childhood memories

The summer when I was ten or eleven, I went camping with my family and my two childhood best friends’ families. It was our annual summer event, and we always looked forward to spending two days of our summer break in the nature sharing our family friendship. That summer, on the way to the camping […]

When I was nine or ten, I visited my maternal grandmother’s house during the summer break. While we were having dinner together, I noticed a new electronic device attached under the kitchen sink. “What is it?” “Oh, this is a device to prevent cockroaches from coming into this room,” answered my aunt. “Unfortunately, we are

In the winter of the year when I was about to enter primary school, every major store in my hometown started to display school bags for the soon-to-be first graders. The moment my mother saw the first display of the year, she called her mother immediately. “The school bag display has started. You must come

Shortly after I saw my friend’s red school bag and learned about its structural details, I had another encounter with my dream school bag. At my local music school, I had a friend who was a year older than me, and she one day came to our group class directly from primary school wearing her

In Japan, primary school students across the country go to school with a special kind of school bag called randoseru. It’s a solid box-shaped bag with two straps and a beautiful smooth lid. I don’t exactly remember when I saw this type of school bag for the first time, but it happened the year before

Throughout my primary and middle school days, I went to schools in my neighbourhood. For the nine years, every morning, I would walk to school with my friends, with the school bag on my back. chatting about what was going to happen at school that day. Even though I wasn’t usually forgetful, from time to

It was when I was eight or nine. One day, I accompanied my mother on her trip to a bank in the city centre. Banks in Japan close at 3 pm, and when we went to the branch, people were already starting to prepare for the closing. As I waited for my mother to complete

Around the time when I entered kindergarten, along with many other girls, I became very interested in long hair. My hair was not long at the time, but at my kindergarten, I would carefully observe other girls’ and teachers’ long hair styles and think to myself what hairstyle I wanted for myself when my hair

When I was in primary school, a few times a year, my father’s college friend, who lived near Tokyo area, came to visit us for a long weekend. He had three daughters close to my age, and we used to play together whenever we had the chance to meet. Both my father and his friend

When I was about five, there was a very large earthquake in South region of Japan and many people lost their lives as a consequence of this earthquake. My hometown was located far North and was not directly affected by the earthquake, but everybody was shocked by the news. At the time, I was too