This story is based on the Azumanga Daioh TV series continuity (which is slightly different from the manga continuity), and is set six years after the girls graduate from high school. If you are concerned about spoilers, please watch all 26 episodes before reading my story.
Many thanks to Di and Gina for beta reading "Azumanga Daioh Plus Six." Their comments, critiques, and corrections were invaluable.
This story was completed in January, 2003, and posted to the Azumanga Daioh Fanfiction & Fanart Yahoo Group. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/azumangafanfiction/
I put more time, effort, and research into this story than into any of my previous fanfics. Hence, this notes section is enormous. So, for your convenience, I've provided a table of contents:
Career Choices
Sakaki
At the end of the series, we know that Sakaki intends to be a veterinarian and that she passed her first choice college entrance examination. So in my story, she has her degree in veterinary medicine and has entered into practice. She is, of course, working under a more experienced veterinarian.
In Japan, students typically graduate from college in four years and start working in their field immediately. Medical and dental schools take six years. Graduate school is pretty much only for people who intend to be university professors or researchers. Now, I suppose veterinary medicine could be a six year program, if it's classified under medical.
I did find a program for veterinary medicine offered at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology. They had it listed under agriculture, so I suspect it's a four year degree. (Reference: http://www.tuat.ac.jp/index-e.html) Of course, since all of the information is in Japanese, I couldn't read it to confirm that.
I guess it doesn't matter much. I wrote the story with the mindset that Sakaki has been working in her field for two years. But the content of the story wouldn't be much changed if she'd only just started her job.
Osaka
At the end of the series, we know that Osaka intends to be a teacher. She failed the first entrance exam she took, but that test was for her second choice career path. Since she passed her first choice entrance exam, I figure that means she's going into education. We do not know what she intends to teach.
Personally, I think she'd be a fantastic linguistics teacher, with all of her word games and arcane kanji knowledge. However, I really liked the idea of having her teach at the same high school as Yukari, Nyamo, and Kimura-sensei. I don't know about Japan, but in the U.S., linguistics is college level stuff.
So I made Osaka a history teacher. I figured with her penchant for trivia and obscure details, it would be a good fit.
Tomo
We know that Tomo failed the first entrance exam she took, but passed the second. We do not know which was her preferred career choice.
We do, however, know that she wanted to be an ICPO officer.
How exactly does one become an ICPO officer? Well, I went to the Interpol website to find out. (Reference: http://www.interpol.int/Public/ICPO/Recruitment/Default.asp) Among other things, Tomo would need "a relevant degree." Okay, she got into college. Let's say she got an appropriate degree. She'd also have to have an "excellent command of English" as well as some level of fluency in French, Spanish, and/or Arabic. We know that Tomo's English is terrible, but we could say that the desire to get into the ICPO prompted her to study harder in college, so we could pretend that she built her language skills to an adequate level. Another requirement is "previous relevant experience." In other words, she'd have to be a regular police officer first.
Okay, I admit it. I just can't picture Tomo as a police officer, no matter how hard I try. I can picture her striving for it, even making it as far as a training program. But I can not picture her on a police force. If this were the world of Dirty Pair or Hyper Police, it would be different. She'd fit right in. However, the Azumanga Daioh story world overall tends to be very realistic. And I can not picture Tomo as a police officer in the real world.
Hence, she was expelled from police training, and is now an office lady.
Yomi
We know that Yomi failed two exams, and with much effort passed the third. We don't know what any of her career preferences were. However, we know that Yomi is one of the best students in the class, a little behind Chiyo. So I imagine that she was probably taking harder tests than the other girls.
For whatever reason I can't explain, I felt that she should be somewhere in the medical field. So I made her a pharmacist.
Kaorin
We know absolutely nothing about Kaorin's career choices or the exams she took. (Actually, we aren't even explicitly told that she takes any entrance exams at all.) All we know is that she was in the Astronomy Club in high school. So I made her an astronomer.
Kagura
We know that Kagura intended to go to a college with a good athletics program, but she was a little fuzzy on her actual career goals. She passed her entrance exam with no problem.
With Kagura's ability and dedication (as displayed by her training alone in the evenings), I figured she could go far as a professional athlete. I liked the idea of her being a world class competitive swimmer. Fame, fortune, she's got it all . . . or does she?
Chiyo
We know that Chiyo was going to college in the United States. And that's pretty much all we know. Since she's a genius, I figured she'd have no trouble going for multiple degrees, even when the classes aren't in her native language.
So as an undergraduate, she triple-majored in mathematics, physics, and information technology. Then she went on for the masters degrees in math and physics. Next . . . a doctorate or two? Or perhaps a new field of study? She's a little undecided about that right now.
Hey, being a genius doesn't necessarily mean you know what you want to do with your life.
Why does Sakaki sleep in a futon in this story, when in the series she sleeps in a bed? Well, in the series, she was living with her parents, presumably in a house. A recent college graduate without a lot of savings would probably be living in an apartment. I priced apartments in Tokyo, and all I can say is YIKES!
