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Tokyo with three thousand other English teachers on their way to every corner of Japan. We traveled twelve hours by bus from Tokyo to Kanazawa, then two hours by train to Hakui, then completed the final leg of the journey by taxi. By the time the white-gloved driver reached our new address, the only light came from his headlights, which shone off the aluminum siding, two yellow tunnels attracting a flurry of insects. The back doors of the cab opened automatically. The driver handed us our luggage, bowed and sped off. In the darkness, I fumbled to find the key that Miyoshi-sensei had sent to New York, along with a letter apologizing for the fact that his vacation coincided with our arrival, so he couldn’t come to the station to meet us. I’d barely opened the door when the stench hit us, a physical blow.
    â€œSomething must have died in there,” Carolyn said, gagging as she backed away.
    She wasn’t that far off.
    The refrigerator loomed inside the genkan , the Japanese entryway traditionally reserved for taking off shoes, putting on slippers, and displaying a floral arrangement. It was a hulking vintage Amana with rounded corners and a cherry red handle, the enamel yellowing like old teeth and splotched with the pale ghosts of lost alphabet magnets, the words “jesussaves” arced at eye level. Pinned behind one remaining magnet was a receipt from a slaughterhouse in Nebraska. The previous tenants, a pair of Mennonite missionaries, had ordered half a cow to be shipped on dry ice to Japan. But in the month of July that elapsed between their departure and our arrival, the house electricity was cut. The stench of rotten meat had seeped out of the refrigerator and into the walls, which are made of a plaster that holds odor like an old sponge. We pinched our noses, but the smell was so foul that we could taste it.
    â€œI told you we should’ve seen the house before signing a lease,” Carolyn said, pressing her face to the inside of her elbow. “I don’t know why you were in such a big fucking hurry.” It didn’t seem like the moment to admit the truth. In Miyoshi-sensei’s welcome letter, he’d told me that aside from this house, “a traditional Japanese house built in the Showa period,” the only local apartments for rent were six tatami mat studios, “too small for two Americans to share.” Carolyn had brought up the idea of renting separate apartments of our own. She thought that living together for the first time in Japan could put too much pressure on our relationship, that we risked becoming overly dependent on each other. But I persuaded her that we shouldn’t pass up the chance to live in a traditional Japanese house. I also convinced her to use the tips she’d saved waiting tables all year to cover the “key money,” six months’ rent up front, which was nonrefundable.
    â€œI’m sure the rest of the house is nice,” I said, crossing my fingers that this was true.
    To get past the fridge, we had to turn sideways and squeezethrough the gap between the wall, which crumbled at the slightest contact, bits of plaster and twigs falling to the Smurf-blue carpet. A narrow hallway led to a room dwarfed by a ripped vinyl couch the color of root beer, which faced a big TV propped on a sagging cardboard box. In the bathroom, the toilet was a porcelain-lined hole set right into the floor. This “Japanese drop toilet” was something else Miyoshi-sensei had warned me of in his letter, something else I’d failed to mention to Carolyn, since it didn’t sound like a selling point.
    The kitchen at the back of the house was smaller than an airplane galley, smaller than the refrigerator itself. It had no oven, just a single electric burner lined with scorched aluminum foil. Carolyn loves to cook and had been looking forward to having her first real kitchen. Her face was blotchy, she kept retching, and I felt terribly