The chapter opens with a flashback to the beginning of the novel, in which the narrator tells the reader that he is a third-year student at the school of Hashimoto-Sanimoto. The narrator tells us that he was born and raised in the United States, and that he has been studying in Japan since he was a young child. He tells the story of how his father died when he was only eight years old, and how he came to live in the U.S.