First flashback to Kyoko's student days with Mr. Soichiro.
We (and Godai) find out that Kyoko is 22 in December 1981, whereas Godai is 20. Later we'll find out Kyoko's birthday is in the Fall.
The original has, on the first panel of the second page, the caption: "Tokyo, December 30th, 1981" (Tokyo is spelled in romaji, and the year is given as 81)
First appearance of Godai's parents.
We find out that Mitaka is from Tokyo and that Kyoko, because of "her father's work" moved around a lot when she was growing up.
First published February 15, 1982
We find out that Mrs. Ichinose is a native of Hokkaido (Japan's northernmost major island), and Godai is from Niigata (the "Snow Country"), just like Takahashi herself.
The name of the cat is actually just "Kyoko", not "Kyoko-baby", and Godai always calls her simply "Kyoko". The reason why this is a problem, for Godai as well as for the translators, is that Godai always calls the other Kyoko "Kyoko-san", as he should (when he doesn't actually call her "manager"), and to address someone you're not on very intimate terms with by their name without the "san" is a serious breach of courtesy. There is actually an expression, "yobisute ni suru," to describe doing this kind of thing, and this is what Godai tells Kyoko the first time she comes around after hearing him yell at the cat: "There's no way I would "yobisute ni suru" you!"
Takahashi does not forget Kyoko the cat, and she is seen a few times later on in the story, in Sakamoto's apartment.
First appearance of Kyoko's parents, Ritsuko and Mr. Chigusa.
First appearance of Kozue's parents and little brother.
The word (or, at least, a word) for widow in Japanese is "miboujin", which is made up of three characters, "mi", meaning "not yet", "bou", meaning "dead", and "jin", meaning "person". This explains Mr. Otonashi's words to Kyoko by the gravesite.
The backgrounds on the title page of this episode show, for Mitaka and Kyoko, the symbol for "dog", and for Godai and Kozue, the symbol for "food".
The end of this episode suggests that Takahashi had pretty much laid out the future of the story already at this point: "wait three years (for me to graduate); no, wait five years (for me to get a job)!". In fact, Godai will graduate in the spring of 1985 and the series will be over in the spring of 1987.