When I was between seven and nine years old, I liked to go to
Amembo. Amembo was the name of the dagashi-ya near my
house. Dagashi-ya is a kind of sweets shop and there
were many dagashi-ya when I was a small boy.
Dagashi means cheap sweets and snacks. There were
many kind of dagashi. My favorite ones were
fugashi and umaiboh. Fugashi is brown
sugar-coated and made of wheat flour. It is white, soft and
crispy. Umaiboh is a stick of corn snack. There were
many variations of flavor and my favorite was a Worchester sauce
flavored one. Those in the candy store were very cheap, so if you
had a hundred yen, you could enjoy nearly an hour eating and
talking there.
Usually, a candy store's keeper is an old lady, and we call
her Oba-chan, or Grandmother. I liked to chat with
Amembo's Grandmother. She was small and talked very softly. She
brought her dog named "Shiro" every day to Amembo. I liked dogs
but my parents didn't allow me to have one. This was another
reason I liked to go to Amembo.
It was so fun for me to chat with Grandmother, play with Shiro
and eat sweets and snacks at Amembo. Grandmother always told me
how hard it was to continue Amembo because the profit from the
shop was so small, but I was too small to understand it, so I
never even dreamed that she would shut her shop up.
The day had come. I think it was autumn of my ninth year.
Amembo's small building was destroyed and became a car park. Now,
I don't know what Grandmother is doing now or even if she is
still alive, but thanks to Oba-chan and Shiro, Amembo
was really one of my best places to be in my childhood.
by Masaru Jibiki
