My early childhood was spent with my grandmother who watched me, while my parents were at work.  I don’t know who was watching who, because I always observed how busy my grandmother was with the usual daily chores.

Like for instance, folding all the heavy futons that was slept on the night before.  Piling all that and blankets next, with sheets and pillows on top, into one nice stack balanced on top of a storage trunk.  Only to jump and climb onto when she wasn’t looking and play or pretend that I was the princess and the pea (Children’s story).  Then have her scold me cause the stack was a mess and lob sided.

I also liked watching her make tsukemono.  She’d washed and seasoned the vegetables and poured her liquid concoction over them in a large pyrex bowl.  Then she would put a round flat disc like stone on top to squish down the veggies and then a large weight on top to exhert more pressure. She stored it underneath the sink in the cupboard.   And after a few days it was cured and sour enough to eat.

She swept and mopped the floors daily, and washed clothes by hand in a big bucket in a cement wash tub.  There was a graded wooden board that she would rub the clothes on to get it cleaner and a bar of soap to apply to the dirtier spots.  Then hang the clothes out on the line to dry.  The sheets were the most fun to play hide and seek with, just as long as we didn’t get caught by my grandmother for dirtying them as we ran through the isles, chasing each other.

In the late afternoon, she was always busy in the kitchen prepping the vegetables and meat to cook for dinner.  My duty was to take all the condiments out from the refrigerator, like the takuwan, iriko, tsukemono and left over rice to be used for chasuke.  Also any other left over food from the last meals.  There was a lot of treasures to find in there and I had lots of fun asking her what was this or that.  Sometimes I found dried Kaki, or figs, and sometimes her stash of Lahaina Nasu which was pickeld and sliced in a bottle with karase, these things I was allowed to just taste a little as a treat. Watching my grandmother taught me many things about how life was for her and I got to see this through her window, watching her.