What's in your Yotsubox?
We all were young once, and like Yotsuba, we all had a box of our most precious playthings.
So since Yotsuba has begun printing again here in North America (I just bought Vol 6), I decided to re-read the series.
It's amazing how Yotsuba is symbolically a reflection of our own desires to re-experience our youth. The manga does this in such an incredible way, that I feel like I'm seeing the world anew through Yotsuba's eyes. I can feel her emotions of awe-struck when she gazed into the sky to see fireworks for the first time, and I couldn't help but giggle when she pulled out her Yotsubox. It brings back memories of my youth, and how things have changed so much.
So I thought I'd ask everyone here a question:
"What's in your Yotsubox?"
It doesn't have to be what you really had. It could be something symbolically sentimental to you, or is just plain cool.
(photo taken from here.)
To answer my own question, my Yotsubox contains:
a Garfield stuffed toy. He was one of my favorites, especially knowing that we were born roughly the same time. He'd always be around to comfort me.
a small transformer. It's the red autobot that looks like bumblebee but never got nearly as much screen time. I like him more because he looks more modern, and Volkswagen Beetles were for potheads and hippies.
a box of melted crayons. They were in the sun for too long, so now all my drawings are multi-colored.
a slingshot. Even though I never used it, because I was too afraid to hurt anybody with it. I always wish I did, and you know, just in case I really needed it.
an Egon figure from Ghostbusters. He was my favorite because he's smart. I liked smart and wanted to be like him.
a Calvin and Hobbes comic book. Even though I didn't understand what Calvin said most of the time, I liked the pretty drawings. I didn't understand what the comic was about, but now I wish I was back in that time, doing the things Calvin did.
I agree that Yutsuba is as beautiful as it is amusing, and the phrase from the front of the book, "enjoy everything", is something that inspires me. I think we could all use a little Yotsuba outlook in our lives, and thinking about how she takes everything in stride makes me aspire to be more like her, even though she's just a child.
My Yotsubox would include lots of things, a few of which being:
- My Sailor Moon transformation brooch. It's very old, and from the first season of the show, but I loved that thing to death. Whenever I had field trips in elementary school, I'd smuggle it in to my back pack to take with me. I was convinced that the Negaverse would attack us, and I had to have my brooch to transform in to Sailor Moon and save everyone.
- My baby blanket. A family friend knitted me a rainbow blanket when I was a baby, and even at almost nineteen years old, I still sleep with it. It just gives me such a comfort to know it's there.
- My Pokemon cards. I was an avid collector, and I had almost every card that I had ever wanted. Except the promo holographic Charizard card, which my best friend had but refused to trade me.
- My Clow book, from Card Captor Sakura. I guess I really wanted to be a magical girl when I was little.
Reading Yotsuba has definitely inspired me to have a more positive outlook on life, and to not take things so seriously.
Getting a peep at the contents of your box makes me smile. At the same time, it makes me feel a little old, since I was already in college when Sailor Moon started airing in North America. I think you're about the same age as my cousin, who was heavily into Pokemon at the time too!
I think everyone should read Yotsuba; it's such a positive experience!
Now I feel so young! I'm almost 19, but I guess I'm still one the youger users on here X3;
Go read the introductions which came in within the last few days (or a week or whatever). Quite a number of people here are as young as 12 or 13. I didn't except that either ^^
Reading Yotsuba... I started considering it after reading about it here. The best marketing is actually not marketing, but users telling they like the product. Just make sure the users you listen to are actually users and not company agents. Somebody once spotted a software company signed up users, who gave great reviews to their own products and bash all competing products. It's assumed to be the company who were behind it, but I don't think it was ever proven or admitted.
Yeah, I noticed that, and I thought it was just wild! I didn't know who Danny Choo was when I was twelve or thirteen! Oh, the wasted years.
There's a lot of stuff that I've watched and/or read because of what people have said on here about it. Because of Danny and some other people, I started watching K-ON! and Kannagi. I would have totally passed them otherwise, and Kannagi is one of my favorite anime that was released this year!
Neither did I. At that age he was just some random guy living in London and he didn't even work for JAL yet.
