Anna Matsushita

    “ Ema, that’s not right. Put your tongue against the roof of your mouth. Again.” Mum’s sharp voice rang through the living room.   My two little sisters and I were all born and raised in Tokyo, to Japanese parents.   It was 1977.  From the age of six, 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 was born in America and came back to Japan. At the time, I didn't know why."   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...

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...

   **** CAUTION : Strong racist language is used *********** Around forty years ago in the late 80's, in the heart of London, I, then a teenager, was standing with my family, waiting for the traffic lights to change. It was in this moment that a white woman, standing beside me, suddenly erupted into a loud exclamation, as if she had witnessed something deeply unsettling. "Chinaman has got a kid!!!!" she cried, her voice brimming with a strange sense of astonishment. Her companion, the white man, responded nonchalantly, "Apparently, yes," as if to acknowledge the statement, albeit with a sense of resignation. Yet the woman, seemingly struck by some unseen force, continued to voice her disbelief.   “But… a Chinaman! They are animals! They can’t have a family, can’t they ？ ”   The man whispered something to her. However, she did not stop yelling.   “But it’s impossible! They get married and have a kid? Oh, yes, they don’t have freedom to get marri...

  Permit me to indulge in a bit of nostalgic musing, a reminiscence from nearly forty years ago. At the time, my family had relocated to London due to my father’s work. As a result, I found myself attending an international school in the city, and, after a spell, transferring to another one. London, even then, was a vibrant mosaic of cultures, a veritable melting pot of peoples. Yet, these two schools, both ostensibly “international,” had strikingly different demographics. The first school I attended had only a sprinkling of British students. The rest of the cohort hailed predominantly from the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, with a significant number adhering to the Islamic faith. This was, of course, decades ago, and one imagines the mix has shifted since. At that time, however, it was clear: the school’s corridors echoed with a rich blend of accents and languages from these regions. What struck me most was how forthcoming everyone was about their origins. It was as if announcing ...