend sixth-form college, as I did, but then returned to work in the local government office. He got married and then my younger brother and I were born.

That’s all I knew about my grandmother’s background. She was a hard worker and a woman of few words.

Out at the back, behind our house, facing the woods, was a dilapidated old wooden chair. It had been there as long as I could remember. Grandma would sit there sometimes, staring out at the mysterious expanse of forest beyond. I didn’t think there was anything to see besides a lot of trees, and always wondered what she might be looking at.

Now, back in the family home and staring out at the same scene, I felt someone behind me and turned around. My brother was walking over, winding a scarf around his neck as he approached.

‘Wow, it’s freezing,’ he said, and came to stand next to the ancient chair where I was sitting, legs crossed. He looked around. ‘It’s kind of scary, actually, how nothing ever changes up here.’ He laughed.

‘Definitely,’ I said and laughed with him. There was one difference, however – the white birches planted at the front of the house were far taller and more imposing than when we’d both lived here.

The wind blew and my brother flinched.

‘You know, I went to the beach this summer,’ he said.

‘Yeah?’

‘With guys from my seminar group at college.’

‘Did you swim?’

My brother snorted and shook his head. ‘I can’t swim. You know that.’

Neither of us could swim. There was no pool in our little school in the mountains. There was a public pool in the local town in the foothills and some of my friends went there to learn, but when my brother and I graduated from middle school we weren’t even able to float on our backs in the water.

‘Have you ever seen the ocean?’ my brother asked.

‘Sure.’

Our school trip in middle school took us to the southern part of Hokkaido, where I saw the Sea of Japan in autumn. The tuning school was near a harbour, too. Even so, the ocean was a rare and special sight for me.