To put it in another way: I didn't know the word or the concept of otaku, manga, anime or anything like that. Couldn't even tell China, Korea or Japan apart. It was just something Asian like... something ^^;
Without a zillion TV channels or the internet I had no way of knowing such stuff.
even younger<-------(is 10 yrs old o.o)
Which makes me wonder. What are kids of that age doing here?
It's not that I mind you being here. It's more like if I think of myself at that age I wouldn't have been here, even if I could. I was playing with lego and stuff at that time.
i have many reasons for being here :DDDD its ok, your time was different ^_^
Wow. I don't think I was even on the computer consistently when I was ten. I was usually playing computer games or looking up pictures of Sailor Moon.
i look at pictures when im bored =w= but it became a habit of collecting many anime pictures and ended saving about 50 a day, its ok saving pictures into the computer since this is my own personal computer @.@
Talk about feeling old all of a sudden. A quick calculation indicates that I would be using my 2nd computer at the time Eri were born. Not that it's a bad thing. Babies are born all the time, but to start thinking like that about a person who is old enough to drive a car makes me feel old.
I think the most precious things to me as a kid was my Jasmin barbie doll and anything I could color with. Oh, and all my barbies and stuffed animals. I was a much better girl when I was younger than I am now XD
I should look in to this series, I've seen a lot of people talk about it.
If you liked Azumanga Daioh, then you'll love Yotsuba. They're different from one another, but both were very entertaining, with endearing characters.
A Whole New World rings true in Yotsuba. :)
From what i remembered:
1) Smashed up Gundam Wing series 1/144 Gundams
2) Lego
3) Play Dough combined with plaster-sine which stunk to the high heavens.
4) Some laser shooting vest and gun thingy which u shot the dude 3 times and he will "die".
Nothing else i remember!
You mean lazer tag? Oh dang I've always wanted those! I thought that the gun was so futuristic and cool looking, I used to draw it all the time, and add "mods" to it to make it even cooler.
Ah, the memories...
My mother (85 years old)keeps my Yotsubox - it has my old metal bank shaped like a cowboy boot, an aluminum toy truck, and a plastic horse figure; there are other things too.
wow... That's pretty amazing. It's very interesting to see the scope of age groups on here, as well as what their childhood era was like. That's very different from my box contents. :)
even tho have seen sputnik satellite launch, first man on tha moon computers go from room size to iPhone, I still am like young lad in my mind - my childhood is still alive and well. i will post pics of Yotsubox contents later . . .
Hmm? So like toys with sentimental values? TMNT action figures stained with playing clay because I make them into other comic characters, like Wolverine, etc. G.I. Joe figures, even though I never watched any of the cartoons. And a few toys I brought from Jakarta, including the plushie that my grandma made.
Not necessarily toys. Just anything that you can think of that you cherished as a child, or wish you had, or is symbolically identifiable as a part of you.
Ok, then I add one more to that list... Voltes V toys that I wished I had when I was a kid... but now I have it! And also glad to have the whole series to watch again because I grew up with it but I don't remember a lot of what happened since I watched it when I was only 3 years old. I would've loved to get a Goggle V robot too...
ah... those were the days... ^___^
I still have my old japanese mecha toys stored somewhere. I should pull them out someday and take pictures of them.
Everything that I've kept since I was a kid have been sold back thanks to my mom.
I've always planned to keep it all, though.
the small red autobot - cliffjumper ?
I believe so! :D
I think, my addiction to gaming and anime has to be in my box, My commodore 64, and the sailor moon tv series xD Besides that can't think of anything else...oh this toy plushie I had can't remember what I called it but was given it by aunty when I came to australia
I remember the Commodore 64! There were a few games I really enjoyed on it... especially Maniac Mansion!!! Hooohaaaa that game was SO RAD!
>RUN
ha ha ha
You should know more than this -_^
If you lack a disk drive
Normally I used the shortcuts, like instead of load it's l(o+shift.. think it was shift). I can't quoted how it looked because the alternative chars on a C64 is different from a modern computer ^^
Oh such great memories.
It's been at least 20 years since I last used a Commodore 64. (OMG I FEEL REALLY OLD!)
