Chapter 3: 1.3

Spherical Shell Elastic 3

Translated by KuroNeko
Edited by KuroNeko

 

3

There was no longer any need to travel to Tokyo to apply to a university there. Only high school students from the southern Kanto region would be able to take the exam if we did this. As a result, in 2007, the “Equal Opportunity Program” was implemented, allowing students to take admission examinations in locations other than the university’s. However, there were no venues in Aizu, so I rode a bus for a day to Koriyama to take the exam, as anticipated.

    This initiative drew the top applicants from the provinces to Tokyo, and because the opposite seldom occurred, there was widespread criticism of brain drain from the provinces. I don’t think it matters to Wakamatsu if the third-best minds in the class go, but given that the first and second-best will also leave for Sendai and Niigata, I believe the local area, which is in a straight line of geopolitical decline, will also decrease in terms of human resources.

    As the government puts:

    (1) A talented young man.

    (2) Go to the city and study.

    (3) By returning home and contributing to the local community.

    (4) Revitalization of the region.

    That’s the plan, but (3) seems extremely questionable. Perhaps the politicians who say it don’t believe it, and I don’t either. But I’m not complaining because it’s convenient for me.

    I knew I could stay at my grandmother’s house in Koriyama the day before the exam, so I asked her. My grandmother, whom I hadn’t seen in three years since I was in junior high, came all the way to the bus terminal in front of City Hall to pick me up, and as soon as she saw me, she commented, “Well, you’ve grown up.”

    “You should call your mother to let her know you arrived safely.”

    Grandmother made a grumpy remark. Sending email to Wakamatsu from here would incur a long-distance charge, so I don’t believe I need to tell her everything, but I’ll take my grandmother’s advice, who is overprotective of her children and grandkids.

    I was watching TV while eating a light supper made by my grandma after offering incense to my grandfather at the Buddhist altar, when I saw the space center in Otoineppu and discovered about a new domestic communication satellite to be launched in Hokkaido. The satellite was planned to be launched into geostationary orbit above Japan as normal, but this time a new technology was employed for the launch’s anti-weighting board.

    I am familiar with these technologies since I am preparing to take the entrance exam for the Department of Heavy Element Engineering. After launching the satellite into space with an anti-gravity plate, we used voltage to swiftly change the gravity load to a positive one, and then dropped it directly into the Sea of Okhotsk for recovery and reuse. I explained in simple terms that even my grandmother could understand that this is a technology unique to Japan, which is notable for its lack of heavy elements among developed countries. I’m not sure if my grandmother got it.

    “I wonder if this will make satellite communication even cheaper.”

    I was asked.

    “Well… I think it will be a long time before it is reflected in the pricing for personal use.”

    I answered.

    My grandma was born before the war. Telephones were still in use at the time, and real-time voice communication was possible from one end of Japan to the other. Sending an email from Koriyama to Aizu now takes roughly a minute. It takes 20 minutes in Tokyo. It’s nearly immediate with satellite transmission, yet a 67-word SMS costs 200 yen. You won’t be able to use it unless you’re a businessman who can deduct it as an expense.

    My grandma, who lives alone in Koriyama, far from her daughter and husband, must be desperate for cheaper communication costs. However, due to expansion, relay antennas on the ground become less and less useful, while satellites are almost totally packed with bandwidth for industrial use, making them inaccessible for personal usage.

    “It’s amazing that you applied to a university in Tokyo.”

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    Grandma said something along those lines. It’s not like I’m going to attend the University of Tokyo and I am merely “taking” the exam, but people in this provincial city seem to think that just because it’s named “Tokyo,” it must be something great.

    I don’t care if it’s my generation, my parents’ generation, or my grandmother’s generation; if people who could easily travel to Tokyo by train or metro say such things, it appears to me that the people of this region have a city complex profoundly embedded in their DNA. No, the best example is myself, who opted to study heavy element engineering only to travel to Tokyo, but I think it’s in my DNA.

 

    I went to meet Miura-senpai after the exam since I had some time before the bus back home. We had an early dinner at McDonald’s in the York Benimaru.

    “I thought you were smart, but I didn’t expect you to go to a university in Tokyo.”

    As he ate a beef burger, which is exclusively available in Tohoku, he said. On this big open Tohoku road, I don’t think there’s any merit in being termed “exclusive,” yet it appears to be the inclination of the Japanese to place “exclusive” first. When the international lunar base is a little more developed, there may be an “Earth-only burger.”

    “No, as I’ve said many times, I’m not going to TODAI, and Tohoku University is more impressive in terms of deviation.”

    Mostly, I’ve only just taken the exam. Well, I had a reasonable response to the exam, so I figured I’d get it.

    “I can’t recall either of them. Which department was it?”

    “Department of Heavy Element Engineering, Faculty of Science and Technology.”

    “Hmm… Well, I don’t know much about science, but that’s amazing.”

    When he didn’t understand something, this senior, who was a year ahead of me in the brass band, would exclaim, “Wow, that’s amazing.” He was popular among the club’s underclassmen because he had a giving attitude that complemented his ample physique, and he was quick to compliment others for their efforts. He is presently enrolled in the School of Business Administration at Koriyama University.

    “I mean, I thought you were going to Niigata. And there’s also Azuki-chan.”

    “No, please don’t talk about that anymore. Really. I’ll get mad.”

    “Ah, my bad, my bad.”

    We talked about this while eating a burger that was not exclusive to Tohoku, and then went for a short walk in the nearby train park.

    The park’s official name was “History and Music Park,” but because of the locomotive at the park’s perimeter, all Koriyama residents referred to it as “Train Park.” The Banetsu Line’s pre-war lines have been beautifully preserved, and it appears that the mayor of the city turned it into a park several generations ago. Only a few hundred meters of track remain, but it is currently used by colorfully painted trolleys and is filled with children on holidays.

    “I heard that before the war, you could get to Wakamatsu in an hour with this thing.”

    “Wow, that’s amazing,” exclaimed my senior again, as I stared at the tracks. When there was no such thing as global expansion and land was a symbol of something concrete called “real estate,” the government would lay down iron tracks across the country and run these massive iron blocks on them. It was a period when the world was much smaller than it is now, and we could go much further.

    “How many kilometers was it from Wakamatsu to Koriyama?”

    “I believe it was roughly 830 kilometers. The pace of expansion has been stable for a while now.”

    “Eh, really? It was 805 kilometers when I was there. It was the same as my exam number, so I remembered it well.”

    He said this with a distant look in his eyes. While I was spending time like this, my hometown was becoming more and more distant to me.

    2013 AD, 70 years after the expansion began. Traveling to neighboring cities by bus takes a whole day. That was the era in which we lived.

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