Japanese

The Hanaya's kitchen, the morning after the New Year show: Ben retells the bun story to Kenta, who wasn't there, as if it were happening now, and Mrs. Sato answers with a proverb and the name of the man who teaches it on Thursdays.

Thursday evening at the neighbourhood hall: Mr. Hoshino sits Ben on the cushion, gives him a fan and a hand towel, turns his head left and right for the voices, tells him the audience laughs only when he can be silent, and names him Maple after his cat.

At the hall, Mr. Hoshino starts Ben on the first scene of the bun story, five friends naming what they fear, tells him his old man sounds like a boy, and shows him how the clever one says buns as if ashamed; at home Yui asks for the bun man and finds him fake-sounding, which is the point.

Back in the Hanaya's kitchen, Ben has forgotten a whole scene in front of the circle, and Mrs. Sato answers with proverbs, even monkeys fall from trees, three years on a stone, fall seven times and get up eight, while Natsuki reports that Maple sleeps on his practice cushion, which earns the cat a proverb too.

At the immigration office in Shinagawa, Ben applies for permanent residency with Kenta as his guarantor, and the officer tells him the result will be posted as soon as the examination is complete, and that he can't say when; at the Hanaya, Kenta asks whether he pays if Ben runs off, and Mrs. Sato says good news comes to those who wait asleep.

The university hall in Tokyo on graduation day: Sota and Mio in hakama, Yui's parents up from Kyoto, a father who remembers the nursery gate and denies that he is crying, and a photo of all six with Hana.

At the hall, the circle works on the saury story: a lord who has never eaten plain food smells grilled saury while hunting in Meguro and loves it, and back at the castle his cooks bone it and steam it into nothing, so he decides the fish is best from Meguro, which is the punchline, said slowly and without a smile.

At the hall, Mr. Hoshino gives Ben the four words a story walks on, now then, whereupon, however, and so, with a breath before each, and the rule for the punchline: say it, bow, don't move; at the Hanaya's bar, Kenta times Ben's three seconds of silence and calls it the quietest he has ever been.

The house in Asakusa, Yui's mother on the phone: Ben reports Hana's new word, bu-bu, and what it means, Yui lists the others, nya for Maple, manma for food, and papa for the television, and Yui's mother remembers that Yui's wan-wan was her father, for a year.

At Tsubame Travel's Asakusa office, Ben is muttering the long name of the old story, and Mr. Kudo, who learned it at nursery like every Tokyo child, says it with him and tells him that for a foreigner it is very good, which Ben knows is a complaint inside a compliment.

At the Hanaya's bar, the evening before Sota's first day at Sumida Foods, he rehearses his self-introduction, Ben fixes the bow and the last rule, Yui teases him with the grudging and yet, and Mrs. Sato offers a six o'clock phone call.

Friday night at the Hanaya's bar: Sota tells his first week at Sumida Foods, the copies, the phone answered like at home, the tea on the section chief's desk, with the storyteller's and then I went and; Kenta answers with the suitcase in the bath, and Ben asks for it again with the pause.

Thursday evening at the hall: Mr. Hoshino, Ben and Ms. Ogawa tell The Zoo a scene at a time, the man with no work in the dead tiger's skin, the buns, the sign, and just when he thinks he is safe, the lion, whose whisper is the punchline.

Late at the house in Asakusa, Sota tells Ben and Yui how his welcome party went: what he said, what he was told, what the section chief said and what Ms. Ota said, with the three ways of reporting a line, and Yui names the compliment that is a complaint.

On the train home from the airport after Golden Week in Toronto, Yui's parents tell the trip: two fathers four hours in one boat without a word, the fish that got away, which is always big, the mornings they never got lost on, Hana's word for a canoe, and next year at Lake Biwa.

At the Hanaya's front desk, Sota's first visit as a supplier with his trainer watching: Kenta plays the hard customer with the hedge Ben taught him, Sota forgets his humble voice, Kenta names what is going on with so that's what this is, and Ms. Ota gives her verdict.