RUN is the only command I remember. T_T
20 years??? Mine is still working, though it's hidden away in the back of the closet at the moment. I recall a few years ago at uni some guys started talking about their great time with C64 and how long it had been since they last used one and I went "I started mine last night" (the truth). All of a sudden I became a geek hero and they cheered for me. I think I have started it once or twice since that time so it was pure luck that the timing was that great.
We should have a box for childhood memories? No fair. Mine wouldn't fit in a box of that size.
What meant something for me.... well here is a list (in no particular order)
-Lego
-Playmobile
-Transformers
-Farm animal figures + barn and stuff. The machinery like tractors and stuff like that was specially important
-Dinosaur figures
-Dungeons and Dragons figures
-Model railroad
-Wooden blocks (don't laugh. They were designed at a good size for construction (length=2*width and so on) by my grandfather and they were great for building stuff for everything already mentioned and they really meant a lot to me)
-Computers (though people would laugh at them today... a modern phone is more powerful)
-Board games
-Heman (though less important than the rest of the stuff)
I remember digging huge tunnel complexes in the sandbox, but that can't really be put in a box ^_^
I'm sure I left something out. My childhood was partly about collecting a whole lot of great stuff and then spend hours playing with it. I didn't fancy running around outside kicking a ball like the rest of the kids so I ended up spending many hours alone >_<
I never dared to trash anything so I still have everything in storage, except for the stuff stolen by "friends" (which sadly is quite a lot). I recall what was stolen and I think I know who did it. I once found some of it at somebody else and he had am "interesting" story about why he had that heman figure and not his items (which were not stolen). I didn't really want to see him anymore after that. Caught one stealing who gave the stolen goods back when caught, but then it was broken (after just one day). Specially remember that guy. Later he moved to another town and then somebody in that town fitting his description and age got arrested for killing a random person on the street >_<
I hate most kids I met during my childhood. They were so mean and the school I attended is now on top 10 of worst schools in the entire country.
Realised one thing I forgot in the list, all my toy plushies. My grandmother gave me a cat, which I imaginary named after her cat (hey, I was young and it was a cat name). It's hugged so much that it's now half size of what it was like when it was new, but it's still the same one. A few months ago it mysteriously appeared in my bed and I thought "well... why remove it?" and it stayed for a few weeks. Turned out my imouto had found it and decided on a prank. Didn't really expect me to just leave it there so the prank about me going wondering what happened failed :P
Sounds like you really loved that stuffed cat!
http://images.fanpop.com/images/image_uploads/Calvin---Hobbes-calvin--26-hobbes-116940_1024_768.jpg
I guess I really loved it back then. My interest in cats completely died from one moment to the next when a cat jumped up and bit me hard in the head (the temple to be specific. It hurt a like h*ll and I was bleeding a whole lot. I think I was 8-10 when it happened.
Oddly enough this incident made me avoid cats, but not nekomimis ^_^
Oh dear, that's terrible! I've heard that cats do attack, but never heard of one biting someone! Usually that's dogs!
I still love cats, and dogs. I always had a preference for cats though. I think it's because I was influenced by Garfield. I was sorrily disappointed when I saw what an orange tabby REALLY looked like. :P
Oh I have been bitten by dogs as well, in fact more than once. It happens some times with young ones. "it just wants to play"... yeah right. A dog would have beaten it up for doing that and it would learn not to bite. That dog never learned it's place and if I recall correctly it was shot because it decided to be the leader of the pack and would kill everybody standing in it's way (including humans!).
I also got bitten by a policedog once. I was outside running and when I came around a corner the dog came the other way and took my arm so I couldn't move and then it just waited ensuring that I didn't run away (as it thought it should do). The police showed up 1-2 seconds later and made it release me and apologised. They stated that they were searching for a missing person and the dog mistook a running person as the target. I told them I just spotted the real guy less than 5 minutes ago and where he was heading and off they went.
