Memories of my hometown.

 I grew up in a snowy country village in Japan. The amount of snow that we have is so much, sometimes we had to go outside from the second floor. The view of the snowy horizon was incredibly beautiful. In my garage at home, my family’s old straw jackets were hanging there for a long time.  

I always remember the old straw jacket.
It was my grand mother's jacket. I didn’t remember that she wore the jacket. 

The Yo-kan box had a symbol of a little boy wearing a straw jacket in the package also. When I was a little girl, we used to enjoy this Japanese sweet called Yo-kan. It's like a jelly kind of texture, and it's made of red beans. It was a luxury sweet for us. In Japan, we have a gift culture, and we often take this Yo-kan box to people as a gift and we are also often given by others in my home town. When I saw the Yo-kan box on the table after school, my sister and I were so excited and couldn't wait for my father to come home and open the box. In our home we had to give the first piece to our Buddha, then my grandfather. After that the whole family got to eat.

I still miss Yo-Kan from my hometown which has the little guy wearing the straw jacket. Same as my grandmothers in our garage. Little memories of my hometown like this take me back to slower times.