So I figured Sakaki would be in a one room apartment. I decided to be nice and give her one room with a separate kitchen
I looked at floor plans for a couple of 1K apartments, and they had the entrance in the kitchen. Sometimes the bathroom is a single room with a shower, sink, and toilet. Other times, you get a room with a toilet and a sink, and a separate room with a Japanese style bathtub (o-furo). The bathroom(s) would open into the kitchen area, so all of your plumbing is pretty consolidated. Beyond the kitchen is the main room. Interestingly, there always seems to be a small balcony on the opposite end of the room. (Random tangent: I'm told that clothing dryers aren't very popular in Japan, and that most people prefer to hang their clothing outside to dry. I imagine that the balcony would be the logical place for an apartment dweller to do this.) I'm sure there are many other, totally different layouts for 1K apartments, but these were the common features of the floor plans I happened to see.
Anyway, when one room has to serve as your living room, bedroom, dining room, and whatever else, a bed seems like an horrible waste of space. A futon, you would just fold up and put in the closet during the day. Much preferable.
There was some debate about sleeping "under the cover" versus "under the covers." I went with "cover" because I think with a futon, it would be singular. A real Japanese futon, of course, is nothing like the folding couch thing Americans call a futon. A Japanese futon consists of a thick, stuffed mattress and a thick, stuffed cover. I've never slept in one, but I imagine it's like being in a sandwich.
And as for Maya
Aside from Kimura-sensei, male characters are few and far between in Azumanga Daioh. Oh sure, there are male students around, but for the most part their role in the story is about equal to the roles of the desks, chairs, and chalkboards.
As it is, only two male students are sufficiently distinctive that I can actually recognize them. One is the boy with the glasses, and the other is the boy with the funky locks of hair hanging in front of his ears.
I only noticed one male student identified by name in the entire series. In the first episode, when Osaka fails to answer a question, Yukari-sensei calls on someone named Ooyama-kun, and a male voice answers from off-screen. Then in the last episode, the graduate delegate is identified Ooyama Masaaki. Again, he is off-screen when his name is spoken. This guy could be anyone.
Well, in volume one of the Azumanga Daioh manga, the boy with the glasses is identified as Ooyama-kun. (Page 7.)
Then again, the Azumanga Daioh movie clearly identifies the boy with the glasses as Matsuyama-kun. He's actually on-screen when Yukari calls his name. So there's a bit of conflict here as to the correct name for the boy with the glasses.
I decided to go with the manga over the movie. (Why? Because the movie kind of freaked me out. The animation style was so different, and everyone looked just a little . . . wrong.)
Later, well after I finished this fic, I bought Azumanga Daioh: The Animation Visual Book (complete in two volumes), which conclusively identifies the boy with the glasses as Ooyama-kun. (Hooray!) The first volume even gives an assortment of character sketches of him in different outfits. (By the way, these books are wonderful if you can get your hands on them. They contain illustrated synopses of every episode, lots of full color art, character sketches for everyone from the main characters right on down to the unnamed students, and
I got my information on sea slugs and sea cucumbers chiefly from the Sea Slug Forum. It's actually a pretty awesome site, if you're into sea slugs. (Reference: http://www.seaslugforum.net/)
The legal drinking age in Japan is 20. (Reference: "Drinking Age Limits." ICAP Reports 4. March 1998; Revised March 2002. http://www.icap.org/publications/report4.html)
Strawberry-rhubarb preserves are wonderful. If you've never tried them, do give them a chance. As for the corn cob jelly, I'm not a fan of it, but some people like it. Deer sausage . . . yum. (Deer jerky is even better.) Omaha's Henry-Doorly Zoo just plain rules, and in addition to the white tigers (of which there seem to be fewer now than I remember from my childhood), it's got everything from an indoor rain forest to a desert dome to underground caverns filled with nocturnal creatures on a reversed light cycle. (In that nocturnal exhibit, by the way, you can see Fishing Cats, which look a lot like Iriomote Mountain Cats, except larger.)
And then . . . Carhenge. It's real. I kid you not. (See photos at: http://www.river.org/~jnfr/carhenge/) I can not say whether or not there really are snowglobes of Carhenge, though.
An interesting side note
And you wonder why living in Nebraska for six years warped Chiyo.
I use Japanese honorifics in my story because we really don't have anything equivalent in English. I tried very carefully to document the honorifics usage in the series, so I could be accurate, but of course, I could still have missed something.
Mihama Chiyo
Chiyo is very polite. She refers to all of her classmates as -san, with the exception of Tomo, whom she calls Tomo-chan. (The only thing I can figure here is that, because Tomo doesn't respect anyone, Chiyo refuses to respect her.) It is worth noting that we never hear Chiyo refer to Kaorin by name, so we can only assume that she would use -san based on her normal usage patterns.
Chiyo also refers to all of her teachers as -sensei.
Generally, in Japan, you would always use surname-sensei with your teachers, but Chiyo does call Yukari-sensei by her given name. Why? Well, only people I ever heard call Yukari "Tanizaki-sensei" were Kimura-sensei and the principal. Every student in the entire school calls Yukari by her given name. This is not normal in Japan, but apparently it is normal for Yukari-sensei.