20 minutes later the police showed up at my home giving me some paper I should use to get compensation if I suffered any financial damage (like damage cloth). The only damage was fixed by the washing machine... oh and they had no problem picking up the guy based on my directions ^^
Wow... bitten by cats and dogs! I've never been bitten before, thank god. Well it's a good thing you didn't get hurt when you got bitten by a trained dog. Pretty cool that it just held you in place rather than try to take you down.
http://fc05.deviantart.com/fs29/f/2008/105/7/4/Azumanga_Neko_by_Aerawen_Vanhouten.gif
Hehe... funny picture. However I don't recall any dogs or cats ever biting me in my hands. I do recall birds and hamsters doing that when I attempted training a new one. I never failed in taming one and so far ended up with all of them being able to sit in my hand on their own free will. None of them ever bit me hard though, just told "keep your distance" without wanting to actually start a fight. If one would bite to bite for real, then I think I would take it to the vet, specially if it happens more than once. After all some animals have genes/trauma from childhood, which can't be repaired and I don't want a pet, which might attack me. I never had such problems though.
But... are you saying it's not normal to have experienced being bitten by cats or dogs? Oh dear, that would make me really unlucky >_<
Wow... Sorry to hear that this topic has dug up some pretty emotionally scarring events from your childhood.
I guess it's interesting to know that many of the kids you met back then, most likely haven't changed much. If they didn't amount to anything back then, they haven't now.
One day several years ago, I drove up to a gas station, and the person serving me was one of my high school classmates who was a complete jerk back then. He and many others picked on me when I was younger.
What goes around truly does come around.
It's ok. You couldn't predict this would happen. I will still sue you for psychologist bills and a days worth of paycheck since I cried all day instead of working.
j/k. To tell you the truth I didn't really get sad until you said sorry :P
My brother said something similar when he returned from a class reunion. I know I will not go to a class reunion... well depends on which class, but sure not the first one. When I was 8, two classmates and a brother(6) committed burglary in the middle of the night and they were removed from their families. 2 or 3 more ended up getting removed as well due to social problems. A dad raped his daughter's classmate and got jailed. On top of that bullying was a severe problem. All that happened around the time I was 6-9. As you can see it wasn't the best class you could imagine. Eventually I was moved to another school and the teacher there encouraged bullying me away because "we should have equal numbers of girls and boys and now this new guy ruins it" (parents actually complained that the teacher told that in class the day before I started). I wrote the history of teacher bullying somewhere on DC, but can't find it right now (I think it's part of the offline part of DC). Basically the schoolsystem blacklisted me as a kid, who had parents who would complain about bullying and naturally such parents are a big problem when you officially don't have bullies at school. They even forwarded a "warning" about me when I switched school meaning I had no chance to prove it incorrect when I arrived a new place.
I wrote about accidents/assaults here.
I really hate my school life >_<
Wow... and I thought I had it bad. You come from a pretty scary school background. It sucks that you had to endure all that crap... the good thing about it is that you survived, and are doing ok. That's always something good.
Hey, how do you quote my text like that? You kids are so smart nowadays...
That's simple. When you write a comment then there is an icon with a guy saying something and if you click it, it will make the quote.
You can also just write it manually. You write it like this:
[ q ]text[ / q ] (without spaces inside [])
1: I'm not a kid... just the other day I said something like "I was using my 2nd computer when you were born"... I feel old.
2: This is trivial for one with years of programming experience ^^
oh whoops! I was confused and thought Eri was the one that said that!
That icon is too small. :P
Playmobile! Oh, that takes me back. I had the Playmobie fairy tail castle, and my friends and I could spend hours playing with it. Until we got bored and used the catapult to fling people down the stairs and in to the air vent ^^;
Playmobile catapult? Wow, I really missed something for my castle. I once built one out of lego. In fact was a trebuchet and looked somewhat like this one, only mine was a bit bigger (but never completely fixed the release hook to release correctly). Sadly I figured out how to build one years later than when I actually needed it >_<
Come to think of it the age difference could be the reason why I didn't notice any when I bought Playmobile. After all my stuff is so ancient and primitive that not even all the men can turn their hands (the arms and hands are cast into one piece). Many toys did a whole lot of product development in the past years.
Okay, see, trebuchets are awesome. Neither of us were skilled enough in legos to do something that awesome, and we probably would have started breaking windows if we had! XD
I adored the little catapult, though. The adults were a little too big to fit in there, but the children were perfect for flinging around. We did it all the time until we hit my friend's dad in the head, and then he made us stop ^^; Those little things hurt when they hit you!
