O-sensei was lovely. She played the piano exquisitely. Her activities ran like clockwork, and when speaking to the room, she was warm and radiated intelligence in a way that reassured us that she knew what she was doing. My son, Dana, had drawn a picture of our family that was posted on the wall. Strangely, Dana’s picture did not look like a cloud of truck exhaust fumes.

It’s a common sight on Japanese mass transit: Children troop through train cars, singly or in small groups, looking for seats.