1.08 Breakfast

From the deep end of the cellblock, the grating of casters over concrete rises like a bubble up the corridor. As the sound draws closer, I look out the window just in time to see an inmate pass, trundling the very same trolley I got bawled out for sitting on earlier.

The two of us could be twins, dressed as we are in identical gray denim shorts and white undershirts. Unlike me, however, he's also decked out in a matching gray cap, and a pair of old-fashioned, general-issue glasses, the kind with thick frames above the eyes that look like heavy black eyebrows. Doing an about-face before my cell, he backs the trolley the rest of the way up the cellblock.

A muffled announcement comes over the squawk box. Something about meals, if I’m not mistaken. And now, out in the shallow end of the corridor, muted voices can be heard, followed by a metallic clank, the sloshing of a liquid. The routine is repeated, only closer. A moment later, the inmate with the cap is back, standing before my window, poking the spout of an industrial sized kettle between the bars of the window.

In a reedy voice he asks for my kettle.

I was wondering what that was for.

I take the kettle from the desk, and place it on the windowsill where he does a cack-handed job filling it, splashing tea all over the ledge, the tatami, and me. 

“Thanks,” I say as he moves on to the next cell.

Pouring myself a cup, I take a sip.

“Blech! Mugi cha.”

I’ve never been crazy about barley tea—stuff tastes like mud—but at least it’s cold.

While the guy is away serving the others, I give the schedule in the Regulations & Morals another look:

7:50 Breakfast

12:00 Lunch

16:20 Dinner

Dinner at four-twenty? Who the hell eats dinner at four-twenty?

Several minutes later, the inmate reappears before my window, pushing a trolley now laden with a large tin pot, stacks of plastic soup bowls, and covered rice bowls.

The first few times his figure darkened my window I got the impression that he was in his forties, but now that I take a good look at the guy—the knobby knees poking out of the bottom of his gray shorts like dried persimmons, the stooped, bony shoulders, and arms like sticks—I’d say he must be pushing something closer to sixty.

And the longer I look at him, at his gaunt features, the outdated spectacles, the cap covering his shaved head, the more I am reminded me of Gilligan stranded on this uncharted desert isle of sorts, aging, yes, but not getting older season after season after season, year after year.

"Plate," Gilligan wheezes to me through the bars.

"Huh?"

"I need your plate," he says again.

"Plate?"

"Yes, your plate."

There's nothing on, or under, or beside the desk that remotely resembles a plate. Gilligan suggests I check the shelf to the right and above of the window. When I do, I discover a plastic basin and dishtowel under which are hidden a set of plastic chopsticks, and a plate, salmon-colored and featuring three elephants and the following message:

Do you like living here?

Yes, it’s great living here.

Let’s be HAPPIEST DAYS.”

Good grief.

I feed the HAPPIEST DAYS plate through a narrow opening below the bars, where a guard, an enormous bear of a man, takes it, dumps a ladleful of pinkish mystery cubes on it, and passes the plate back.

Setting a bowl of miso soup and a covered bowl of rice on the ledge, Gilligan and the bear move on to the next cell.

Arranging everything neatly on the desk—rice on the left, soup on the right, the plate set before the others—I kneel down for breakfast, giving the meal the customary greeting: “Itadakimasu.”

I take the rice bowl in my hand and try to remove the lid, but no matter how hard I twist it, the damned thing won’t budge. The lid is so firmly attached, I have to resort to rapping it against the corner of the washbasin a few times until it finally gives.

Christ, you could hang a man from a goalpost with this shit.

Removing the lid, I find the bowl has been filled slipshod with mugi gohan (barley rice).

Can’t say I’m crazy about mugi gohan, either.

I take a bite of the barley rice, and wash it down with the soup, a simple miso broth with chopped leek.

I’ve eaten worse.

The mystery cubes on the plate have me completely stumped. An exploratory sniff gleans nothing. In all my years in Japan, I've never come across anything quite like it. And I have eaten some pretty odd things over the years. Is it some kind of pickled fish or vegetable? Is it canned whale meat? What with the price of whale meat these days, they wouldn’t be dishing out a “delicacy” to lawbreakers top of the morning now, would they? I take the plate to the toilet and scrape the cubes into it.

The toilet, by the way, has these easy-to-follow instructions posted above it:

Flush once, not twice.

Don't flush anything but toilet paper down the toilet.

Use sink to wash face.

Gilligan returns about fifteen minutes later to collect the dishes, and, seeing how little I've eaten, asks if I need more time. I tell him that I haven't got much of an appetite. He nods and takes the bowls away.

"Keep the plate," he says.

© Aonghas Crowe, 2010. All rights reserved. No unauthorized duplication of any kind.

注意：この作品はフィクションです。登場人物、団体等、実在のモノとは一切関係ありません。

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

The first installment of No.6 can be found here.

No. 6 is now available on Kindle.