Fewer and fewer raindrops came plopping down until finally they stopped altogether, leaving only the dark sky. The huge gravestones lined up on either side of the memorial park turned out not to be gravestones at all, but a picture book carved on sixteen slabs of stone. Relief carvings with text were lined up along both sides. The park was laid out so that as you read the book, looking at the pictures, page by page, you gradually got closer to the huge statue of the Russian soldier. The same story was told on eight slabs, in German on one side and in Russian on the other. Perhaps those American soldiers I’d seen a while back hadn’t been able to read either text, which might explain why they were in such a good mood.

The story begins with Nazi Germany’s first attacks, rolling eastward to steal territory from other countries. The carvings of military planes flying in the sky are crudely done, on purpose. Even elementary school kids draw cartoons that look much better. “I’d sure hate to be drawn this badly,” said a voice from behind, and I turned around to see a tall, thin youth who looked like he’d come straight from trendy Shibuya. “Hey, take a look at this,” he said, holding up his computer screen like a hand mirror to show me a photograph. A dung beetle crawling across the desert, I thought, but what he said next turned things completely upside down: “The whole world’s amazed that Japan has these state-of-the-art tanks.”

“A tank?” I asked. “So insects are called ‘tanks’ in Japan. There’s something nice about a country where they sell bell crickets in department stores but don’t have a single tank, don’t you think?” I blurted out, then peered into the guy’s face but saw no reaction; besides, what would a Japanese tourist be doing here in the first place? Was he really here, or . . . I was blinking furiously, trying to think. What was even more surprising was that his face didn’t really look all that young; in fact, the longer I stared at him, the older he got—thirty, thirty-five, forty, forty-five. “Those planes carved on the panel look like flies, don’t they?” I said, but maybe he didn’t hear me because in lieu of an answer he showed me the next picture on his screen, practically drooling as he said, “Here’s the kind I really like.”

I gasped at what I saw: a laughing girl in a military uniform, straddling a propeller plane that looked just like a fat, dark green caterpillar. Though her face was young—about junior high school age—her breasts, enlarged with silicone, bulged so beneath her middy blouse they seemed about to explode. Since it’s illegal to send bombs through the mail, she must have been taking the girl next door somewhere in her plane—legally, of course. I gave the guy a slap on the arm and, pointing to the stone picture book said, “Why don’t you take a look at this?”