The red rubber ball soared over a wall, traced an arc against the springtime Tokyo sky and fell -- ker-plump! -- into the playground of Takanawadai Elementary School.
There, it was immediately put into motion by a throng of running, jumping, laughing children, who seemed gleefully unconcerned about how the mysterious gift had arrived from above.
Nor did it seem to strike the children as odd that a smiling foreign man in a baseball cap soon appeared out of nowhere bearing more red rubber balls that he tossed about with an abandon much like their own.