Familiar Sights Became My Treasure.
Summer in Japan. I was feeling a little homesick when a friend from my class invited me, “There’s a summer festival this weekend, want to go together?” It was a world I had only ever seen in anime, so of course, I immediately said, “Yes!”
On the day of the festival, my host mother helped me put on a yukata for the first time. My heart pounded with excitement as I went to our meeting spot in the unfamiliar clothes. My classmates were already there, also in yukata and jinbei, and the special atmosphere was thrilling.
The shrine grounds were a magical space with swaying paper lanterns. Just walking through the crowd with my friends, holding cotton candy and a candy apple, felt like a special day. Even failing completely at the goldfish-scooping game is a great memory now.
But the moment that remains in my heart is when we all looked up at the fireworks together. Huge, colorful flowers of light bloomed one after another in the night sky. Hearing my friends next to me whisper, “Kirei…” (Beautiful…), I felt my heart swell.
That night, surrounded by the energy of the festival, the smiles of my friends, and the beautiful fireworks, I truly felt like I belonged. It’s a sparkling page in my unforgettable “seishun”—my youth—in Japan.
