I awoke to the New Year and rested lazily on my futon, snuggled beneath the warmth of a down blanket while looking up at the ceiling. Outside was stillness and a deep quiet, a sense of inertia, calm and a peaceful mood of tranquillity begging to remain undisturbed.

On a regular workday I would not have the luxury to enjoy such a restful slumber. I'd be up and about my morning ritual, performing a programmed morning liturgy which would get me off and going for another day. But this was the New Year. It begins with a yawn, a time when all unnecessary motion comes to a halt.

I hear the murmured engine of a scooter approaching my apartment and it grinds to a sudden halt. It is a familiar sound and one which heralds the delivery of mail. Today's is a special delivery for a special day. What is being delivered are not letters, bills and junk mail but nengajos, those small postcard greetings as cryptic as a haiku. They are voices from the distant past who cared and dared enough to send a card lest my memory of them continues to fade. Such cards beg for immortality and are assertions to make one's life relevant rather than obscure.

The cards are usually simple in design and may include a recent photo taken at Disneyland or a beach resort. They are stamped with the year's animal from the Chinese zodiac. This year is to be the year of the snake.

A soft thud echoes in my slot as the postman drops my packet of New Year cards into my mailbox. The sound of his retreating footsteps echo down the corridor as he goes back to his bike and off to the next apartment house, a Santa without a sled. Again silence.

This brief intrusion of the postman's delivery has been silenced by the holiday. Everyone is still asleep having gone to bed in the early hours of a new day approaching dawn. At the Cinderella stroke of midnight everyone had gone to their local shrine to perform hatsumode, a yearly ritual which centers around the symbolic gesture of visiting a shrine to offer their first (and perhaps their last) visit of the New Year. It is one of those rituals without meaning, not unlike the agnostic Christian who goes to midnight Mass on Christmas eve.

Having returned from hatsumode they eat zoni and noodles like Pavlovian dogs before retiring for the night. Now, here at the new dawn they are still asleep.

I crawl out from under the warm blanket which covers my futon and a shiver runs through me as I embrace the cold of my poorly heated apartment. I put on the kerosene heater with the hope that within a few minutes the room may get warmer. Ever so slowly it does.

Throwing on an old winter yukata I go to the mailbox and retrieve the package of nengajos. I am disappointed. The packet is half as large as I expected. I had sent out twice as many and received but a token several dozen in return. As usual, this year I gave out more love than I received.

I take the packet of cards securely held together with a rubber band and prepare for myself a cup of coffee. Reading nengajos is a leisurely ritual, not to be hurried. Besides there was nothing else assigned to my morning agenda.

I get the usual cards from people from the distant past whom I might never see again, and cards from new acquaintances from the recent past whom I may never care to meet again; cards which tell of last year's achievements and milestones; a new birth, a job appointment, a new house under construction and other trivia which make for social binding.

Among the cards in the package, however, is one from someone who signed her name simply as Kimiko. It is written in a cute script with two hearts written over the "i"s where a dot should be. At the end of her signature is a cartoon face with a broad smile.

She write in her message the following, " Thank you for taking care of me this past year. I hope that you will continue to take care of me again this year. Love Kimiko"

I am both surprised and puzzled because I do not know any Kimikos, not even the slightest hint of an acquaintance so named. I know a Kumiko and a Komiko and a Kimoko and a Kinako, but not one Kimiko.

Also, her last name is equally mysterious - Daikon. It's a strange name and one which I had never heard before in the vast lexicon of surnames. I associated daikon with a Japanese radish ready for the nabe hot pot, but not as a last name for a friend or colleague.

I know many Tanakas, a half-dozen Fujiwaras, and several dozen Yamamotos, but unfortunately not even one Daikon.

I reach to get my address booklet and double check the name Kimiko Daikon to see if, hidden somewhere in the accumulated pages, her name will appear. It doesn't. Then I search my computer data base for the same, hoping for a clue. There is none to be found. I then go to my file of business cards. I flip through hundreds of them - no Kimiko Daikon.

Then I double check the address to whom the card was sent and see my name and address clearly printed on the card with a small heart over the 'i' of my first name.

I resign myself to the reality that I have a secret admirer but one who is not so secret because her address is also printed on the card begging for a reply. We live in the same city. So, I conclude that Kimiko is someone whose life I had touched and who deems the contact worthy enough for a New Year card's recognition.

I rush trough my mind all the possible places where I could have met a Kimiko. Was she the girl at McDonald's who serves me my Egg McMuffin every Saturday morning? Or was she the bank clerk who knows exactly how much I am worth and fantasizes that there may be more stashed away in bonds and securities?

Perhaps she is the young clerk at the supermarket who checks out my groceries and "Daikon" is not her real name but merely a clue to her profession.

Suddenly I realize that I have presumed too much. I have concluded that Kimiko is a young woman because of the 'i's crowned with a childlike heart, but Kimiko can also be a middle-aged or elderly woman locked in eternal adolescence, a genre of female quite common to the culture.

Could Kimiko be the old lady who delivers my newspaper in the morning at 4 A.M. even during typhoons and snow storms? Could she be the hostess of the snack I once visited by chance who approved of my off-pitch singing of "Yesterday"?

Realizing that I might never know, and too embarrassed to ask her directly, I reach for a blank nengajo card from a pack especially prepared for such an emergency. I address the card to Kimiko Daikon and place small hearts over the ' i's in her name as I set down my message, "Thank you, Kimiko, for your thoughtful card at the New Year. I hope I can continue to be of help to you throughout the year to come..Lots of Love,...."

I pause and then sign my name.

Stories