My Short Trip to Ueda: Part 3 Three-Year-Old Kan-kun
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My Short Trip to Ueda: Part 3 Three-Year-Old Kan-kun

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travel
family

On the first night, Motoshima-san and his family visited our guesthouse, and we all had a great meal and chat. The Hitonoma children had all grown significantly over the past seven years. Some of the boys were now taller than him, while the majority of the girls were now wearing makeup. They seemed a bit nervous around each other, but soon got back to their old ways. We adults, on the other hand, hadn't changed much. Of course, Motoshima-san and I had gotten a bit older, but we were perfectly at ease with one another, as if we'd met up just the day before.

Motoshima-san has three daughters and one son. I'd met his daughters in Toyama, but had never met his three-year-old son named Kan, who was born in Ueda. Kan-kun seemed to be enjoying listening to the adults chat and joyfully shouted something out of nowhere. I didn't catch what he said, but according to his mother, Emiko-san, he said: "Ouch! A mosquito bit me on the chin! Help me! Help me!" He wasn't actually bitten by a mosquito, though. She explained that he was repeating something that had happened to him recently:

His big sister, Yui-chan, belongs to a painting club and plans to do an oil portrait of him lying on the back of a tiger in the dappled shade of a tree. So, she asked him and the second sister, Miki-chan, to pose under a tree in their backyard. Miki-chan played the part of the tiger. A mosquito came and bit little Kan on the chin, and he made a big fuss.

It seemed to satisfy him to be able to talk about his strange experience. I was impressed by his drive, which I thought was similar to mine wanting to share my experience on Journaly. His Japanese skills will easily surpass my English ones in a few years. I don't think that the way native children learn their mother tongue is particularly useful for adults learning a foreign language. However, I believe he and I share an innate desire to express ourselves.

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I struggled to decide which tense to use. I wrote the third paragraph in the present tense, as if I were discussing a film scenario, but I'm not sure if that's correct.

Headline image by hassanmd619 on Unsplash

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