October 2022

When I helped myself to a candy bag

In Japan, there is something called the Great Cleaning, a tradition where each family cleans their house thoroughly before the arrival of the new year. The cleaning usually takes place in December and lasts for several days. During this time, the floors are washed, the windows are cleaned, the ceilings and the fans are dusted,

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My first pajama party

The summer when I was seven, my first pajama party was hosted at my family’s new house in the suburb with my two childhood best friends. We were friends from our time in the community of tiny half-dilapidated apartments, and by that time, not only our mothers but also our fathers had become good friends.

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A magical car

Growing up, my family’s car was always a five-seater and so were my close friends’ family cars. As a child, wherever I went, the car I travelled in was almost always a five-seater. However, my maternal aunt’s husband had a car that was usually used as a five-seater but could turn into a seven-seater by

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A lesson that persists

Growing up, my mother and I didn’t spend too much time in the kitchen together, and most of my current cooking skills I gained since I started living on my own as a college student. However, there is one lesson that my mother taught me back home that I constantly seem to practice in the

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A memory that persists

When I was a teenager and learning English as a second language back in Japan, one day, my father shared with me a story about one English test he had taken at secondary school that he had never forgot about. Located in a big urban city, the secondary school my father attended had a very

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