October 2021

One autumn, I was visiting Italy on a solo trip and took a train from Milano to Pisa. It was my first time to take a long distance train in the country. For the first time in my life, I saw a train with compartments like the one in the movie of Harry Potter series […]

It was years ago when I was still a busy college student in Tokyo. One hot and humid evening of summer, I was walking back home from the nearest train station. It was already dark. Exhausted from the long day, I was focusing all my energy on moving my legs as fast as I could

In the region of Japan where I grew up, October is the season of fragrant olives. Wherever you walk, you’ll encounter their subtle sweet fragrance and their pale orange blossoms. When I was about nine or ten, there was a period when I walked to school just by myself. As the autumn arrived, I felt

It was when my great aunt was in her late seventies. She lived in the same old house in a crowded neighbourhood of Tokyo where I spent much of the first year of my life on this earth before my family moved to north Japan. Her husband had passed away long before I was born,

One summer, I became good friends with a girl three years older than me. One day, she told me that she had a special trick. “I can smile with just half of my face.” As soon as she said that, she smiled with exactly half of her face while the other half remained completely still.

A departure can come to us when we expect it the least. As the thanksgiving approaches, there is one moment that I recall in my heart with special feelings. The first time I met the dog was when I visited the shop for the first time to purchase the very first guitar in my life.

That summer, I was on my way back to Ottawa from Tokyo. After having spent a very long layover in Calgary (I remember it was more than 12 hours), I finally sat on the plane that was going to carry me to Ottawa. The plane took off at around midnight. As soon as I finished

Several years ago, I was at an outdoor equipment store with the intention of getting myself a pair of new over glasses sunglasses. It was my first time to buy a pair of sunglasses, and I was feeling very nervous, the kind of anxious sensation you get when you are about to reach for something

This summer, I became fond of a particular kind of birds that walk in a very particular way. I don’t know the name of this bird kind. But every morning when I took a walk around my block, I found a few of them on the way, walking in somebody’s front garden. There was something