I was born in the early morning of June 28, 1979, in Seki City, Gifu. It was the year of the sheep according to the Chinese zodiac. Like the Chinese, we Japanese believe that we take on the characters of the animals of our birth years. Therefore I am expected to have the character of a sheep.
I consulted a book on the Chinese zodiac to see what characteristics Sheep people have. The book tells that those born under the sign of the sheep are elegant and creative, but timid and prefer anonymity.
I'm not so sure if I share these same characteristics.
I'm not sure, either, that all my classmates from my elementary school days who were also born under the sign of the sheep share these characteristics.
Now back to my birth. I heard that my mother gave birth to me at the hospital. I have often been told that it was a one week premature delivery.
My parents were very worried that I might be a low- weight, premature baby, and be placed in an incubator.
My birth weight was 2,300 grams. It was 200 grams below the average weight for a newborn baby, but it was not so low as to be defined as a premature baby. Still my parents were worried that I might not grow up well.
My mother's obstetrician assured my parents that the babies who are small at birth grow faster. As the doctor predicted, I doubled my birth weight after four months.
When I was born, my mother was working as a junior high school teacher. She got a maternity leave for twelve weeks; six weeks before birth and six weeks after birth.
When my mother returned to work, my grandmother on my mother痴 side, offered to take care of me. My other grandmother, who is my father's mother, was suffering from asthma and couldn't look after me.
Since my mother's parents lived by themselves in the next town on my mother's way to work, my mother drove me to my grandparents' home every morning and picked me up on her way back home every afternoon.
She often tells me that it was the hardest time for her to pursue her career as a teacher.
When my brother was born two years later, my mother took a leave of absence for infant care for a year and enrolled me in the day-care center in the neighbor-hood.
As you may know, there are two kinds of preschool institutions in Japan, which are institutionally different; a kindergarten and a day-care center. Most of the day- care centers are operated by municipalities, while more than half of the kindergartens are privately run.
Kindergartens are under the supervision of the Ministry of Education and classified as educational institutions for children three to five years of age under the School Education Law, while day-care centers are under the supervision of the Ministry of Health and Welfare and classified as welfare institutions under the Child Welfare Law.
There were several public and one private day-care centers in our town. There was no public kindergarten in my town, though there was a private one.
The private kindergarten accepted only children over three years of age. And the tuition was rather high.
At that time, our family lived in an apartment, which had only two rooms, and my parents were trying hard to save money in order to buy a new house. They didn't want to pay the high tuition.
Anyway I was only two years old then and was not qualified to be enrolled in the kindergarten. So my parents decided to send me to one of the public day- care centers in our town, which was and still is in our neighborhood.
Private kindergartens usually provide a school bus service which picks up children near their homes and brings them home each day. However, if parents enroll their children in a public day-care center, they must take and pick up the children every day.
The day-care center I attended was just two blocks away from my house and only a ten-minute walk. For one year, while my mother was on infant-care leave, she walked me to the day-care center every morning and came to pick me up around five o'clock every afternoon.
At that time, my brother was only two months old, and couldn't be left at home alone. My mother put him in a baby carriage and pushed it with her right hand, while holding my right hand with her left hand, so that I could walk on the left side of the street.
When my mother returned to work after one year of infant-care leave, my grandparents took care of my brother as they did for me, and I walked to the day-care center by myself.
I attended the day-care center for four years until I entered elementary school at the age of six. When my brother was three years old, he and I went to the day- care center together.
The teachers at the day-care center were all female.
As I remember, all the teachers except the head teacher wore a T-shirt and jeans in summertime, and a sweatshirt and jeans in other seasons. A few of the teachers wore a tracksuit.
The head teacher was a plump lady in her early-to-mid- fifties. She usually wore a blouse and skirt. She always wore a friendly smile for all the children. We all liked her very much.
When one of the children wet his or her pants, it was always the head teacher who took care of that child.
There were some two-year-olds who still wore diapers.
It was also the head teacher who changed the wet diapers. I think it was because only she had had the experience of baby rearing.
Either my brother or I never wetted our pants, since we were well taught by our grandmother how to handle the toilet as soon as we stopped wearing diapers while we were in her care.
In the day-care center, when the weather was fine, we could spend lots of time on the playground outdoors.
There were a slide, jungle gym, sandbox, seesaw, two swings, and two horizontal bars, one of which is a bit higher than the other one.
Since my mother left home before eight o'clock, I had also to leave home at the same time. I arrived earlier than other children. It was good for me, because I could get the best place in the sandbox right in the middle which was my favorite place.
Many of the children liked playing in the sandbox.
If you arrived late, the sandbox was crowded with many children, and there was no place to get into. We dug in the sandbox with a shovel and made a small pond. We put water in the pond from a pail. We also built castles and houses.
Many of the boys liked playing on the jungle gym.
Another favorite of mine was a swing. When one of the swings was not occupied, I played on the swing. When another girl or boy was swinging on the other swing, I tried to swing higher than the other.
When I swung so high up, I felt scared and closed my eyes at the highest point of my swing. I could open my eyes only when I swung down.
On the first day when my brother started his day-care center, I showed him how I could swing up high on the swing. He was fascinated with me swinging so high, and wanted to be able to swing himself. So I put him on the swing and pushed him. At first he was so scared, and jumped off the swing. But he soon learned how to swing high, and it became his favorite play.
He also loved sliding down the slide. The ladder of the slide had ten steps to the top of the slide. The steps were wide and deep so that even three-year-olds might not slip down. Still it was very difficult for my brother to climb the ladder by himself. Until he could climb the ladder by himself, I had to help him up the ladder many times.
One of the popular games among the girls was a group version of skipping rope. In this game, two players hold the ends of a three to four meter rope and turn it as the other players jump, one at a time.
The rope turners start by swinging the rope away from the jumper, then making a full circle that will pass over the jumper痴 head. As others in the group look on, each jumper in turn stands just outside of the whirling rope and steps in as it is about to hit the ground. Then the jumper hops over the rope with both feet as many times as possible. When the jumper misses, the turners stop whirling the rope. The jumper who has missed becomes one of the turners, and they resume swinging the rope. Then another jumper steps in. I was so good at skipping the rope that I seldom had to be a turner.
In wintertime, when it snowed the previous night and the playground was covered with freshly fallen snow, we had a snowball fight. We threw snowballs at each other. It was fun.
When we were tired of the snowball fight, we built a snowman. We used pieces of charcoal for its eyes and mouth, and a carrot for its nose.
When it was rainy, we played indoors. Some of the boys played soldiers with swords made of newspapers. Some of the girls liked to play house, asking some boys to join them to play the part of a father or brother.
Some boys and girls liked playing doctors and nurses together. Teachers sometimes advised us to play shop with play money, using toy vegetables and fruit.
Teachers also taught us how to make origami. We folded sheets of paper into many kinds of figures; cranes, helmets, frogs, and swans. I was the expert at cranes.
My brother was no good at origami. When he failed to fold paper, he crumpled the paper into a ball and threw it on the floor.
I think we had a lot of fun at our day-care center.
I still remember those happy days with kind teachers and the broad smile of the head teacher. I sometimes wish I could return to those days, when we were innocent and had no worries.
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