“(Letters from My Japanese Kitchen: Family, Work & Society Through My Eyes)
Dear Friend,
It’s early September here in Tokyo, and the sharp edge of summer is finally softening. The cicadas still scream from the trees, but the nights are just cool enough that I’ve pulled out a thin blanket for the first time in months. I always know the seasons are shifting not by the calendar, but by my cravings in the kitchen.
This week, I found myself reaching for kabocha — Japanese pumpkin — at the market. Its deep green skin and golden flesh always remind me of my grandmother. She used to simmer it in soy sauce, mirin, and sugar, and serve it in chipped white bowls at dinner. As a child, I hated it. I thought it was too sweet, too soft, too… boring. But now, making that same dish for my own kids, I realize it carries a kind of quiet comfort I never understood before.
I write this from the small wooden table that sits in the corner of our kitchen. It’s the same one where my children scribble homework while I chop onions, and where my husband leaves his morning coffee mug without rinsing it (every single day). From here, I can see the rice cooker humming softly, the laundry basket overflowing, and the groceries I haven’t yet put away.
It’s messy. It’s loud. And yet, it’s where everything — family, work, life — intersects. My kitchen isn’t just a place to cook. It’s where decisions are made, emotions are processed, arguments begin (and sometimes end), and the invisible labor of family life unfolds daily.
As I peeled the kabocha this morning, I thought about how much of a woman’s story — especially in Japan — is told through her kitchen. We don’t talk about it much. The emotional weight of planning meals. The unspoken pressure to make something “good,” “nutritious,” “balanced.” Or the mental juggling act between PTA emails, part-time job shifts, aging parents, and growing kids.
I wanted to start writing these letters not because I have everything figured out (far from it), but because the kitchen gives me a lens — one that is deeply personal, yet quietly universal. If you’ve ever stood in front of a fridge wondering what to make for dinner, or cried quietly while washing dishes, then maybe you’ll understand what I’m trying to say.
This isn’t a food blog. It’s a life blog, from the stove-side.
Next time, I’ll tell you more about the actual kabocha dish — and how cooking it for my daughter led to a surprising conversation about gender roles. But for now, I’ll sign off here. There’s a miso soup pot calling my name.
With warmth from my Tokyo kitchen,
—Yuki
Dear Friend,
So—about that kabocha.
When I pulled it out of the pot, soft and steaming, the whole kitchen filled with that sweet-salty smell that instantly transported me back to my grandmother’s house in Saitama. I placed the bowl on the table, called out “Dinner’s ready!” and waited for the usual parade of feet.
My daughter, Hana, was the first to appear. She’s ten now, caught in that space between childhood and whatever comes next. Lately, she’s been asking all sorts of big questions — some of which I’m not always ready to answer.
She sat down, poked the kabocha with her chopsticks, and wrinkled her nose.
“Why do we always eat things like this?” she asked, half-laughing, half-genuine.
“Like what?” I asked.
“Like… soft vegetables in brown sauce,” she said. “It’s not even spicy or crunchy or fun.”
I smiled. “This is traditional. It’s called nimono. My grandma used to make it. Now I make it. Someday, maybe you will too.”
She looked horrified. “Me? Why would I cook? I’m not gonna be a mom who stays in the kitchen all the time.”
It caught me off guard. I put down my serving spoon and looked at her. She wasn’t being rude — just honest, in that way kids are when they haven’t yet learned to wrap their thoughts in politeness.
“That’s what you think I do? Stay in the kitchen all the time?” I asked, trying to keep my voice light.
“Well… kind of. You cook and clean and do laundry. Dad doesn’t,” she said, shrugging.
Oof.
Part of me wanted to correct her right away. “No, no, your dad works hard too, outside the home.” Or, “I chose this — I’m not stuck.” But I knew that wasn’t the point. What she was seeing was a pattern. What she was feeling was a message — that food and care and housework somehow belonged to the women in the house.
I sat down beside her and gently turned her bowl so the glossy kabocha caught the light.
“You know,” I said, “when I was your age, I didn’t like this either. I thought it was boring. But when I cook it now, I feel connected to the women who came before me. Not just my grandma, but all the women who stood at their stoves, trying to feed people they loved.”
She looked skeptical.
“It’s not that I have to do this,” I said. “It’s that I choose to. But I also think… you’re right. It’s not fair if one person is expected to do it all just because she’s a woman.”
Hana poked a piece into her mouth. Chewed. Frowned. Swallowed.
“It’s okay,” she admitted.
Then — and this surprised me — she asked, “Can I help make it next time?”
I almost cried into the miso soup.
That night, after the dishes were washed (by both me and my husband, thank you very much), I thought about how these quiet, seemingly ordinary moments in the kitchen are actually where the bigger stories start. Not on social media. Not in heated debates. But over simmering vegetables and honest conversations with a ten-year-old.
