“Mama, just one,” he whispered.

This was the real lifestyle: not fancy vacations, but the ritual of summer. The cold metal of the shaved ice shaver. The mountain of white snow. The violent splash of red syrup. The brain freeze.

“Ready?” asked his mother, Rina, holding up her smartphone.

His mother raised her phone one last time. Kenji didn’t pose. He just held up his sleeping Magikarp capsule against the setting sun, his mouth stained red from syrup.

“Kenji! Look!” Yui held up her sketchbook. She had drawn a shaved ice machine. Kakigōri.

Kenji and Yui made the kakigōri. They ate it too fast. Their tongues turned red. Kenji took out his sleeping Magikarp and placed it on the table.

But Kenji’s eyes locked onto the third machine. Pokémon: Sleeping Styles.

An hour later, Kenji stood in front of the holy grail of Japanese kid entertainment: a row of gacha-gacha capsule machines outside the local supermarket. They were lined up like colorful soldiers. One machine had Anpanman , another had tiny erasers shaped like sushi.

The photo captured a very specific kind of Japanese childhood: Kenji in his navy blue shorts and white short-sleeved shirt, a wide-brimmed yellow hat (the gakubōshi ) sitting perfectly on his head. In the background, the shōji screen doors were slid open, revealing a tiny garden where a half-dead morning glory plant clung to a bamboo pole.