ow it was time for "something from the ocean and something from the hills," the lunch hour Totto-chan had looked forward to so eagerly.

The headmaster had adopted the phrase to describe a balanced meal--the kind of food he expected you to bring for lunch in addition to your rice. Instead of the usual "Train your children to eat everything," and "Please see that they bring a nutritiously balanced lunch," this headmaster asked parents to include in their children's lunchboxes "something from the ocean and something from the hills."

"Something from the ocean" meant sea food-- things such as fish and tsukuda-ni (tiny crustaceans and the like boiled in soy sauce and sweet sake), while "something from the hills" meant food from the land--like vegetables, beef, pork, and chicken.

Mother was very impressed by this and thought that few headmasters were capable of expressing such an important rule so simply. Oddly enough, just having to choose from two categories made preparing lunch seem simpler. And besides, the headmaster pointed out that one did not have to think too hard or be extravagant to fulfill the two requirements. The land food could be just kinpira gobo (spicy burdock) or an omelette, and the sea food merely flakes of dried bonito. Or simpler still, you could have nori (a kind of seaweed) for "ocean" and a pickled plum for "hills."

Just as the day before, when Totto-chan had watched so enviously, the headmaster came and looked in all the lunchboxes.

"Have you something from the ocean and something from the hills?" he asked, checking each one. It was so exciting to discover what each had brought from the ocean and from the hills.

Sometimes a mother had been too busy and her child had only something from the hills, or only something from the ocean. But never mind. As the headmaster made his round of inspection, his wife followed him, wearing a cook's white apron and holding a pan in each hand. If the headmaster stopped in front of a pupil saying, "Ocean," she would dole out a couple of boiled chikuwa (fish rolls) from the "Ocean" saucepan, and if the headmaster said, "Hills," out would come some chunks of soy-simmered potato from the "Hills" saucepan.

No one would have dreamed of saying, "I don't like fish rolls," any more than thinking what a fine lunch so-and-so has or what a miserable lunch poor so-and-so always brings. The children's only concern was whether they had satisfied the two requirements - the ocean and the hills--and if so their joy was complete and they were all in good spirits.

Beginning to understand what "something from the ocean and something from the hills" was all about, Totto-chan had doubts whether the lunch her mother had so hastily prepared that morning would be approved. But when she opened the lunchbox, she found such a marvelous lunch inside, it was all she could do to stop herself shouting, "Oh, goody, goody!"

Totto-chan's lunch contained bright yellow scrambled eggs, green peas, brown denbu, and pink naked cod roe. It was as colorful as a newer garden.

"How very pretty," said the headmaster.

Totto-chan was thrilled. "Mother's a very good cook," she said.

"She is, is she?" said the headmaster. Then he pointed to the denbu. "All right. What's this! Is it from the ocean or the hills?"

Totto-chan looked at it, wondering which was right. It was the color of earth, so maybe it was from the hills. But she couldn't be sure.

"I don't know," she said.

The headmaster then addressed the whole school, "Where does denbu come from, the ocean or the hills?"

After a pause, while they thought about it, some shouted, "Hills," and others shouted, "Ocean," but no one seemed to know for certain.

"All right. I’ll tell you," said the headmaster. “Denbu is from the ocean.”

"Why?" asked a fat boy.

Standing in the middle of the circle of desks, the headmaster explained, “Denbu is made by scraping the flesh of cooked fish off the bones, lightly roasting and crushing it into fine pieces, which are then dried and flavored.”

"Oh!" said the children, impressed. Then someone asked if they could see Totto-chan's denbu.

"Certainly," said the headmaster, and the whole school trooped over to look at Tottochan's denbu. There must have been children who knew what denbu was but whose interest had been aroused, as well as those who wanted to see if Totto-chan's denbu was any different from the kind they had at home. So many children sniffed at Totto-chan's denbu that she was afraid the bits might get blown away.

Totto-chan was a little nervous that first day at lunch, but it was fun. It was fascinating wondering what was sea food and what was land food, and she learned that denbu was made of fish, and Mother had remembered to include something from the ocean and something from the hills, so all in all everything had been all right, she thought contentedly.

And the next thing that made Totto-chan happy was that when she started to eat the lunch Mother had made, it was delicious.