Anna Matsushita

    On my very first day of preschool, when I was a three years old, I couldn't understand a single word my teacher was saying. I was so scared that I clung to my mother's skirt. Mom and the teacher talked for a while. Then Mom knelt down, smiled at me, and said in Japanese, "Go have fun, Yuki." She gently placed my hand in the teacher's. The classroom walls were painted a soft pink. Sunlight poured through the big windows, making everything sparkle. There was a shelf full of toys in the back. Children my age were running around, laughing at the tops of their lungs. Some had blond hair. Some had dark, curly hair. Some had sun-tanned skin. They all came over to talk to me. I couldn't understand a single thing they were saying. I was frightened. I didn't understand anything. I cried my way through the whole day.   The moment Mom picked me up, I threw my arms around her and burst into tears. I couldn't stop cryi...

    “ Ema, that’s not right. Put your tongue against the roof of your mouth. Again.” Mum’s sharp voice rang through the living room.   Me and my little sisters were all born and grew up in Tokyo, under Japanese parents.   It was 1977.  From the age of seven, we had English lessons at home every single day. My sister was four, and the youngest was only one year old.   Mum was our English teacher, and she was tough. She showed no mercy, even with my sisters. Mum had spent large part of her childhood in America.   She often told us about those days. Wide roads. Big houses. Kind teachers. A sense of freedom. And she always ended with the same words.   “ America is our homeland. One day, we’re going back. If you can’t speak proper English, people will think you’re a foreigner and look down on you.”   I was too young to understand what “look down on” really meant. But the word left me with the impression that...

This is a personal memoire, encountering Western drinks. The book covers travel and drinks from 12 different countries. The first chapter introduce my trip to Ireland, and remembered memorable drinks I met not only in abroad and but in Japan. Get your favourite drinks tonight and enjoy the book!! It is available all AMAZON shopping sites across the world. Fot a sample, please visit the links below.   https://www.amazon.co.uk/-ebook/dp/B0GQCJMHJ9/    (the UK) https://www.amazon.com/ebook/dp/B0GQCJMHJ9/    (the USA)

There was a deafening bang, followed by a deep, rumbling tremor that shook the ground beneath me.   The elderly pedestrians all dropped to the pavement in unison, as if rehearsed.   Across the street, an old man lay flat on his stomach, waving urgently in my direction. “Down!” he bellowed.   Instinct took over. I flung myself onto the pavement without a second thought.   Moments later, the wail of sirens filled the air—fire engines, ambulances, police cars, all racing past in a blur of flashing lights.   And then, just as swiftly as they had dived for cover, the prone figures around me picked themselves up, dusted themselves off, and strode away as though nothing had happened.   I had arrived in Britain in the 1980's at the age of fourteen, dragged along by my parents on account of my father’s job. I hadn’t wanted to come. Life had been perfectly fine back home, thank you very much. Germany was still split into East and West, Marga...

  Permit me a moment of reminiscence—an old woman’s soliloquy, if you will. This is a story from some forty years ago. For a brief three-year period, my family found itself living in Britain in the late 1980s. It was the height of Japan’s bubble economy, a time of exuberance and affluence. Britain, by contrast, was struggling with economic stagnation. The rapid growth of Japanese imports and the expansion of Japanese businesses were, at least in some quarters, a source of unease. For people who had grown up in an earlier era, Japan’s sudden economic prominence could be an uncomfortable sight. There was also, of course, the legacy of the Second World War. Britain, once a global imperial power with colonies across Southeast Asia, including Burma and Singapore, had fought Japan directly in those regions. Even in the late 1980s, the memory of that conflict remained strong among some people of an older generation. The sight of a once-defeated, non-Western Japan becoming an economic po...