childhood memories

My father has a habit of walking around the house while brushing his teeth. After each meal, he puts a generous amount of toothpaste on his toothbrush, and as he starts brushing his teeth, he wanders off from the bathroom, walking around the house and often talking to my mother about some random thoughts that […]

As long as I have known him, my father has always been a person who preferred to take a shower in the morning, even though the common practice in Japan was to take a proper bath in the evening. Whenever an invitation was extended to him for a fresh bath in the evening, he would

One day, when I was four years old, I was playing with my two best friends and another close friend one year older than us. In the backend of our community of tiny half-dilapidated apartments, there was an open space where the local buses would come around to spend their extra minutes out of service.

When I was between the age of four and six and when my family lived in the community of tiny half-dilapidated apartments, I used to play a lot with my two best friends in the square park in front of my apartment building. Among one of the things we played most often was the game

When my little brother was about the age of two, he used to take a nap once every afternoon. When it was time for his nap, my mother would play Pachelbel’s Canon on our CD player, a daily cue which told everyone at home what was about to happen next. Both my brother and I

When my little brother was about two, he became very interested in helping his mother. There was a small shop right across from our tiny half-dilapidated apartment where she used to purchase a few grocery items, and she often bought our weekly milk package from there. My brother often accompanied her to the shopping when

In the summer when I was five, the annual large family gathering took place in my hometown. Many relatives travelled from the Kanto region, and we all stayed at one of the famous hot spring resorts called Akiu onsen. The term resort suggests something very fancy, but a typical onsen resort in Japan is simply

The spring when I was about to turn nine, one of my two childhood best friends and her family moved to a brand new house in the suburb. One evening shortly after their move, we met at the local music school in the city centre as usual, and after the music classes, my mother offered

When I was little, my mother kept a very strict rule for us children around snacking. Unlike at my friends’ house where snacks of all kinds including potato chips and chocolates were readily available all through the day, at my home, our snack was provided only once a day in the afternoon. The content of

When I was in primary school, there was a shopping complex in our suburban neighbourhood that my mother used to visit regularly for the weekly grocery shopping. I often accompanied her whenever I was at home and wasn’t doing anything else. But since grocery shopping didn’t interest me much back then, I always brought a