利根町 (Tone-machi) was my second home. Located in the very southern portion of Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan, and named after the river that cuts through it, Tone-machi is a wet village. The land is covered in rice paddies, and if you pay attention, you can see a crane waiting for you in the fog. Frogs belong to these rice paddies. At school I would walk toward the muddy water, dipping my yellow rain boots next to the tall rice stalks, and collect the jumping frogs into bright red buckets. By the end of the day, I would return to see that they had escaped their shallow prison once again.
Tone-machi is an old people town. Across from my home was a pharmacy where my grandmother could refill her prescription and get her mandatory “one walk per day.” Three blocks away was a grocery store next to an elderly home and a donut shop whose owners had a beauty-pageant-winning cat. If I wanted, my mother would let me take my bike down to the donut shop and buy three donuts for my mother, my grandmother, and me. No one would be seen on my route there; they were either too young or too old to be outside in the mornings when I craved custard bread or strawberry donuts. Tone-machi was always and always will be a sleepy town.
My house, which stood on a corner next to the main road, had gray roof tiles and sliding glass doors, typical for a Japanese home. I remember one year I climbed off of my balcony onto those gray roof tiles, trying to jump from my roof to the neighboring one before sliding off and falling one flight. I landed on my back, the wind knocked out of me but no injuries to prove my feat. My mother scolded me for taking such a great risk. The roof tiles laughed at me. Inside, the home had a combination of wood flooring and 畳 (tatami), a type of flooring made from rice straw. By our staircase a glazed tree trunk covered in Japanese folklore masks grew to the second floor. The masks were lightly painted, featuring divinites and legendary creatures such as a 天狗 (tengu) and 鬼 (oni.) They looked nearly human but with bright red cheeks or long, almost finger-like noses. The open doorways were all covered with a curtain of beads, and I remember how I longed to be tall enough to walk through them. With no central heating, our living room was the main hub during the winter because of the heated table in front of the television. Known as a 炬燵 (kotatsu,) the low, wooden table held a futon that would cover your legs as you sat. I would sometimes crawl underneath the heat lamp and fall asleep, only rising when the prospect of dinner was announced.
In front of our two-story home was my grandmother’s barber shop. The store had its iconic red, white, and blue revolving tubes on the facade, guiding untrimmed hair to its doorsteps. Inside, it smelled of damp scalps, cleaning supplies, and old Japanese men. My grandmother had two identical barber chairs facing a wall of mirrors lined with hair products. The chairs were an ugly shade of blue, the kind of blue you might associate with hospital curtains or smocks. The cushions had worn down over the years, becoming soft and unsupportive. When I was little, I used to crawl into them during a quiet day and fall asleep next to my grandmother and her newest old customer. Now when I pass the old barbershop, the tubes refuse to move and my grandmother’s old phone number still sits on the window, waiting for calls. It’s dead and I cannot go inside to grab one of my chairs. I’m pretty sure my uncle threw them out anyway, but we don’t talk.
I don’t live in Tone-machi anymore. My grandmother moved to Chiba and left her barbershop to fend for itself. In an attempt to leave his own shallow prison, my uncle sold the home from under us while I was here in the United States. All of our belongings, from the mannequin that lived in my bedroom to the photos in the living room, were thrown out. Last summer I drove past it to see lights on in the room my grandmother slept in, and I nearly wept. I look to my past in Tone-machi, a village made of nostalgia, and see that I cannot return to its tired ways.