My parents were poor and they lost everything. I know how important things were to my mom. We only had a few ochawan [bowls]. Not like now. We have so many things. Before we only had so many rice bowls and so many plates. We had to be very careful that we didn’t drop the rice bowl. And that we didn’t lose school things like our eraser and pencils and things like that.
My mother was a strict parent. She told me that her mother was quite lax. [Strict parenting] may have come from being poor. She didn’t want to be poor. And she didn’t want her children to be poor. Education was very important to her.
