childhood memories

In his very short life, my little brother fell from a staircase twice. The first time was when he was one year old. We were visiting my paternal grandmother’s house, which had a steep staircase connecting the two floors of the house. One evening, we were all upstairs preparing the bedding for the night when […]

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

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

It was the spring when I had turned nine. One long weekend, my father’s good old friend from college time came to visit us with his children. One afternoon, we all went to a local hot spring to have a relaxing afternoon. My parents booked a room there, and after taking a good long bath,

It was the autumn when I was four years old and staying at my maternal grandmother’s place. There was an old hut next to her house where my grandmother used to keep her farming tools and store some vegetables from her vegetable garden. The hut was from the time before my mother was born, and

As long as I can remember, my maternal grandmother has worn false teeth. They weren’t just a few teeth, but a bunch of teeth. And my grandmother used to clean them with a brush every evening before bedtime. I was four years old when I first saw her false teeth. At the time, I was

This is a story about a small incident that took place when I was about four years old. I used to play daily with my friends in our community of tiny half-dilapidated apartments, and that day, I was playing with a particularly large group of friends near the rows of Japanese plum trees on the

When I was small and lived in a community of tiny half-dilapidated apartments, my favourite activity of all was to play house with my friends on one of the Japanese plum trees on the community premise. Each of us would pick a branch and claim it to be our private room. I had a branch

When I was about three, one day, there was a large gathering in our community of tiny half-dilapidated apartments. Most of my friends and their mothers came together in somebody’s home (a tiny apartment) and had a potluck party. It must have been a special occasion – somebody’s farewell party, perhaps – since the place

The autumn when I was in Grade 3, the whole four classes of Grade 3 presented a play based on the famous folktale “The Emperor’s New Clothes” at the annual school art festival. Being fond of acting in front of other people, I auditioned and got the role for one of the weavers. In the