childhood memories

When I was between the age of eight and nine, there was a period of time when I was fascinated with the idea of a bubble bath. I had seen bubble baths in Western movies a few times and thought how fun it would be to play in the bubbles. I wanted to experience it […]

When I was eight or nine, one day, I went to visit one of my childhood best friends at her house. At the time, we no longer lived close to each other, so every occasion we got to play together was precious. That day, after some time, we started playing at the bathroom sink. We

In the autumn when I was six, my parents bought our first family home. It was a house in one of the new housing developments located in the suburb of my hometown, and we spent a few months visiting different houses in the area trying to pick the one we wanted to live in. As

When I was small, the other thing that made me extremely anxious was when I travelled by a cab with my parents. Since my family had a car, we usually didn’t use any public transport or cabs. But on those occasions when we travelled by trains to visit our relatives far away, my parents would

When I was small, there were two things that always led me to a sense of panic. One was when I travelled by a bullet train with my parents. At the main train station in my hometown, bullet trains have special platforms separate from those of the local trains, and they are located at the

It was when I was four and staying at my maternal grandmother’s place for a few weeks. My grandmother was an active folk song singer in the local community, and she used to take part in the community’s senior folk song club. The group had a regular practice at a nearby meeting house, and one

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,

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.

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

The autumn when I was five years old, my kindergarten teachers took us to a local sweet potato farm for a “harvest” experience. The whole kindergarten (it was a small one) rented a bus and travelled to the farm located somewhere in the outskirt of my hometown. What I remember about the farm is that