Sarah nodded importantly. This had happened less than half an hour ago. She had folded up the futon comforters, stowed them in the closet, and was heading toward the dining room when she was struck by a sudden urge to see the garden where she had played so often as a little girl. Hurrying over to the wall of sliding glass doors that opened out onto the garden, she had thrown open the heavy, floor-length drapes. The metal rollers slid back with a shhh, like a receding wave, and the room was suffused with green light.

The garden was pleasantly unchanged-although smaller than she remembered-with the same four-legged stone lantern in one corner and the familiar stepping-stones spaced at artistically irregular intervals. The roof’s extended eaves cut off the sky, intensifying the effect of mass foliage: maple and yuzu and bamboo and camellia, all at the peak of summer lushness.

From a slightly stooped position Sarah could peer up, under the eaves and over the wooden fence and the dwarf yuzu tree, and get a good view of Granny Asaki’s second-story balcony. Mrs. Asaki was pinning up handkerchiefs and socks on the clothesline. She, too, was unchanged: small and spry, with the faint beginnings of a hunchback, and dyed black hair slicked into a small bun at the nape of her neck. Immediately spotting the girl’s face at the window, the elderly woman leaned over the wooden railing and vigorously waved a wet handkerchief, causing a large crow to flap up from a nearby pine branch. Sarah waved back.

“It was almost like she’d been watching our house,” Sarah now reported to her mother and grandmother. From past experience, she knew that any evidence of Mrs. Asaki’s nosiness was guaranteed to hold their attention. But the Japanese code of conduct deemed that children-even teenagers-should remain unsullied by any awareness of adult conflict, so Sarah made her remark with an air of bland innocence.

To her satisfaction, the women once again exchanged knowing glances.

“Granny Asaki has sharp eyes,” said Mrs. Rexford dryly. Then, catching herself, she switched to a tone of bright geniality. “Not nearsighted, like the rest of us! Her health is remarkable, especially for someone her age…it must be the good family genes! Ne, Father?”

Mr. Kobayashi, who shared his elder sister’s robust health, chuckled with pleased pride, and his wife murmured that good health was indeed a quality to be envied. The two women turned back to Sarah with expectant faces. Then, perceiving that this was the extent of the girl’s contribution, they drifted off to another topic.

“That reminds me,” said Mrs. Kobayashi several minutes later, “I think you and Sarah should go visit them first. They usually finish breakfast by eight thirty. So eat fast and run over there, quick, before they show up here.”

“Why shouldn’t they show up here?” Mrs. Rexford said. Relaxed and smiling, she made no attempt to eat faster. “I’m the older one. Masako should come to me, even if her husband’s a little older than I am.”

“No, no,” said Mrs. Kobayashi. “Forget Masako’s husband. Granny Asaki’s the real head of that house. And she outranks our head…” She nodded toward her own husband, whose face was obscured by the lacquered bowl from which he was drinking.

“But, Mother, it’s not Granny who’s going to be coming over. Everyone knows I’ll pay her my formal respects during visiting hours. We’re just talking about my generation.”

“There is no such thing,” said Mrs. Kobayashi, “as just my generation.” She glanced surreptitiously at her husband. He was drinking a mixture of rice and tea with loud abandon, clearly uninterested in the conversation.

Mrs. Kobayashi leaned forward and silently mouthed the words Be careful. The women’s expressions were no longer amused but grave.

Watching this, Sarah felt the first stirring of curiosity.

Mrs. Rexford looked up at the clock. Sarah followed her gaze. The clock was a shiny modern piece, incongruous with the aged wall post on which it hung. The wooden post dated back to a more traditional time, when aesthetically minded craftsmen used to leave small remnants of nature in their work. Each wall post in the room retained some individual quirk: a curious burl, or the serpentine tracks of beetle larvae just below the surface of the wood.

“A little more rice, Father-san?” Mrs. Kobayashi asked, holding out her hand in anticipation of her husband’s empty bowl. They waited in silence while he drank down the last drop.

“Aaa,” he said, handing the bowl over. He then turned to Sarah. “Do people in America talk this much about manners?” he asked. “They just do whatever they feel like, right? Anytime they want?”

“Soh, pretty much.” She giggled politely, and her grandfather chuckled with her. But there was more to this than etiquette. What it was she couldn’t say, but there was definitely something more.

Someone was tapping on the frosted glass panels of the kitchen door. The women froze, chopsticks in midair, and looked up at the clock. It was far too early! Only a quarter after eight!

But it was just the two little girls from the Asaki house, ages eight and eleven. They had slipped away from their mother in their eagerness to come early. They stood bashfully outside the kitchen door, peering up at the breakfast scene. They had to look up, since the vestibule was a foot above ground level and the main tatami floor was another two feet above that.

Instantly the energy of the house altered; there were peals of excited laughter from the women, exclamations of “Come on up! Don’t be shy!” and “Look, Sarah, you have visitors!” There was a flurry to fetch additional floor cushions, which were encased in summer cotton covers of white and blue to suggest the coolness of ice and water. Room was made at the breakfast table, a tin of chocolates brought down from the cabinet. Mr. Kobayashi, outnumbered by all the females, picked up his cup of green tea and wandered off to a quieter room. On his way out, he stooped down and affectionately ruffled the little girls’ heads as they bent over to line up their sandals properly in the small cement vestibule. Grinning up at him, the barefooted girls clambered up the high wooden step onto the tatami mats.

There was no choice now but to stay and entertain them; this resolved the etiquette dilemma for both houses involved. Sarah wondered if the girls’ mother, also unsure as to the best policy, had purposely turned a blind eye. If so, it had been a tactful move on her part.

“Look at you both, how big and fine you’ve grown!” Mrs. Rexford cried, grasping each girl’s shoulder with a Western-style physicality that Sarah had never seen her use back home in America.

Clearly smitten, the two little girls beamed up at her.

“So healthy and brown!” Mrs. Rexford’s face glowed with heightened emotion. It was years since she had laid eyes on real Japanese children. Yesterday at the airport, she had followed her fellow Japanese travelers with avid eyes, remarking wistfully that in her youth, she had never really appreciated the cuteness of Asian babies. Sarah, vaguely stung by this comment, had made a noncommittal grunt.

The two girls sat down, their eyes moving rapidly over the elaborate breakfast spread. They looked nothing like the chubby little girls of five years ago. They had the same slender build, doll-like bangs, and high Kobayashi cheekbones that Mrs. Rexford had in old photographs.

Mrs. Kobayashi, as if thinking along these same lines, sighed. “You know, Yo-chan,” she said, “they remind me so much of you as a child.” Sarah felt a stab of jealousy.

Little Yashiko, her tan accentuated by a white tank top, eyed Sarah’s pale arms with timid curiosity. “Do children play outdoors in America?” she asked.

“Yes, of course,” said Sarah. “But I have to be careful so I don’t burn and peel.” The girls looked mystified. Mrs. Kobayashi and Mrs. Rexford and even their own mother were every bit as white as Sarah, but in their youth they had all been brown. It was a rite of passage: Japanese girls stayed in the sun until adulthood, upon which they switched standards and adopted pale makeup and shielded their complexions with parasols.