January 2023

The summer when I was six, my parents took me to the Tokyo Disneyland for the first time. We took the bullet train to Tokyo the day before, and after being a guest at my great aunt’s place for the night, our real adventure to the Disneyland began. It was an extremely hot humid summer

When I was in Grade 3 and 4, I had a classmate who was a huge fan of Disneyland. (As kids in Japan, whenever we said “Disneyland,” it referred to Tokyo Disneyland, not the one in California.) Though my hometown was not exactly close to Tokyo, this boy had been to Disneyland several times, perhaps

Shortly after I turned seven, close relatives of mine came over to my family’s new house to celebrate my birthday. In Japan, there is a tradition to celebrate the third and the seventh birthdays for girls and the third and the fifth birthdays for boys, a tradition that apparently goes back to ancient times to

When I was in primary school, at the end of every school year, a large gathering was held in the gymnasium to celebrate the graduation of the Grade 6 students. The preparation was mostly done by the Grade 5 kids with the help of teachers, and on the day of the farewell party, the whole

When I was small, my friends and I all believed in Santa Claus. We believed in the existence of what we called the real Santa Claus, and throughout the year, we often talked about him. The conversation typically started by one of us declaring that they had seen Santa Claus. “Are you sure that it

One summer day when I was about nine, my two best friends were visiting my house. These were my friends from the time I used to live in a community of tiny half-dilapidated apartments, and even though we no longer lived close to each other, a few times a year, we would all gather at

When I was in primary school, every winter, Grade 6 students spent a few months creating their original wooden music boxes in the art and crafts class. It was one of the biggest mandatory art projects since the process involved carving of wooden boards, painting, and assembling of all the pieces. The project would usually

One hot summer morning when I was four, I was playing with my dolls as usual in the second largest room of our tiny half-dilapidated apartment. On the other side of the room, in front of the wide open window, was my mother doing her daily house cleaning. While vacuuming the floor, she had found

When I was about eight, there was a period of time when I daily visited the school library on my own. In one corner of the tiny square room, there was a section dedicated to books of true stories – stories about people’s lives. Some were autobiographies of famous historical figures, some were stories written