"Tsutsui, Yasutama - The Polar King" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tsutsui Yasutaka)

Yasutama Tsutsui
The Polar King

This is the assignment essay for the summer vacation.
The assignment was to write an essay titled "A Summer Vacation Trip".
I heard that Kano had been to Hawaii with his mother.
Farther than that, Fujimori's family took her to Canada, which is much farther than Hawaii.
But I had no one to take me to a trip because I have neither Father nor Mother.
My Father and Mother died in a traffic accident when I was four years old. Ever since then, I have been living with Grandmother.
Everybody is going to make fun of me since I have not travelled anywhere so I cannot write the assignment essay.
Yet, to tell the truth, I've had a trip.
I went there alone.
This is true.
The place I've been is much much farther than Hawaii or even Canada.
It is the North Pole.
I'm not lying, not at all.
The reason I could go to such a far place by myself is because I had a letter of invitation from Polar King.
The letter went like this:
Dear Kazuhiro Uno,
How are you doing?
How is your grandmother?
Prices and taxes have gone up too high these days, haven't they?
I suppose, Kazuhiro, you will not go out anywhere during the summer vacation.
But that will give you trouble when the time comes to write the summer assignment essay.
So I invite you to the North Pole.
The North Pole is a wonderful place.
I would be glad if you'd come.
Don't worry about the train fare. Use the ticket I enclosed.
I'm looking forward to seeing you.
Sincerely,Polar King
I showed the letter to Grandmother right away.
She was very pleased and the next day she got up early in the morning to prepare a lunch box for me.
"Take extra underwear with you as the North Pole is a cold place," said Grandmother, putting my underwear and the lunch box into my bag.
She also gave me a thousand yen.
In the morning, Friday, August sixteenth, I set out for the North Pole with my bag.
Leaving home but going in the opposite direction from school, I turned the corner of Tomoe-Ya Candy Store, and went through Hachiman-Mae Mall, passing Sakura Beauty Parlor, then came out in front of Takasu-Hachiman Station.
I presented my ticket from Polar King to the ticket taker.
He was surprised at the ticket and said, "Well, well. You'll go all the way to the North Pole all by yourself? Good boy!"
A train bound for Hagite-Ochiai came along after I'd been waiting on the platform for a while.
There were many people in the train and every one of them gave me a pat on the back when they heard I was visiting the North Pole alone.
Passing the railroad bridge across Kamito River and making stops at stations such as Higashi-Tugumo-Cho and Hachiken-Sakagami, the train arrived at Hagite-Ochiai.
I had to change there. I asked a railroad officer at the station which train I should transfer to.
There were many people on that train too, but I could find a seat.
The train rushed, rushed and rushed through rice fields, farms and villages, through forests and woods, through big towns and beaches, through mountains and meadows, through railroad bridges and tunnels, and through countless numbers of them.
The train seemed going northward and northward.
At the northern end of Japan is Hokkaido.
I arrived at Hokkaido by train.
According to a railroad officer at Hokkaido Station, the land of Soviet Union is the north of Hokkaido, so you cannot go farther north unless you take a Soviet train.
The officer also told me that Japan and the Soviet Union once had been in a bad mood, fighting, invading territories and once friends,--well, now they are still getting along--besides, there had been countless of various other things that you cannot explain in a word, the numbers of complicating, troublesome affairs between them, therefore the Japanese train cannot go into the Soviet land.
So I had to walk from Hokkaido Station to the entrance of the Soviet Union.