childhood memories

It was when I was four. I came back home after playing with my two best friends outside until dusk. In our tiny half-dilapidated apartment, there was an old sofa in the main room adjacent to the kitchen. While I was waiting for supper, I sat on the floor and started playing with my dolls […]

When I was five and my family used to live in the tiny half-dilapidated apartment, all the basic shops were within walking distance. In fact, we could see most of the shops from our window – the grocery shop, the tofu shop, the meat shop, the fish shop, the fruit shop, really everything. Thanks to

When I was five, I had two very close friends and playmates in the neighbourhood. We all lived in a community of small old apartments, which meant that everybody’s house was as tiny and half-dilapidated as my own house and our life was quite basic – only we children believed that there was no better

During my young childhood in a tiny half-dilapidated apartment in the North Japan, I read a lot of fairy tales and folk tales from around the world rewritten for young children. One of the things that appeared frequently in the Western tales was an apple. In Snow White and other stories, I often encountered a

In the summer when I was five, my family went to a local indoor water park. It was my first time to play in a large indoor pool. Once inside, I saw several different pools and one big slide. It was an impressive view. My parents gave me and my little brother swim rings so

When I was five, during the weekdays when my father came home late, my mother, my little brother and I would have a small reading time before our bedtime. My mother would read a picture book or a picture story show (called kamishibai in Japanese) for us, and we would have a lot of fun

During the summer when I was four, I spent several weeks at my maternal grandmother’s house while my baby brother went through a major heart operation and required the full attention of my parents. At my grandmother’s house, every day, I had the entire day to myself. During the day, my grandmother was usually busy

It was when I was six. Shortly after the sudden departure of my one and only little brother, I was feeling very alone at home and missing him every day. Usually, during the day, I was busy attending the kindergarten and playing with my best friends, and didn’t feel the void in my life too

When I was five, my mother used to take me and my little brother to the local public library once a week. It was a tiny old library located at 5 minutes drive away from our apartment, and we would borrow several picture books for our evening reading time. One day, we borrowed a picture