Excerpt from Tokyo Ueno Station by Yu Miri, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"I'm hungry, Mama."

"You want some of this?"

"Don't want it."

"Well, then Mama's gonna eat it all."

"No, Mama, don't!"

A little girl of about five years, in a short-sleeved dress pale pink as cherry blossoms, walks with her head turned to look up at her mother, whose body-hugging, leopard-print dress suggests a job in the nighttime economy.

Another young woman in a navy-blue suit passes them, her heels clicking.

Just then a sudden downpour strikes the deep canopy of the cherry trees and falls onto the pavement, leaving its dark footprints here and there.

Even in the rain, the stream of people never stops.

Under their umbrellas side by side, two old women in loose blouses and identical black slacks chat as they walk.

"It was twenty-two this morning, wasn't it?"

"Mm-hmm."

"You can't say it's cold, but it is chilly. I feel like I could freeze!"

"What a chilly rain!"

"You know, Ryuji won't stop going on about his stepmother's cooking."

"Oh, how dreadful for you."

"He thinks I could learn a few things from her."

"So awful, isn't it, this rain."

"And the rainy season's just begun. We've got another month of this to look forward to."

"Are the hydrangeas in bloom now, do you think?"

"Oh, not yet."

"And the Japanese oaks?"

"They're not in season either."

"Things have changed around here a bit, haven't they? I'm sure that wasn't a Starbucks."

"Yes, it's gotten a bit chic, hasn't it?"

This is the lane of cherry trees.

Every year in mid-April, this area is crowded with people who've come to drink and eat under the blossoms.

When the cherry trees are in bloom, we don't need to go looking for food.

We can eat and drink people's leftovers, and with the groundsheets they leave behind, we get brand-new roofs and walls for our huts, replacing tarps that have crumpled and begun to leak over the past year.

Today is Monday; the zoo is closed.

I never took my children to Ueno Zoo.

I came to work in Tokyo at the end of 1963. Yoko was five then, and Kichi was just three.

The pandas came to Ueno Zoo nine years later. The kids were both in middle school by then, past the age when they would want to go to the zoo.

I didn't take them to the zoo, nor to the amusement park, the seaside, the mountains; I never went to their beginning-of-year ceremonies or graduations or to a parents' open day or to a sports day, not even once.

I went back only twice a year, in summer and in winter, to my village in Fukushima, where my parents, my brothers and sisters, and my wife and children waited for me.

One year when I was able to return a few days before the Bon holidays, there was a festival or something, and I took my children to Haramachi for a day out.

Haramachi was only one station from Kashima, but it was the height of summer and it was hot on the train, making me lethargic. Hit by drowsiness, the children's excited voices and my halfhearted responses felt indistinct, as if I were in a fog, while the train cut across the endless landscapes of sky, mountains, farmlands, and rice fields, passing through the tunnel before accelerating. I saw my children's hands, outstretched like geckos', and their foreheads and lips glued to the window, beyond which there was only blue and green. The tang of their sweat filled my nose, and for just a few moments I let my head drop.

When we got off at Haramachi, the ticket inspector told us that we might be able to take a helicopter ride in Hibarigahara, so I set off down the Hamakaid Road with Yoko's hand in my right and Kichi's in my left.

Kichi, who saw me too rarely to even miss me and never tried to pull anything or get his way, squeezed my hand. "Daddy, I want to go on the helicopter." I can see his face clearly now in my mind, wanting to say something, opening and closing his mouth several times before he finally spoke and, in the end, turning bright red as if in anger. But I had no money. The helicopter ride cost about three thousand yen at that time, or over thirty thousand in today's money... . It was too much.

Excerpted from Tokyo Ueno Station by Yu Miri. Copyright © 2020 by Yu Miri. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.