At the Hanaya's front desk, Natsuki's mother phones from Hokkaido and asks everything, her father asks for the owner, Kenta says his first humble words to him, her father answers with the sentence a parent says to the people his daughter works with, invites him north and says goodbye the Hokkaido way, and Ben reads the one word that mattered.

Sunday night in the Hanaya's kitchen, a month into the job: Sota got an order wrong and wants to quit, Mrs. Sato answers with the stone, Ben tells his Osaka presentation and the time he had no choice but to redo it, Sota finds he can't not go tomorrow, and Mrs. Sato sends him to bed with a six o'clock call.

Thursday at the hall, three weeks before the show: Mr. Hoshino teaches the minute before a story, Ben tries two jokes at his own expense, the cat's name and the backpack, learns to say what the audience is thinking before they do, asks what happens if nobody laughs, and Ms. Ogawa knows the answer is not a compliment.

Ben's birthday in June at the Hanaya: a cake, Yui's was it thirty-four again, Kenta's unfinished sentence about being thirty-five, Sota's question about what he is waiting for, Mrs. Sato's proverb that good deeds should hurry, and the lord's saury line asked for at the table.

Mr. Hoshino's own teacher visits the circle and hears Ben's scene from Scared of Buns: the old man is good, the young one is Canadian, and since there is no way to hide an accent, Ben is told to use it, to change one line and never the punchline, and that every show happens once.

At the hall Mr. Hoshino starts Time Noodles: a noodle stand late at night, a customer who flatters the sign, the chopsticks and the broth, slurps, pays his sixteen coins one by one in the old numbers, asks the time at eight, and walks off one coin ahead while a man in the shadows watches.

The second half of Time Noodles: the man who watched tries the trick the next night, far too early, at a worse stand, with hot broth and cold noodles, asks the time at eight, is told four, and when he tries it he finds he has paid for twenty; at home, Yui sends Ben to bed after the hundredth count.

Ben's first performance, Time Noodles, at a small hall in Asakusa with the whole Hanaya in the front row: Mr. Hoshino sends him on with one time, one meeting, Kenta heckles, Mrs. Sato hushes him, Sota shouts the answer, and afterwards Yui tells him the moment he said four the whole room laughed.

Late on the river bank by the Hanaya, Kenta asks Ben how he proposed to Yui, says he wants to ask Natsuki and that it doesn't look like he'll manage to say it, and Ben answers with Mrs. Sato's proverb, that giving birth is easier than worrying about it, and with the news that everyone already knows.

At a jeweller's in Ginza, Kenta doesn't know Natsuki's size and Ben does the polite talking: size nine, his wife asked her; Kenta says never mind the price, quotes the television's three months' salary, the jeweller says these days the two of them decide, and Kenta chooses the plain ring because she doesn't like things that shine.

In the Hanaya's breakfast room after closing, Kenta says he was the last to notice and asks Natsuki to marry him; she says yes, gladly, and then, in her first plain sentence to him, that she had been meaning to say it first; Ben coughs in the corridor, Yui says he coughed at theirs too, and Kenta calls them in.

A formal afternoon at the Hanaya with Natsuki's parents up from Hokkaido: Kenta kneels and asks to be allowed to marry her, her mother asks whether she will work the front desk forever, Mrs. Sato says she will be the next hostess, her father says the set phrase about a clumsy daughter and then, in Hokkaido speech, that Kenta is a really good man.

Late in the Hanaya's kitchen, with sake, Mrs. Sato tells how Kenta's grandfather came as a guest for one night, stayed that once and never went home, was told by her father to pay or work, and worked; Ben says he came for one night too, and she answers that he married Yui, not the inn, and that her story took fifty years to tell and his six months.

At the Hanaya's bar, Kenta asks Ben to be his best man and give the speech; Ben answers with the office's polite no, Kenta names the trick, forbids the story of the suitcase in the bath, and Ben promises the speech and not the story, while Mrs. Sato says a speech is a story that ends with a bow and Yui says it starts tomorrow.