clear space
Now that spring has finally come to Tokyo, I decided to pick an item for today’s disposal that reminds me of the warmer months in Japan. It’s a Ramune (ラムネ) bottle which we bought 2.5 years ago at a summer festival in Ueno Park. Ramune is a carbonated soda drink that is typically sold at Japanese summer festivals. The name Ramune comes from the English word lemonade which would have never crossed my mind prior to knowing how to read and use katakana. Continue reading “memory archive – day 29”
This morning when I was roaming around the house to find today’s item for the memory archive, my partner pointed out this tangled rainbow stick. Its temporary home was a jar in our kitchen which is holding a random collection of, currently, homeless items. It never crossed my mind to dispose of the stick; it’s beautiful. His reasoning was that he is constantly asked by the kids to detangle the stick. It’s a sisyphean task as less than a minute of playing with it, the kids always manage to get it all tangled up again and the fiddly work starts all over again. Continue reading “memory archive – day 28”
Today, our good old spice racks have to go. I got those when we were living in London, probably from a pound shop or maybe Argos (British catalogue retailer). I never liked them but, as we were living in a small London flat and were running out of space, we needed a quick and space saving solution for all our spice containers. A vertical stacking method seemed just right at the time. Continue reading “memory archive – day 27”
There is a certain cabinet drawer in our living room that is stuffed full with cards – that is Christmas cards, Birthday cards and Japanese New Year cards (nengajo). There are so many now that I know they have to go. To make the process easier, I decided to get rid of the cards gradually. Continue reading “memory archive – day 26”
As today’s contribution to my ‘decluttering project’ has merely been to finish off the recent filing session, I decided to recap on my progress rather than boring anyone with further thoughts on the act of filing. Continue reading “memory archive – a short recap”
I am pretty sure that anyone living in Japan with young children knows this character very well. It’s Anpanman, the picture book and anime series hero with an anpan as head (anpan is a pastry filled with sweet bean paste). Even though me or the kids never read the books or watched the series, we were exposed to Anpanman straight from the beginning of time in Japan. It is just unavoidable to stay away from him. Continue reading “memory archive – day 25”
As mentioned in previous posts, our house is slowly filling up with crafts brought back from kindergarten, a Montessori school. I like what the kids do as crafts activities. A lot of wood and other natural, simple materials are used. Often, rather than being just decorative, the crafted item fulfills a certain purpose – it could be a game or musical instrument for instance. Continue reading “memory archive – day 24”
I found this shimekazari (Japanese New Year or shogatsu entrance decoration) in one of the cupboards today. A shimekazari is hung at the entrance door to keep bad spirits away and bring in luck for the coming year. It is put up a few days before New Year’s day and then removed about a week after. There are a lot of preparations for the New Year period that families do – it is the most important celebration in the Japanese calendar after all. Continue reading “memory archive – day 22”
This is a small kids drawing board which you get when you fly with ANA (All Nippon Airlines) and are travelling with young children. I think the ANA kids giveaways are very much appreciated by all parents during the flight – any extra five minutes of your child being occupied is a relief. Continue reading “memory archive – day 21”
katazukete 