Stories that land

Hamatani and the dumplings on his doorknob

Hamatani came home to find food hanging on his door. He thought he knew which friend to thank.

Before the story

Comedian Hamatani (ハマカーンの浜谷) remembers a delivery to the inexpensive apartment where he used to live.

A delivery at home

The apartment I used to live in cost 22,000 yen a month. No bath, shared toilet. At night, when I turned my light off, the light from next door came shining through. Such atmosphere… A very stylish dump.

One night I came home and found five or six sasa dango—dumplings wrapped in leaves—hanging in a bunch from my doorknob.

I was broke, so my friends often brought me things to eat.

There was this comedian I knew, Tsuyoshi, who loved a prank. Once he’d let himself into my room and left a cardboard box of CalorieMate. Stuck into the top of the box was a card:

“From Cat’s Eye.”

So I thought, maybe these dumplings were from Tsuyoshi too. I called him.

“Hey, Tsuyoshi. Thanks for the dumplings.”

“What? Dumplings? I don’t know anything about that.”

The other person I could think of was Akira. I called him and said, “Thanks for the sasa dango.”

“Sasa dango? What’s that?”

He didn’t even know what they were…

Now I was getting a really bad feeling.

I’d already eaten some… What if there was something weird in them?

Honestly, the lock on that apartment might as well not have been there. Anybody could get in.

So I peeled the leaves off the remaining dumplings to check them.

One of them was split open. That scared me. I looked closer, and there was a tiny piece of paper:

“From Cat’s Eye.”

He’d really gone to some trouble…

But I was kind of happy.

Two dumplings wrapped in green leaves and tied with string against a brown background.

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