Natto - eternally grateful for my heritage

One of the happiest memories in my life was to swim with my dog, T-Bone when I was unemployed and desperately looking for a job.  It was a summer of 2009.

Never imagined that that summer would be such unforgettable and beautiful days, especially when I had been experiencing rejections one after another by the companies I applied for.

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T-Bone would always make a big splash into the lake in front of my face, which make me see nothing but water splash and everything in sight become a blur on a horizon.

Then, he calms down.  We finally swim side by side reasonably and peacefully.

Lying on my back and floating like a paper doll on the water, I gaze into the faraway sky and wonder if I ever saw a blue sky whose edge was decorated with branches of trees.  

As I enjoy watching those branches moving slowly away in my sight, I gradually visualizing my sepia-tone pictures in my life that I cherish eternally.

***Soul mate,  my mother, my father, my dogs/Chako & Muddy,

Northeastern part of Japan - a huge elementary school yard with many trees where I swung on vines like Tarzan, - thousands of white swans in front of my house which migrated from Siberia ***

This is the moment that I can convince that there will never be an end but continuation.
This is the moment that I feel so powerful because I stop defining myself by neither the job I hold nor the title of organization nor any other secular achievements, but by the sepia-tone pictures that I cherish in my life.

I transformed that summer which could be my most desperate and miserable time to the happiest moments of my life.

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A nine-year-old bobbed hair girl would rush home after playing so hard in a school yard Jungle because the beautiful sunset illumination on the trees telling her the time for dinner, telling her go home.

It was a summer of 1971 when the first MacDonald opened in Japan and people in Japan started eating American fast food, but I was so lucky that I had no choice but to eat my mother's home made meal every day because it would build my strong body that can tolerate a 110-pound-black massive lab as a play mate in a summer of 2009 when the global economic decline even started affecting me.

I would rush home with wet black monster after swimming so hard and run to the kitchen start warming brown rice, cutting Japanese pickles (tsukemono), warming miso-soup and preparing my most favorite dish called Natto, which I convince, is the most miraculous food on the planet and makes me a healthiest, happiest and, moreover, a person who can eternally grateful for my heritage.

How to eat Natto:

1. Stir the natto with chopsticks. Do not mash. Stir fast and well about 10 to 15 times until it becomes sticky.
2. Pour the seasoning that comes with Natto.
3. Add your favorite vegetables or condiments such as chopped green onions, sesame seeds, eggs, mustard, wasabi, etc.