Three weeks until our first baby. Yay!  Three weeks to go.  Three weeks to organize, three weeks to relax and three weeks to enjoy my last three weeks of quietness… I decided to invite my parents in law to stay as it was my husband’s birthday. What a good wife I was! Looking and feeling [...]

Right in the middle of Japan, high up among the mountains, an old man lived in his little house. He was very proud of it, and never tired of admiring the whiteness of his straw mats, and the pretty papered walls, which in warm weather always slid back, so that the smell of the trees [...]

It was the custom in old times that as soon as a Japanese boy reached manhood he should leave his home and roam through the land in search of adventures. Sometimes he would meet with a young man bent on the same business as himself, and then they would fight in a friendly manner, merely [...]

TOBERMORY I was little anxious when I heard Mrs Blemley’s is giving another of her dinner parties this evening. I am not that fond of dinner parties though I like the food, but mostly because of my coyness and of my disastrous dressing sense. But there was just one thing that instigated me to go [...]

A long long time ago, an old couple dwelt in the very heart of a high mountain. They lived together in peace and harmony, although they were very different in character, the man being good-natured and honest, and the wife being greedy and quarrelsome when anyone came her way that she could possibly quarrel with. [...]

There was once a worthy old couple who lived on the coast, and supported themselves by fishing. They had only one child, a son, who was their pride and joy, and for his sake they were ready to work hard all day long, and never felt tired or discontented with their lot. This son’s name [...]

Near a big river, and between two high mountains, a man and his wife lived in a cottage a long, long time ago. A dense forest lay all round the cottage, and there was hardly a path or a tree in the whole wood that was not familiar to the peasant from his boyhood. In [...]

Once upon a time there lived a cat of marvellous beauty, with a skin as soft and shining as silk, and wise green eyes, that could see even in the dark. His name was Gon, and he belonged to a music teacher, who was so fond and proud of him that he would not have [...]