And maybe — just maybe — passing on a recipe and a new way of thinking is one of the most powerful things we can do as mothers.
Until next time,
—Yuki
Dear Friend,
The morning after my conversation with Hana, I packed her bento while thinking about our exchange. I sliced leftover kabocha into neat little cubes and placed them next to tamagoyaki and a rice ball shaped like a bear. My hands moved automatically, but my mind was elsewhere.
What she said — about not wanting to be “a mom who stays in the kitchen” — kept echoing in my head.
It didn’t hurt because she was wrong. It hurt because there’s a part of me that’s wondered the same thing. Am I just “the woman in the kitchen”? And what happens when that kitchen becomes too small for everything I want to be?
Later that day, I headed to my part-time job at a small office nearby. I work three days a week doing admin support for a local nonprofit. It’s flexible, quiet, and the kind of work that doesn’t follow you home — which is both a blessing and a curse.
At lunch, I sat with two other women from the office — Kana, a mother of two teenagers, and Erika, who’s newly married and already being asked about “when the babies are coming.”
As we picked at our convenience store salads, Erika sighed and said, “Sometimes I think I’m not built for this whole balancing act. I want to be good at my job, but I also feel guilty not being at home more.”
Kana nodded. “When my son got sick last month, my husband said, ‘Can’t your mom help?’ I wanted to scream, ‘You’re his father!’”
I laughed, but it wasn’t really funny. We were all thinking the same thing: how invisible and expected our effort is — at home, at work, everywhere in between.
Back in the kitchen that night, I was too tired to cook a full meal. I reheated some miso soup, added tofu and wakame, and threw together a salad with cucumber and sesame oil. My husband came home late, tired too. He thanked me, but I could feel the quiet resentment bubbling under the surface — not toward him, but toward everything. The way society is built. The way I’m expected to perform miracles before breakfast and smile through it all.
Later, while folding laundry (of course), I listened to a podcast where the guest — a Japanese working mother — said, “We are praised for doing everything, but rarely supported to do anything properly.”
That hit me like a splash of cold water.
Sometimes I think: If I stopped doing everything, would anyone notice? Would the world fall apart? Or would it just adjust — awkwardly, unevenly — and keep spinning?
That’s the part no one prepares you for: not the cooking, or the childcare, or the job itself — but the weight of being everything to everyone and still wondering who you are for yourself.
I don’t have the answer yet. But I do know that the kitchen — for all its expectations and limitations — is also the place where I’m learning to push back. Quietly, but surely.
I’ve started asking my husband to take over weekend breakfasts. I’ve told Hana she’s responsible for setting the table. I’ve stopped apologizing when dinner is just reheated leftovers.
It’s a start.
Maybe reclaiming the kitchen doesn’t mean escaping it, but redefining what happens inside it — and who holds the spoon.
With love,
—Yuki
Dear Friend,
It’s been a few weeks since that evening when I stood in the kitchen wondering if the world would fall apart if I stopped holding everything together.
It didn’t.
Actually, the world barely noticed — but I did.
Small things have shifted.
My husband now makes miso soup on Sunday mornings. It’s watery and he forgets the dashi, but he’s proud of it. Hana has started asking questions about recipes. Last week, she even made onigiri for her lunch — with far too much salt, but wrapped with so much focus that I nearly cried again.
And me?
I’ve stopped measuring the worth of my day in how many dishes I washed or how perfectly the bentos looked. I still cook, still clean, still answer emails for my part-time job between loads of laundry — but I’ve also started something new: I write. These letters, to you.
At first, I felt self-conscious — who would care about the thoughts of a housewife in Tokyo with pumpkin stains on her apron? But the more I wrote, the more I realized something: the kitchen isn’t a cage. It’s a stage. A sanctuary. A starting point.
It’s where I overhear my children growing up.
It’s where I feel the temperature of my marriage — warmer some days, cooler on others.
It’s where I wrestle with expectations — society’s and my own — and where I get to reimagine what care looks like when it’s shared, not shouldered.
There’s a quiet revolution happening in homes like mine.
Not the kind that makes headlines, but the kind that changes dinner tables — and maybe, someday, boardrooms and parliaments too.
It starts when a father rinses the rice. When a child learns that cooking isn’t “mom’s job.” When a woman dares to say, “I don’t want to do it all anymore.”
I still make kabocha. But I don’t make it every week.
And when I do, I don’t expect it to taste like my grandmother’s — because I’m not her. I’m me. Living in a different Japan, raising a different kind of daughter.
Maybe one day, Hana will write her own version of this letter.
Maybe her kitchen will look nothing like mine.
Maybe it’ll be filled with gadgets I can’t even name.
But maybe — just maybe — when she simmers something in a pot and smells that same sweet-salty scent, she’ll remember not just the food, but the feeling: of being heard, being fed, and being free to choose her own way.
Thank you for letting me share mine with you.
With warmth, always,
—Yuki
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