When we three sisters were children:

I clung to my second sister Ecchan, who was four years older than me. Whether playing with our identical dolls, at snack time or during the night when going to the bathroom far down the dark hallway where monsters seemed to lurk, we were always together whatever we did.

Ecchan had a lot (bromide paper) picture cards of movie stars, Takarazuka (female operatic company) starlets and children's song singers. When I pestered her for one, she reluctantly gave me a Kurumi Kobato card.

In addition, Ecchan was very good at playing beanbags and cat's cradle. In time with the counting song "First One, Then Two ~," she could juggle and keep many different colored beanbags in motion in the air at the same time without ever dropping any on the floor. In Ecchan's hands the marvelous cat's cradle string would create one shape after another, from a railroad bridge, to Tokyo Tower, to an airplane. No matter how many times I watched her play beanbags or cat's cradle, I was filled with excitement every time.

My oldest sister Micchan, who was six years above me, would sometimes play house with me. She could actually cook rice using an empty can and would cleverly use towels, sheets and ornaments in our home to dress me up as an Arabian princess. As a little child, I thought she seemed so grown up.

On the day my family visited a Shinto shrine to celebrate me being seven, after returning home we discovered that there had been no film in the camera. Seeing how crestfallen I was, Micchan took me on her bicycle to visit the shrine again as dusk was approaching and took my picture there. I had a smile on my face as I clutched my bag of Chitose (longevity) candy, dressed in my brand new sky-blue dress with a white sailor collar, which my mother had made for me.

Something we three loved to do was to play in the large hammock woven from some sort of grass that our father had brought back from Brazil, where he had been posted. The three of us would sway in the hammock strung up in our garden. The rope eventually broke, but I've never forgotten the distinctive smell of that grass hammock.