136 Seasons Later
Ever flipped through your parent’s old photo albums, finding pages eaten by silverfish, facing plastic pages sticking onto each other after a long period of time or colours of the photos fading in a fashionable manner?
Beyond my parent’s wedding album and honeymoon album, my favourite album in the untouched corner drawer is my dad’s travel album to Japan - probably the only special place my dad has been to other than Malaysia, Thailand and Batam.
For as long as I could remember, my dad is the man who speaks Japanese. My siblings and I always loved imitating him whenever he was on the phone. Moshi mos… Hai Hai Hai... Domo Domo... It was so funny then. At some point, I learnt that my dad was in Japan for a brief period of six months to work when he was 24 years young. It seems to me that opportunities like these were hard to come by then and it must had been a great experience for him. As I flipped through more pictures trying to relive his journey and experiences, I was getting excited because I was going to visit the places my dad visited 136 seasons ago…