childhood memories

The spring when I turned thirteen, I started having allergic reactions to tree pollen. In many parts of Japan, March through May is the biggest pollen season of the year. People who are allergic to pollen from Japanese cypress and cedar trees have a hard time during this season. In March that year, I remember […]

During the summer when I was about five or six, I was visiting my maternal grandmother’s house with my mother. It was one of the regular visits we made a few times every year. Since my family lived far away from my mother’s home region, we used to visit them on holidays. The night of

Oden is a Japanese one-pot soup dish that is very popular throughout autumn and winter seasons in Japan. The dish consists of boiled root vegetables, eggs, and processed fishcakes, all stewed in a large claypot. When the air gets cooler and the leaves start falling in autumn, oden starts to make a frequent appearance at

When I was about five years old, I used to love sitting by one of the three windows of my home. Our apartment block was located at the edge of the community of tiny half-dilapidated apartments, and this window was facing the outside of our community. Located at the second floor, from the window, I

(This story is a continuation from the previous post “A diary entry.”) Here is another story I found in my mother’s diary that recorded the time when I was around three. One day, my mother invited a few friends of mine and their mothers to our apartment. In the tiny living room, she served tea

There was a period of time when my mother kept a diary while I was very small. One day during my college break, I happened to be organizing my mother’s bookshelves, and I found the notebook. The first entry was about the reason why she had started the diary. At the time, I was about

In October when I was six, my family bought a house in the suburb of my hometown in the north region of Japan. It was the first big move I experienced in my life, and throughout the process, I learned that even after choosing the new house, there were many things to be done prior

The summer when I was in Grade 5, all the Grade 5 children in my school went on a three-day camping trip to a mountain about an hour bus ride away from the school. The trip was packed with different kinds of activities, including the mountain climbing, the campfire, and what’s called “walk in the

In the community of half-dilapidated apartments where I used to live during my young childhood, there was one playground. It was a square-shaped playground with a huge willow in the middle. My friends and I used to play there a lot. We were particularly fond of the slide and the carriage-shaped swing, and once we

When I was in primary school, every autumn, our school hosted an arts festival where each school year would prepare either a music performance or a play and present it in front of the rest of the school and all the parents and guardians. For about two months leading up to the event, we practiced