Wow, that's crazy! I never had any like that. But then again, I didn't get in to Playmobile until I was in fifth and sixth grade. All mine were the ones that you could move the hands and heads on, and the adults could exchange hair styles and such. I think I even still have all of mine stored in my closet back home. I can't bring myself to get rid of it.
Keep it. Even if you don't use it, then you will regret if you get rid of it. Maybe not tomorrow but then at least when you get children of your own and even if you say "I will never get children" then I'm not so certain you think the same way in 10 years.
Don't say that. First of all I didn't try hard. Also I built a plane, which had landing gear, which it could take up and down and it even had plates, which could cover the wheels so the underside of the plane were completely flat when airborne. I planned to make the pneumatic system to move the wheels up and down, but I ended up lacking the blocks to actually do it.
I also built built some railroad stuff. noteworthy would be Big Boy, a turntable, a train with shared bogies and a 4-4-2 Atlantic steam locomotive. Naturally all of them had to be able to operate to make it fun and the last one was particular nasty. It's by the book to make bogies of 4 wheels and make that work, but the trailing single axle took some thinking and testing to make it work in curves.
I also built other interesting stuff like a working paddlewheeled ship (could float and gain a surprisingly high speed using batteries and a small engine), spaceships and stuff like that.
I looked out of the window when the garbage container was emptied and thought "I should be able to make that out of lego" and made one where the bottom was closed and somewhat solid. Once it was lowered into a "bottom opener" the bottom opened and the content fell out. When I lifted it up again, it closed and I could add more stuff. I didn't do anything but lifting in the right point (where I used a Playmobile crane to do it). The locking mechanism worked based on a pull from that point (closed) or lack hereof (open).
I made all this before I turned 13 so it's not like I lacked ideas or skills to make interesting stuff out of lego... I just didn't get around to actually build all the stuff I made up in my mind ^^
Trebuchets were used for people. Two kinds of people to be specific. The first one was dead people. This was a good way to spread plague into the castle you want to attack. The other kind was spies. Basically the idea was "return to sender by airmail". "You always know when a spy returned home. It's when he stops screaming".
As for your dad... well I have seen trebucket testing on TV. They can shoot through a 2 meter thick stonewall at a range of 200 meters, so I guess even a scaled model can seriously bruise a forehead (oops) ^^;
I don't think I'd ever be able to bring myself to get rid of it. If I do have kids one day, I'm sure they'd love it, and if I don't, then I'll be sure to give them to a kid who I know will love them just as much as I do X3
I had a really hard time focusing on things (not really disorder, but I was always zoning out ^^;). I tried to make stuff out of legos, but I lost interest, and by the time I was interested again, my mom had cleaned it up or my brother had gotten in to it. My favorite thing to do was build houses out of boxes. My mom keeps every shoebox that ever comes in to the house, so when I got a new stuffed animal or a Barbie or something like that, I would make houses for them out of the boxes. Some of them got to be as big as I was! I usually had to take apart the ones I made in order to move on to my next project, which made me sad, but I had a lot of fun with it. It was sort of like giant legos.
I've always wanted to make some big lego something now that I'm older. I know my godfather collects lego Star Wars sets, so I might see if he'll let me try putting together one of his. I've never made one of the big ones, and now I just want to see if I can do it.
Wow, I didn't know that! The thing about the plague makes a lot of sense, and somehow, the idea of flinging these dead bodies back and forth in to enemy castles is a morbidly funny mental image XD; My dad eventually got over it and let us start playing with it again, but only if we shot them down the stairs, which no one uses.
Toooootally meant to say "down the front stairs" XD; Whoops!
People really know way too little about history. The middle age wasn't all about knights fighting with swords to save innocent maidens being kept in a tower.
The known ammunition of trebuckets:
-stone bullets (commonly known). They had problems targeting on it's own, but they could hit the same spot again and again (hits around within a meter at a range of 200 meters). They could easily change where they hit like moving the aim 5 meters to the left though. All aiming was done relatively to the previous shot.
-lead bullets
Much longer range and more damage. They are so expensive and it was tricky to get enough lead, so they were not really used.
