Summary

“Yesterday” started out with the narrator, Tanimura, saying that the only person who had ever sung Japanese lyrics to the Beatles song was his friend Kitaru. They worked together at a coffee shop when Tanimura was in college. Tanimura was from Kansai, but he had developed a standard Tokyo accent, as many people did. Kitaru had been born and raised in a nice part of Tokyo, but he spoke with a perfect Kansai accent, which was very strange. He had studied the dialect because he was a fan of the Hanshin Tigers baseball team and he wanted to be able to sit in their bleachers and get along with all of their fans who spoke the Kansai accent. They both came from rich neighborhoods but lived in ordinary houses, and so they became friends.

Tanimura wanted to become a new person when he left...