Oyako Day Essay Contest 2025 — Prize-Winning Entry

The Home to Which the Noise Returns

There came a day when I stopped going on family trips.
I had been glued to my desk preparing for university entrance exams… or perhaps, I had just come up with that excuse.
The truth was, I simply couldn’t find a reason to go to noisy places with my family anymore.

— In other words, I longed for silence.

My family silently accepted it. Gradually, the number of trips they took without me increased.
They must have sensed that I was yearning for “serenity.”

In my house, silence never truly existed.
The TV was always on, laughter shook the walls, the ventilation fan hummed, and the air conditioner groaned.
Even if I curled up in the furthest corner of the house, the noise would follow me.

— However, when my family was gone, silence would unexpectedly arrive.
A silence so empty it felt almost unnatural.
The body left behind in the stillness experienced a strange sense of liberation.
The air spreading from corner to corner of the room didn’t clear with a “shh” but instead carried a tension, as if it were on the verge of snapping. I tried to merge with it.

I wanted to live in that stillness forever.

…That was my feeling for the first three hours.

Soon, the silence turned into a ringing in my ears, summoning phantom sounds that gnawed at my mind.
I started feeling ill, and in the end, I turned on the TV and played music…

— Ah, please come back.

When the door opened, the noise rushed in.
Laughter bounced through the air, the clinking of dishes echoed, and the TV blared noisily.
I frowned, but deep inside, I felt relieved.

The stillness certainly comforted me.
But it was the noise that connected me to something.

I hear there is something called “OYAKO Day.”
I want to celebrate that day not as a day to give flowers or exchange special words, but simply—
as a day to truly appreciate the value of the noise.

The discomfort of being alone.
The disharmony born from the interactions between parent and child.
That disharmony is my life, my comfort,
— and the place to which I belong.

Nao Sasaki
Age: 22
Ebina City, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan

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For example… curry sounds nice, doesn’t it?

Today’s featured essay is a story born from memories of curry and the weekend.

Oyako Day Essay Contest 2018 — Prize-Winning Entries

Saturday’s Sazae-san

“The day you were born, we were at Grandma’s house, eating curry and watching Sazae-san.”

This is one of those stories my mother has told me several times from the day I was born up to the present.

By some strange twist of fate, I grew up to become an adult who loves curry and even records Sazae-san so I never miss an episode.

My mother always ends the story the same way.

“And that’s why you were definitely born on a Sunday. Children born on Sundays are lucky.”

Thanks in part to this tale, I’ve lived with a healthy confidence in my own good fortune.

During entrance exams, during job hunting—those words always encouraged me somewhere in the back of my mind.

For the record, I failed the entrance exam.

One day, though, with time to kill, I was idly checking the calendar of the year I was born on my smartphone when I discovered a shocking fact:

My birthday was a Saturday.

Well then. That certainly explains the failed exams and my losing streak at job interviews.

I immediately asked my mother again about the day I was born, careful not to reveal what I had found.

Sure enough, she said the same thing:

“We were eating curry and watching Sazae-san.”

Curry I can accept. But could anyone really mistake a memory as vivid as Sazae-san?

Of course, I know Sazae-san used to air on Tuesdays long ago.

But the real issue here is Saturday.

I considered the possibility of a recording, but unfortunately no one in my family was enough of a Sazae-san fanatic to tape it for later viewing.

At this point, I even began to suspect an error in the official documents.

Surely it is more likely that a busy doctor wrote down the wrong date than that Sazae-san suddenly aired on a Saturday.

Or perhaps the Sazae-san my mother saw was some kind of labor-induced vision passing before her eyes.

This story, which has encouraged me for over twenty years, will now likely become one of those maddening mysteries that slips into my thoughts whenever I least expect it.

And when I start brooding over things like this, I can’t concentrate on anything else.

For now, I think I’ll make curry for dinner.

Female, 23
Kyoto City

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LAYING POSSUM

The little girls’ batteries begin to run down after eight at night. You can measure the younger one’s fatigue by how much she cries. As for her full of energy older sister, she survived today’s kindergarten, but now she’s run out of juice and is sleeping on the sofa. Mom’s the one who’s supposed to get them both upstairs to bed. After a 10 kilo and then a 17 kilo freight transfer to the second floor, Mom’s ready to give it up, but when she comes back to the living room, there’s another child who’s hurriedly taken over the couch and is now lying on it with his eyes shut. “Go to bed !” No surprise there: another 24 kilo load would put quite a strain on Mom’s chassis.

Mama knows how hard you’ve been trying to be a good older brother to your two little sisters.

She knows how hot it was today from the sweat marks when you took off your backpack.

She knows how you let go of my hand and turned away when your younger sister started to cry. And that you were trying to be patient but unintentionally hit your sister when you swung your arm in frustration.

Your mother knows that her right and left arms were commandeered as pillows for your sisters and that’s why you’re sleeping alone with your back turned towards her. And she suspects you’ve got your eyes narrowed to slits to keep track of what Mama is doing.

It’s only when I get busy that it’s difficult to give you the attention you want. With only two arms, Mom can’t hug three kids at the same time. The son on the couch knows this full well.

Of course if he’s “sleeping”, then he has to get carried upstairs, and there’s no way not to hug him in the process… and maybe that’s what he needs.

She’s picked him up. “You’re always trying hard to do your best, aren’t you…”
“No,” he whispers in a small voice.

So, he is awake after all.

Quietly by his ear, “And what face are you making now? I think I know !!”

Halfway up the stairs the 24 kilo boy’s body suddenly goes limp and gets even heavier.

Famale | Fukuoka Prefecture

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I COULD HAVE PICKED A BETTER MOTHER

Always at work, never at home; oh, how I hated my mother.
When I thought I heard her at home, I’d find her standing there at the kitchen sink with her back to me.
By middle school, I was fed up with everything. One day something happened at school that bothered me and everything went haywire. At home, I blew my top and turned on my mother.
“If only I could have chosen my mother ! I would’ve picked a better one !!”
I could see I’d really hurt her. Suddenly, I felt so lost. She left the kitchen without a word, and I chased after her.
“You’re not interested in anything I have to say. I know how much you hate me !!” I blurted out at my mother whom I’d cornered on the toilet. I’d actually followed her there because her reaction in the kitchen worried me so, but I didn’t have the guts to tell her at the time, much less to apologize.

After high school, I went to college abroad. I started to notice how much I was skyping her. When something went wrong, I’d always call her on skype and have it out with her. And if anything nice happened, she’d always be the first to get the news. When I came home to visit, Mom would always ask, “What would you like to eat? How ’bout some sushi?” And I’d always answer the same way, “No, I want your cooking. Anything you make is the best.”

Whenever I was happy, she was happy with me. When I was angry, she took the sting from my wrath. She was always there for me. That’s who my mother is.

My mother did always keep her back to me in the kitchen, but it never meant she hated me. She was there to make a meal for me no matter how busy she’d been at work. And her food was always the best. Very soon I will be having my own child. And now I stand alongside my mother at the kitchen where she’s teaching me how to cook. And we joke about all the horrible things I used to say.
Now, I have the guts to tell you.
I’m sorry for what I put you through.
If I could have chosen a mother, it’s you I’d pick; now, then, and forever.

Famale | Hyōgo Prefecture

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