Takino Tomo
Tomo starts out calling Chiyo -chan, and later she starts calling her Chiyo-suke. I have no idea what the heck -suke is. My best guess is that it might be derivied from the term sukeban.
Tomo starts out calling Sakaki -san, but it isn't all that long before she becomes the first (and one of only two who dares) to call Sakaki -chan.
Tomo is especially snarky with Yomi. Usually she doesn't use any honorifics at all, but depending on the kind of reaction she's trying to get, she variously uses -san, -chan, or -kun. She's also the only one, aside from Yomi's mother, to ever call her Koyomi (specifically, she called her Koyomi-kun when she was really upset with her and trying to get her to waste money on the vending machine that had failed to dispense a cup with the milk tea).
Tomo never uses any honorifics with Kagura or Kaorin.
And of course, Tomo is the one who saddles Ayumu with the name Osaka. She never attaches any honorifics to it.
Once in a while, Tomo might actually address Yukari as Sensei (without the name attached), but right from the first day of school, Tomo's calling her Yukari-chan. Tomo addresses the gym teacher as Kurosawa-sensei at first, but from the time she first hears Yukari call her Nyamo-chan, Tomo also calls her Nyamo-chan. Nyamo appears to be somewhat traumatized by this.
It is also amusing to note that Tomo occasionally refers to herself in the third person as Tomo-chan.
Mizuhara Koyomi "Yomi"
Yomi's really not all that much better than Tomo. She never uses honorifics with Tomo or Kaorin. She calls Ayumu "Kasuga-san" once, before Tomo christens her Osaka. Once the Osaka name sticks, Yomi never attaches any honorifics to it.
I never noticed her referring to Kagura, but based on her other usage patterns, I think she'd be unlikely to use any honorifics with her.
Yomi starts out calling Sakaki -san, but later she stops using any honorifics with her, either.
She, like Tomo, starts out calling Chiyo -chan, and later calls her -suke.
When Yukari is not around, Yomi doesn't attach any honorifics at all. When Yukari is around, she uses -sensei. I never noticed her referring to Nyamo, so I have no idea what she'd call her.
Kasuga Ayumu "Osaka"
Osaka by and large uses -chan with her classmates. I definitely heard her use -chan for Chiyo, Tomo, Yomi, and Kagura. At first, she used -san with Sakaki, and later in the series, she started using -chan for her too. I never heard her go totally without some kind of honorific.
With the teachers, she started off saying Yukari-sensei and Kurosawa-sensei, and later on she followed Tomo's lead and started calling them Yukari-chan and Nyamo-chan.
Sakaki (surname unknown)
Sakaki just doesn't refer to people by name, so we have no clue what honorifics she uses. She did once say Chiyo-chan, and that's the only name I ever heard her say. Since absolutely none of the classmates ever uses -san with Chiyo, Sakaki calling her Chiyo-chan can not be used to construe anything at all about her overall honorifics usage patterns.
Kagura (surname unknown)
Kagura doesn't refer to people by name all that often, either. She uses -chan with Chiyo. She doesn't use honorifics with Sakaki or Yomi. Oddly enough, she actually starts off using -san with Tomo, but it's not long before she drops that, too. I never noticed her referring to Osaka or the teachers by name.
Kaorin (surname unknown)
Poor little Kaorin just doesn't get that much screen time. But she does tend to say people's names relatively often when she talks. She uses -chan with Chiyo and Tomo, -san with Sakaki and Kagura, and no honorific with Yomi. I never noticed her referring to Osaka or Nyamo by name. She does call Yukari -chan.
(On a side note, Kaorin's mother calls her Kaori, which is what Kaorin wanted Sakaki to call her in her dream. I believe this is her real name, and Kaorin is actually a nickname.)
Tanizaki Yukari
She starts out the first year a little formal, referring to her students as Kasuga-san and Takino-san. She even -sans Yomi early on (although with her given name). However, it's not long before she's using -chan with Tomo and nothing with Osaka and Yomi. She never uses any honorifics with Sakaki, but she does -san Kagura. I never noticed her referring to Kaorin.
Yukari is the third person who starts out calling Chiyo -chan and ends up calling her -suke. See what Tomo started? Poor Chiyo.
She generally calls her old schoolmate Nyamo, with no honorifics. Once, when she's being obnoxious, she calls her Minamo-san.
Kurosawa Minamo "Nyamo"
She uses -chan for Chiyo, -san for Sakaki, and none for Kagura or Yukari. I never heard her refer to any of the other girls by name except once, when she was totally drunk. That time, she addressed Tomo with no honorific. Who knows if that's in keeping with her normal pattern. (I'm inclined to think she'd probably use -san for most of her students, except Kagura, who she seems to feel personally close to. But that's just an opinion.)
(Yeah, I know, neither Yukari nor Nyamo actually appear in my story. But since I'd documented their honorifics usage, I figured I might as well include it here. Hopefully someone finds the information interesting or useful.)