December 2021

Earth Science Club

When I was in high school, I was a member of the Earth Science Club. The reason I joined the club was not because I was into earth science but because my two childhood close friends said they wanted to join. Well, it turned out to be a portal to a whole new world. This […]

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Ghost

When I was small, I was afraid of darkness. I was afraid of being alone in the dark and discovered by ghosts. Especially since my family moved to a larger house in the suburb, there was more darkness to deal with after the sunset. My room was located upstairs, and whenever I needed to go

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Westminster Abbey

When I was ten years old, my father took the family to London, England for ten days on his business trip. It was my first time to visit another country, and I was naturally very excited. Most days, my father was busy with his work, and my mother took me to different places during the

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A grandmother’s cautious walk

This is a story I heard from my “grandmother in law,” that is, my aunt’s husband’s mother when she was around eighty years old. One afternoon, she was walking down the street by herself. She had visited the post office, and was now on her way home. It was a warm sunny day. The air

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Rome from the sky

I’ve written on this blog a few times about my visit to Rome two years ago. But my very first encounter with Rome actually took place three years before that in a most unexpected way. Back then, I was living in England as a student, and I was on my way back home from Catania,

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Wild Turkey

Earlier summer this year, I had a most unusual encounter in my neighbourhood. I met a female wild turkey. It was late afternoon. I had made a quick visit to the pharmacy down the road, and I was coming back home on my bike. The road was busy with evening rush hour. Next to the

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Racoon

Before I came to Canada, I had never seen a racoon in my real life. In Japan, where I grew up, racoons are found only in a deep countryside, definitely not in a city. But since I started living in Ottawa, I quickly learned that they are as common animals as crows are in Japan.

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Girl from Austria

A few years ago, I became friends with somebody from Austria. We initially met at our work place, but soon we started to go on an adventure together outside of work. At the time, I was new to Ottawa, and she took me to quite a few interesting places in the city in her secondhand

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Igloo

Between the age of seven and twelve, every winter, my life revolved around one thing — an igloo. In the region of Japan where I grew up, it used to snow quite a lot, and every winter, as soon as I saw the first snowfall, I would look forward to the arrival of a snow

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