Every Japanese Kid Has This Notebook

I was surfing J-list today and came across this Japonica notebook.

Every little Japanese kid has at least half a dozen of these notebooks, because they make one for each subject. They're lined differently depending on what they're for. For example, the one in the picture is for language class. That means you'll probably be writing a lot of sentences using new kanji in it, so the pages are lined with blocks, one for each letter. (Kinda like how those notebooks you first learned cursive on had four lines to remind you where to loop up or down.)

My favorite was the one called "diary." The top half of the page was blank, and the bottom half had squares. So you get to draw a picture to go with your story. My story was always about going shopping with my mom or fighting with my brother or eating dinner with my dad. And the picture was always of a girl with straight black hair and big bright anime eyes, smiling and holding a dog on a leash.

It was supposed to be me, except I didn't have straight black hair, anime eyes, or a dog. But the written part was always true. A child's memory is always part fact, part fiction. In my case, the line that divided the page into text and illustrations neatly separated my childhood fantasies from my day-to-day life.