June 2022

The summer when I was seven, I took an official assessment exam at my local music school for the first time. It consisted of several different tasks, and one of them was to read a given short music score and sing it out loud. When I went to the exam room, I was welcomed by

When I was about five, my family made a road trip to a mountain area near my hometown. At one point we came to a place where the view was fantastic even though it was not an official lookout. My mother suggested that we should take a picture there. It was many years before we

In my second year of kindergarten, our annual sport festival fell on a most gorgeous autumn day. There was not a single cloud to be seen in the clear blue sky, and the sun was bright but a lot gentler than in the summer. That morning, we were told to meet in the large public

This is a story I heard from my aunt – my mother’s elder sister – some time ago. She has three daughters, of which the two younger ones are a twin. They are all more than ten years older than me, so when I was old enough to have memories, they were already adults. But

When I was elven, I participated in one of the famous classical music contests in Japan. The section I had enrolled in was the piano section for primary school kids. After about five months of intense practice through the rainy season and the boiling summer, one early September, my mother and I travelled to Tokyo

It was when I was about five years old. One evening, my family finished eating dinner in the tiny kitchen of our half-dilapidated apartment as usual. My mother started washing the dishes, my little brother and I started playing, and my father went to the bathroom. After some time, I went back to the kitchen

This is a story about when I was small and lived in a community of tiny half-dilapidated apartments. There was a post office adjacent to our community. My mother would often go there to fulfill the family’s daily financial tasks (In Japan, post offices used to have a bank function as well). Sometimes it was

The year I was thirteen, my maternal grandmother celebrated her 77th birthday. In Japanese tradition, a person’s 77th birthday carries a special weight and it’s typically celebrated in a bigger way than usual. When my grandmother turned seventy-seven, her family organized a large birthday party on a long weekend at a local restaurant inviting all

It was toward the end of my time at primary school. The school’s PTA decided to spend their extra budget to host a special party for Grade 6 children to celebrate their upcoming graduation. One afternoon, we were called to the auditorium, and there we played many games with our teachers and parents. After having