Interview - My grandmother

 I asked my grandmother about her childhood. She is 77 years old and lives in Tokyo, so she has experienced World War II .

 During World War II, the Japanese country announced plans for rationing. They needed a ration ticket to to buy something.

 For example, to buy clothes, she lined for hours to buy those. Also, she had older sisters so she didn't have many chances to buy new clothes. So she usually wore elder sister's hand-me-downs and if it gets too small for her, she gave it to her neighbor's kid. Nowadays I think we are not wearing clothes for good. But in Japan, it's kind of a vogue fasion wearing used clothes, and recently, there are even many special feature articles about used clothes on popular fasion magazines. I think this is a good Japanese culture.

 She told me that now, there are too much waste by packing for food. I think so, too. Fish, vegetables, and so on. In the old days, they were not packed very much, and for example to buy fish, my grandmother took her own tray from her house. I asked her if fish were rotten. She laughed and said it was okay. Isn't it funny that people in the past were eco-friendly while they didn't know about environmental issues at all? Now we now the earth is in danger, but we don't stop using plastics which we don't really need.

 Asking her many questions, I noticed that people in the old days had the mottaiani spirit. Mottainai is a Japanese word, which means 'What a waste!' It also shows appreciation to the person who made the product. This is a special Japanese culture. In the old days they thought mottainai while they were poor because of the war. Now people should think mottainai for the environment!