The Friends (夏の庭 The Friends)

A Yomiuri Telecasting Corporation production

Heads up out there!

Tackle him!

Tackle! Come on!

Sugita, that's not fair!

Get clear!

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?

Kawabe.

I didn't do anything!

You charged him from behind.

Line up!

Cut it out, I said!

Get back... get back... you too...

All right, all right, that's good.

He'll aim at your head.

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

[Background noise halts then returns]

Fatso Yamashita's away. Today makes three days.

Yeah?

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.

What was the funeral like?

"How"?

Was it cool?

It couldn't have been. Someone died, right?

Tell us, Fatso!

A funeral's just a funeral.

But when somebody dies, they burn them.

In a "crematorium".

The coffin goes in this big furnace, and then...

Bang! The doors slam shut.

Then about two hours later...

What?

It's all bones.

It's all burned. All that's left is bones.

All white and crumbly.

They burn for two hours?

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

Then everyone takes chopsticks and puts 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.

"Look! I'm immortal!"

52... 53...

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

600 to 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.

THE FRIENDS

- -

You could've gotten that!

Quick, get ready.

Come on! Grab it!

So what do you want to tell us?

You know that calligraphy school...

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 he's going to die one of these days.

So what happens if one day some old guy all alone...

just up and dies?

Well...

if he dies all alone...

Then he's a body there all alone.

And then somebody finds him.

What?

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

By who?

By us, stupid!

I'm going.

Listen...

we keep 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?

Kawabe, what are you doing?

These days all I think about is dead people...

and what happens after you die.

But somehow it's just not real to me.

Me neither!

But when you think about something that isn't real...

don't you start to feel kind of weird?

Like you have to pee real bad.

Yeah, sort of...

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 was dead...

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!

You can see from here.

Look, there's grass growing on the roof!

Yeah.

There's spider-webs everywhere.

What a mess!

Is there really someone living here?

I wonder...

He's alive!

My dad was a detective.

Yeah? Cool!

You know the barber murder case? The stabbing with the scissors?

No, I don't.

He cracked that case. That was my dad.

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 can only watch for an hour and a half a day!

You know what?

You know what?

The old guy might be in there dead with the TV on.

Sitting at his leg-warming table?

Can you prove he's not dead?

He's not!

He might be!

Who'd sit at a warming table when it's boiling hot like this?

Yamashita...

let's go.

Quiet!

Do you smell something funny?

What a stink!

Let's get out of here.

Kiyama... you go first.

Yamashita... you go.

[Children shrieking, exclaiming in background]

The 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 just to the convenience store.

Yeah.

But he doesn't eat very well.

What?

He just buys two box lunches.

He must eat one that night...

and the other the next morning for breakfast.

Summer holidays began.

Summer school started early.

I'd never seen his house at that hour.

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...

Help me, will you?

Yamashita, quiet!

It stinks!

Even the newspapers are rotten!

You kids...

what are you doing here?

Putting out the garbage.

I can't close my eyes for a second!