I was a student when social media got popular. I tried searching my own name and discovered there was someone living in my prefecture who had the same first and last name as me?although it was written with different kanji. We were the same age and both of our families had a Dachshund. They were even both named Choco! I couldn’t help but send a message, and we both became online friends.
A few years later, I was on a date on Christmas Eve at Huis Ten Bosch in Nagasaki and we were sitting on a bench. A girl came up and sat down next to us, and I noticed she looked familiar. I mustered up the courage to greet her, and sure enough, she was the online friend with my name. I couldn’t believe we met in a crowded theme park outside of the prefecture where we lived. We both squealed in delight at the amazing Christmas miracle. It was a precious day that I’ll never forget. Over ten years have passed since then, and we’ve both since gotten married and changed our names, but to this day we exchange new year’s greetings over social media.

(mai)

My unforgettable day is Christmas eve 35 years ago. It’s a day I proved Mendelian inheritance. My eldest daughter’s blood type is Type A, my eldest son Type O, my second-born son Type AB and my second-born daughter born on this day was Type B. It felt like a miraculous day to me.

(325)

My unforgettable day is September 3, 2011. It was when I had a checkup for my first child and found out it was a girl. That year was when the Great East Japan Earthquake had happened in March, and we were all feeling anxious and worried. Our baby girl was our ray of hope, so we decided to name her “Hikari” (meaning “light” in Japanese) on this day. She arrived safe and sound the following year, and she’s now a junior high school student!

(maki maki)

My unforgettable day was when my eldest daughter, who was teething, bit my Hobonichi Techo. She was my first child, born in February. I did not know anything about childraising and was having a hard time taking care of my child and getting enough sleep. One day, after she started teething, I noticed she was unusually quiet; she was chewing on my Hobonichi Techo book. “What is this thing my mom loves more than me?” she might have thought. The bite marks on my 2020 Hobonichi Techo remind me of my first year as a mother every time I see them.

(Amedama)

Back when I was working at my former workplace, I went to lunch at a ramen noodle restaurant. When I was looking out of the window, waiting for the ramen I ordered, I noticed a fireball falling from the sky. Surprisingly, there were more and more fireballs coming after. I could see from the glass windows that people were starting to gather around the restaurant, and finally, a fire truck arrived.

The restaurant staff were so focused on preparing the ramen that they did not notice what was going on outside. I couldn’t relax but had to wait for my bowl of ramen to come, and all I could do was to signal with my eyes in bafflement at the gentleman next to me.

I later learned that the electric sign of the restaurant’s building had caught fire, and the melted parts fell in balls of fire.

Just when my ramen arrived at my table, a firefighter rushed inside the restaurant, yelling at us to evacuate the building. After all, I couldn’t have my ramen.

(Okamura)

Let me share “the day that I had forgotten, but the techo reminded me of it, and it became unforgettable.”

“May 26, 2012,” the day I first met my husband, has now become a precious day of my life.

It was the day that I joined the first and only meet-up of the Japanese pop-rock band Mr. Children with a friend after their 20th anniversary concert at Tokyo Dome. My friend and I were having a hard time getting into the mood (because everyone was so full of energy) when I found my husband watching the group from a distance. I talked to him, and had some Japanese sake together; it became our first time meeting.

I did not remember the date, but one day, I found a note about the day when I was reading my husband’s techo. It was a page with just a note on what happened and the attached concert ticket stub, but seeing it made the day very meaningful.

(Iwasawa)

I was in Hawaii one day, traveling by car from one side of the island to the other and viewing all kinds of scenery and visiting all kinds of shops. The scenery was almost entirely molten rock, forest, grassland, or sea. The scenery outside the car seemed to go on forever, and no matter where we went, we could see the sun from the car window.

The sun was high in the sky from morning to afternoon, and then it dipped further down. That’s something that’s common sense after we learn about it in childhood, but as someone who lives in a place filled with skyscrapers, it was so refreshing and fascinating to actually be able to see where the sun is in the sky at any point. I felt like I spent the whole day keeping an eye on where it was.

We went to go take a picture of the sunset around dusk. We picked a beach where we’d have a good view of the beautiful sunset, and set up to wait for the time to come as we looked up what angle and direction it would set. Finally, the time had come for the sun to sink into the horizon before us.

Immediately before sinking, the sun suddenly appeared to grow in size and turned bright red. Once it touched the horizon, it slowly disappeared from view a millimeter at a time. Once the top of the sun disappeared from view, the sky along the entire horizon was pink and faded into a deep purple hue.

When the sunset was over, I suddenly felt like I was standing with the soles of my feet on the ground and spinning backwards?or rather, I felt like I was watching an image. Because I’d been watching the sea, land, sky, and sun all day long, I could almost feel in practice?rather than assuming in theory?how it wasn’t the sun that was moving, but the Earth floating through the universe and rotating at an amazing speed as I rode on it.

Even now, from time to time, I’ll randomly experience those mind-boggling sensations and images. And whenever I do, I realize that my worries and problems are utterly microscopic in the grand scheme of things as the Earth continues to spin on its axis. It’s a nice change of pace to be reminded once in a while how extremely small and insignificant my worries actually are.

(Komata)