Now, I arrived in Las Vegas again, and Takahashi let me stay in his apartment's living room for a few days. Then, his junior, Tamura, heard that he was looking for a roommate. At this time, my mild mania was still lingering loosely.

I decided to move to Tamura's 2LDK apartment. The living room was about 12 tatami mats, and there were two rooms, each about 7 tatami mats. It was around $700 (¥70,000) per month, so it felt incredibly cheap.

Tamura was from Okayama and held a second-degree black belt in judo. As soon as I moved in, he brewed coffee he had roasted himself. Even though instant coffee would have been fine for me, I thought it was stylish. Also, he loved computers and was using an IBM laptop that cost around ¥400,000 at the time. With it, he made voice calls to the U.S. Marine Corps stationed in Okinawa.

Furthermore, for some reason, he had the debut novel of Gaku Miyazaki, a crucial witness in the Glico-Morinaga case, titled "The Breaker." For those who speak Japanese as their native language in America, I think they must really hunger for Japanese print. So, I read it too, and it was a book that felt very real, pulling me into its pages.

I bought a used Toyota car. Until then, Tamura had been cycling to a supermarket about a kilometer away with a backpack to buy groceries, so my car was appreciated. By the way, Johnny Takahashi had a Taiwanese girlfriend named Stephanie. On a day off, we decided to have a curry party at my place. At that time, Stephanie asked if it was okay to bring her Taiwanese friend Ellen, and I said it was absolutely fine.

When I met Stephanie and Ellen that day, they were petite and charming. They were studying hotel management, just like Tamura, at the university. I didn't know that there were quite a few Taiwan-born people who were pro-Japan. We talked about whether it was possible to live in America over curry and beer, and the day came to an end. After they left, Tamura and I talked about how it would be nice if we could get girlfriends like them.

Now, I had forgotten to ask my piano teacher, Yuki-sensei, for her address, as mentioned earlier. However, through correspondence with a fellow student from the drum class, I was able to get her my address. But my mind wasn't quite there.

Yukiko-sensei asked one of the male students how I was doing, and he said she was worried because she was mentally and physically exhausted. I liked her, and it might be a misunderstanding, but I thought she also had feelings for me. So, I had an intuitive feeling that I might have pushed her into depression.

Now, the community college I enrolled in offered a course that could be completed in one year. So, I studied English intensively on my own for about six months. Strangely enough, I started to understand conversations quite well. However, there were not enough students for the travel and tourism classes I was majoring in, so the classes couldn't be held. The school told us that we could work up to 20 hours a week until the classes started.

I already had the Social Security Number that I needed to start the part-time job, thanks to advice from Takahashi. My savings were running low, so being able to work part-time was actually a relief for me. Moreover, since there was a flood of Japanese tourists, I was told by the company president that I was already working well beyond 20 hours a week.

I chose to work at the same travel agency as Takahashi called Blue Sky. The job was simple - checking in customers who landed at the airport and checking out those who were leaving the hotel to catch their flights. In addition to this straightforward job, there was also the task of taking customers to the Grand Canyon West Rim within the Indian reservation in Arizona.

Takahashi kindly taught me the ropes at work. To give you a rough idea of the Grand Canyon tour, it involved sightseeing at the Hoover Dam, which was built as part of the New Deal policy during the Great Depression in the 1920s, shopping at souvenir shops, and sightseeing at the West Rim.

The Grand Canyon in the national park is more famous, but the West Rim is also quite impressive and moving. In the old days, a crude gondola was suspended from the land 1.5 kilometers above the Colorado River to the opposite bank, where we went to collect swallow droppings, which were used as a material for expensive cosmetics. Except for one incident, there were no complaints about this West Rim tour. I'll write about that later.

I continued to hang out with Kelly, Jack, Takahashi, Stephanie, Julia, and Ellen. Tamura, my roommate, started dating a Japanese exchange student from his university, and things seemed to be going well. I also stayed in touch with Yoshimoto in Boston.

However, I ended up having a falling out with Tamura due to a certain incident. At the time, he was interning at a major travel agency. While I was fine just working part-time because the classes at the community college weren't offered, he had a different situation. He had demanding university classes to attend, and he was exhausted from juggling that with his job at the travel agency.

One evening, when I returned home, the apartment door was half-open, and his bag was hanging on the door. Inside his bag was the cherished IBM laptop. I opened the door, entered with the bag, but there was no sound coming from his room.

I had a bad feeling, so I went to the security guard at the apartment to consult, and he called the police for us. A patrol car arrived quickly, and they agreed to search the apartment. After about ten minutes, they came back to us and said that he had just been sleeping and went home. Then, I returned to the apartment.

Tamura, rubbing the back of his head, looked defeated and said, "I was just getting ready like this," crossing his wrists, holding a flashlight in his left hand, and a pistol in his right hand. I couldn't help but laugh at how ridiculous it was. He glared at me sternly. So, I said:

"Look, the door was half-open, and your precious laptop was hanging there. Anyone would find it strange. This is America, you know."

He fell silent.

The problem was that winter. I had fallen into a depressive state after the mild mania, but there was a female black cat that I had noticed living outside the apartment for a while, and I occasionally fed her. Surprisingly, winters in Las Vegas were quite cold, and I couldn't bear it, so I decided to keep her in the apartment.

However, it seemed that Tamura had never had a cat before, and he didn't like things like her going up on the kitchen counter. Also, Nyanko-sensei didn't like being locked in the room and wanted to go out freely, so I kept the apartment door half-open.

Then, a few days later, Tamura, who had become impatient, shouted loudly, "Kakkun, you told me not to leave the door hWhen I said, "Huh? The situation is different now than before," Tamura responded:

"I've decided to move out of this apartment."

And so, we ended up living separately. I remembered that Eric, an IT engineer I had become acquainted with in the community college's music class, was looking for a roommate. I still remembered that he was looking for one, so I sent him an email. The answer was yes, and it was arranged for me to go see his apartment.alf-open!"