-dead bodies
Killing all soldiers with disease is an efficient way to prepare a frontal attack. Dead soldiers were used, but also dead cattle and other animals. The idea of throwing a cow (in Monty Python quest for the holy grail) is not as wicked as the modern viewer would think.
-boiled oil
It was possible to boil stuff you found in nature at that time (like marshland and similar). Once it boiled, it delivered boiled oil (aka tar). Make a clay car, fill it with boiled oil. Put the oil on fire and throw it. On impact the car would crush and the burning oil will spread like water from a water balloon. Aim for wooden structures behind the stone walls, preferably food storage. One lucky shot and you can starve them out!
-clay bullet with flint
This one is simple. Just make a clay bullet and add a whole lot of flint to it. In impact the clay cracks and is useless while the flint cracks and flies to all sides like grenade fragments
Trebuckets were really deadly weapons.
The defending side used similar techniques. They could pour burning or boiling oil into the head of the people trying to climb the wall. Tar sticks to everything so it acts kind of like napalm and heavy armour will not work against this!
The defenders also had garbage from butchering (hopefully a bit old). They put sharp rocks in it and threw the rocks at the enemy. Even a minor scratch from a bacteria covered stone meant death in a world without antibiotics.
Sure some fights were done on battlefields using methods people imagine, but most were done using concepts like this. It must have been horrible to be under siege for months, knowing that at anytime the enemy might attack, either directly or build a trebucket (took 3 weeks!) and either way you would have big problems.
Playmobile really brings back memories for me too. I remember I had a gas station set, complete with a car, a jeep, several people, and children too! You could even change the price of gas with stickers! I think it was an "Esso Exclusive". I remember that I was so young, I didn't know anything about prices, and put like 129.9/L as the gas price. My mom laughed and said that's really expensive and isn't something she'd likely see in her life time. Nowadays, I see gas go up to 159.9+/L O_O
Which currency is that? I thought you guys used Canadian dollars, but then the price is insane. It could take a month payment to drive to work just one day and somehow I don't think that's the case ^^
Yeah Canadian dollars. They put it as 159.9 cents per litre, IE 1.59.9
It's like that because originally gas has always been under a dollar, so it's like 39.9 cents per litre (man that price brings back memories...)
I remember taking a picture a long time ago when the price was 79.9 and I was like holy crap!
Ok, so I was off by a factor 100. That explains why I considered the price to be wild and incorrectly ^^;
However it's odd reading you complain about gas prices like that. Come to Europe and enjoy prices, which are in the region of 220 cents/L (still Canadian).
The green party in Germany once wanted new taxes, which would make a litre of gas cost around $6 in order to reduce car usage. That was an unpopular idea in both the population and the other parties. :P
It's like politicians don't get that it's not enough to make cars expensive. They need to provide an alternative or people will just stick to cars and suffer high taxes.
I remember being at a museum and there were an old gas pump and a sign with the price and it was around 5 cents/L. That was from before the oil crisis and before gas taxes. Inflation also affected this and let's not forget that it was a somewhat crude refining meaning it would provide less mileage. Still it's interesting to see a sign like that ^^
Wow! You guys pay a lot for gas! We Canadians complain about everything. That's why we go on strike so often.
We have a carbon tax now too, and nobody likes it. I don't think it works. I think it's just a huge cash grab for the government to stuff in their coffers.
All I can say is that my box is empty, and I'm on a mission to fill it up.
Well, let us know when you've got something in it! I'd like to know!
My box has Power Rangers toys, coloring books, Ninja Turtle action figures, Pok'emon cards, and bootlegged Kamen Rider Black RX video tapes. I love scribbling with crayons and re-experiencing things from my youth, like riding the swings and drinking Kool-Aid in those weird bottles you twist open. Nostalgia is so refreshing :D
lol, all I got were mostly just Micromen and alot of sentai stuff and mostly just gashapon in my box. along with my first kendo outfit and bokken. (it got broken when someone tried to fight with me and I ended up breaking it over their head.
....-checks his box- I also found some Kinnukumen as well (Ultimate Muscle if you ever watched or played the games)
my "yotsu-closet" keeps yielding more and more of my forgotten early years - I changed my blog title as a result of this post - thank you RD (RadiantDreamer in Vancouver) :D