Inokashira Park is the landmark behind the one-storey house where Itoh receives Toru Watanabe. The visit turns the park’s outskirts into a private refuge: over whisky, grilled smelts, and Mozart, Watanabe finds himself calming down for the first time in ages.## Setting and the visit Itoh’s flat was in a strange, one-storey house behind Inokashira Park, its room crowded with painting supplies and canvases. When Watanabe asked to see Itoh’s work, Itoh was too embarrassed to show it. Instead, they shared Chivas Regal that Itoh had quietly taken from his father’s place and grilled smelts on a charcoal stove. The intimate, unshowy hospitality makes the visit less a tour of an artist’s work than a pause in which the two students can simply be together.

They listened to Robert Casadesus playing a Mozart piano concerto. Itoh, whose father had introduced him to Mozart when he was very young, spoke about the composer with detailed familiarity. Watanabe knew less about classical music, but Itoh’s heartfelt commentary helped him settle; the pair watched the crescent moon over the park and finished the whisky. The scene binds place to sound and companionship: beyond the crowded room, the moon and park provide a quiet frame for an exchange that does not demand Watanabe explain himself.## Itoh and Watanabe Itoh is a gentle, quiet art-college student whom Watanabe first met through their restaurant jobs. Both like books and music, and their friendship grows through conversation at a nearby bar and, here, through a more intimate evening at Itoh’s home. Itoh’s embarrassment about his paintings sits alongside his certainty about music: he is reluctant to expose his own work, yet speaks confidently and affectionately about Mozart.

That difference shapes the encounter. The concerto is not merely background; Itoh’s attentive listening and commentary offer Watanabe a way into a shared experience without requiring him to perform ease or disclose his troubles. By the end of the evening Watanabe feels calmer than he has in a long time. Itoh offers him a place to spend the night, but Watanabe says he has something he needs to do and leaves before nine. The respite is real, but brief.## Narrative significance The park-side visit stands out among Watanabe’s episodes of isolation as a small, concrete instance of connection. Its details—smelts on the charcoal stove, whisky taken from Itoh’s father, Mozart on the record player, and the crescent moon above Inokashira Park—gather around a temporary peace rather than a lasting solution. Watanabe leaves for a reason he does not explain, then calls Midori from a phone box on his way home. The scene therefore links one form of companionship to another: Itoh’s hospitality steadies him enough to continue toward a more emotionally consequential contact.