The Friends (夏の庭 The Friends)

Yomiuri Television Production

Heads up out there!

Tackle him!

Tackle! Come on!

Sugita, that's not fair!

- Get clear! - Shrimp!

Call for it! Call for it!

Sugita, that's cheating!

Damn it! You jerk!

Stop it! That's enough!

Cut it out!

That's a foul!

A foul on who, sir?

Against Kawabe.

Me? I didn't do anything, sir!

You charged him from behind. All right, line up!

Hey! Cut it out, I said!

Get back, get back. You too.

All right, all right, that's good.

The guy's going to aim at your head...

Yamashita's grandma died. The one out in the country.

Fatso Yamashita's away. Today makes three days.

- He went to the funeral. - Yeah?

Yamashita came back to school.

Hey fatso!

I shouldn't have said that. Now he's mad.

Yo, Kiyama.

You were gone three days!

That's a pretty long time.

Hey fatso!

So your grandma croaked?

Yeah, that's right. She did.

How did they do the funeral?

- "How?" - Was it cool?

No, it wasn't cool... I mean, someone died...

Don't get pompous, fatso!

Well, you know... it was a funeral.

But when somebody dies, they burn them...

It's called a 'crematorium'.

The coffin goes in this big furnace... then bang!

The doors slam shut.

Then, about two hours later...

Two hours later what?

They're just bones.

They're all burned up. All that's left is bones.

All white and crumbly.

They burn them for two hours?

That must be hot! Just burning and burning...

Then you take chopsticks and put the bones in a jar.

- I had a dream... - A dream?

There was a teddy-bear wrestling.

But suddenly I saw it wasn't a teddy bear.

It was Grandma's body.

Hey! I'm immortal!

52, 53...

I read once that in your whole life you breathe...

600-800 million times.

So in bed, I would count how many times I breathed.

But, high as I might count, this night I couldn't sleep.

62...

Natsu no niwa

You could've got that!

Quick, get ready!

Come on, grab it!

So what's this great thing you want to tell us?

You know that calligraphy teacher's place,

off the street the bus goes down?

You mean by the park?

Two doors down there's this old guy who lives alone.

My mom says...

that he's going to die one of these days.

So what do you think happens if some old guy all alone...

just up and dies one day?

What happens? Well, he just dies alone, I guess.

All alone... a body...

Yeah. And then someone finds him.

What?

The old guy dies all alone, and he gets found.

- By who? - By us, stupid!

I'm going home.

Listen... we keep a watch on the old guy

Yamashita, you're the one who should know best...

if he's about to drop dead or not.

- You're nuts! - Move!

What are you, a vulture? You jerk!

Kawabe, what're you doing?

These days I keep thinking about dead people...

and what it's like to die.

But somehow I just can't believe it.

Me neither!

But when you think about something you can't believe...

don't you start to feel kind of weird?

Like you have to pee real bad. - Yeah, sort of.

Be careful! - I couldn't fight it...

Yesterday when I was up here.

You did this yesterday?

All the cars were just whipping by under me.

Kawabe, quit it!

I thought if I fell then I'd die for sure.

Come on, Kawabe, stop it!

But I couldn't stop myself... like this.

But if I died, I guess I couldn't tell you guys...

what it's like.

- I get it. - You get what?

Let's go and have a look at this old guy

Come on, Kiyama, let's go!

You can't see from here.

- Look, there's grass growing on the roof! - Yeah.

There's spider webs everywhere.

It's filthy!

- Does anyone really live here? - I wonder.

He's alive!

My dad's a detective.

Yeah? Cool!

You know the barber murder? The one with the scissors?

Yeah...? No, I don't.

He cracked that case. That was my father.

Here we go again! Kawabe doesn't have a father.

He died when Kawabe was a baby.

...and that night he went to the barbershop alone,

and he thought he could smell the blood!

It'd be great to be able to just watch TV like that!

I'm only allowed to watch an hour and a half a day!

You know what?

You know what?

What if the old guy's lying there dead with the TV on?

Sitting there at his foot warmer?

Can you prove he isn't?

No way!

He might be! Who'd have a foot warmer on,

when it's boiling hot, like this?

Yamashita... let's go in.

Be quiet, will you?

Hey, smell something funny?

What a stink!

Let's go home.

Kiyama, you go first.

Yamashita, you go.

What are you doing?

Same thing every day! I'm tired of this!

Not every day. Every three days.

That's right. To be exact, the old man only goes out...

once every three days.

And all he does is go to the convenience store and back.

Yeah.

- But he sure doesn't eat very well. - What?

Well, he usually just buys two box lunches.

I'm sure he must eat one that night...

and the other the next morning for breakfast.

Summer holidays began.

Summer school started earlier than normal school.

I'd never seen the house in the morning before.

Kiyama, what are you doing?

Taking out the garbage.

Garbage?

I can't take the stink while we're keeping watch.

Today's garbage day.

Yeah, but...

Don't worry. Help me.

Yamashita, quiet!

It stinks!

Even the newspapers are rotten... Wow!

You kids...

What are you doing here?

We thought we'd put out the garbage.

D'you think I'm stupid? Get out of here.

I told you to get out of here now!

Go on! Get out of here!

- What, do you think we did something bad? - Quiet!

You come waltzing into someone's yard.

I'd like to talk to your parents!

My father...

My father was a fireman, you know!

He got killed helping someone escape from a fire.

He was really brave, you know!

Cut it out, Kawabe!

Listen... old fart! We've been watching you!

We're watching you 'cause we heard you're going to die!

We're watching 'cause we want to see how you die!

Kawabe, that's enough!

You hear me?!

Hey!

- Did you find him? - No.

So we lost him?

What do we do?

- Maybe he's at the hospital. - What?

I went there when I had pinkeye.

The waiting room was full of old people.

- So maybe... - Right! Kiyama, you take the hospital.

- What about you? - The supermarket.

- I'll look around here. - Okay. We'll meet back here.

Have a seat over there, please.

My name's Hashimoto. I'd like to pay my bill.

What's the matter?

'Surgery'... 'Dermatology'...

Excuse me...

No... I'm sorry

I wonder how many people I've taken to their funeral?

My wife always says... that when I'm asleep...

I look like I'm dead.