Etsuko Kishikawa

Hibi tells about mother who does pottery and lives rather simple life, growing her children up. She does remarkable job in pottery, finding a new way to make natural pottery in her own tunnel kiln. Then, her son gets leukemia. And entire family has to fight hard to find a donor who has matching bone marrow.

January 16, 1995. Tsuyoshi Takahashi, a young student at Shiokaze elementary, is driven solely to get excellent grades. Because of this he often ignores those around him in his pursuit of perfection. Miho, a young girl in his class that wishes he would appreciate the people around him. Kazu a sickly and bed ridden classmate that lives near him. January 17, the 1995 Kobe / Hyogoken-Nanbu Earthquake strikes killing more than 6000 people and leaving 300 000 more homeless. Measuring 6.9 on the Richter Scale, it was the largest Earthquake to hit Japan since the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. In the aftermath of the quake, Tsuyoshi's finds his priorities changing. Dealing with the death of one friend while helping another to cope with a very personal loss, Tsuyoshi is forced to mature into someone who can no longer ignore the suffering around him.

This is a story of a girl born with a bad leg. Ritsuko longs to go to school and make lots of friends, but this proves as not so easy. Her mother is very protective of her, and she is teased by her classmates, because of her disability. Will she manage to keep her smile?