The temple is called Entakuji, and it stands on the slope above Yumura, a hot spring quarter on the northern edge of Kofu. For most of the year it is a quiet place — an old hall, a famous pine, a stone Jizo inside.

The Jizo, they will tell you here, cannot hear.

Except for one day. From noon on the thirteenth of February until noon on the fourteenth, the statue's ears open, and for those twenty-four hours it will listen to anything put to it. That is the entire basis of what follows.

What follows is that tens of thousands of people come up the hill, food stalls line the approach, and Kofu — a city that ordinarily goes to bed early and completely — stays awake all night.

People in their unlucky years bring round things to offer: sweets, small coins, dumplings, one for each year they have lived. The counting is done carefully. Nobody treats it as quaint.

On the first afternoon a great paper charm is carried through the streets of the spa town. After dark the stalls fill with steam and the crowd thickens rather than thins. At three in the morning there are still people on the steps.

Vapour drifts off the bathhouses below. The mountains behind the city are white.

Then noon comes on the second day, the ears close, and Kofu returns to emptying its streets early.