How It All Goes Down
- Our narrator, Chiyo, begins with a little Dickensian foreshadowing.
- She says she will soon meet someone, and it will be "the best afternoon of my life, and also the very worst afternoon" (1.1).
- But before she gets to the best of times and the worst of times, she tells us about the stinky little fishing village where she grew up: Yoroido.
- There, she lives inside a "tipsy house" (1.10) with her older sister, Satsu, and her mother and father.
- Her mother is sick, and her father doesn't think mama will make it.
- Daddy asks young Chiyo to walk to the village to get incense for a prayer ritual.
- In the village, Chiyo falls flat on her face in front of a businessman, Mr. Tanaka Ichiro.
- Her lip is bleeding, and he tends to it.
- After taking care of her, he compliments how beautiful she is, especially her striking blue-grey eyes, and asks where she lives.
- At home, Chiyo and her sister are washing dishes, and the pot is cracked. It's a bad sign.