Novel
Following a tip, Manabu Yazaki loses his last money betting on the older "banba" horse "Unryu" (jockied by Makie, a legendary jockey's daughter) in a draft-horse race held in his childhood home of Obihiro on the island of Hokkaido.
Novel
An alcoholic civil servant wakes up under a cherry tree in Tokyo next to a bar hostess with whom he's impulsively made a suicide pact. Though he's now changed his mind, he agrees to travel with her to Hokkaido, her preferred site for ending it all.
