childhood memories

One day, when I was about six, I was visiting one of my two childhood best friends at her place. It was the time when we both still lived in the community of tiny half-dilapidated apartments, and we visited each other’s apartment almost every day. Just like at my home, there was a small YAMAHA […]

Growing up, I was always one of the tallest kids in my age group. When I entered primary school, I started growing even faster, and every year, I was about 10cm taller than the year before. By the time I was in Grade 5, my height reached 160cm, becoming as tall as my mother. At

In December when I was ten, my family visited my maternal grandmother’s house to do the end-of-the-year cleaning of their house. Since my grandmother and her family members were usually busy preparing food and gifts for the New Year, my family went there to take care of the cleaning. Their house was big and traditionally

In the autumn when I was in Grade 1, I was invited to my classmate’s birthday party at her house. It was the first birthday party I had ever attended, since in my family, birthdays were always celebrated within the family, and in the previous community I had lived in, none of my close friends

When I was four or five, my little brother got pneumonia and was admitted to a local hospital for some time. My mother accompanied him for the hospital stay. One day, my father and I went to visit them at the hospital to see how they were doing. My father put me on the back

Throughout my childhood, my parents were eager about my language education, and they gifted me with a new dictionary at each new milestone of my learning journey. The first dictionary I ever owned was a dictionary of my mother tongue written for young children. Seeing that I had started reading books, my father bought it

When I was small, and my family lived in the community of tiny half-dilapidated apartments, my mother used to visit a hair salon every few months. She was never a fashion-conscious person, but since she liked to keep her hair short, it was necessary for her to have her hair cut regularly. It was always

The spring I entered primary school, a relative of mine gave me a box of old school items which once belonged to her son. Her son was more than 10 years older than me, so his school items were already at least a decade old when they arrived at my place. My mother was delighted

When I was in primary school in Japan, at the beginning of each new school term, every student was asked to bring in one dusting cloth from home. In the class of 40 children, after each one brought one dusting cloth, a pile of 40 dusting cloths was formed, which was then used in our

When I was five years old, my grandmother bought me a Sailor Moon dress. It was a dress modelled after the costume of the character Sailor Moon, and when I wore it, it made me look like Sailor Moon. The dress quickly became my favourite. Back then, Sailor Moon dresses were popular among girls of