“His mother had brought him there and then taken him for green tea ice cream, a memory he has reflected on fondly.”
You bet, sure, I’ll believe that.
For me, I remember Cod liver oil and enemas.... memories I have not “reflected on fondly”.
I question whether they even made green tea ice cream in 1967. I believe nothing this 0 says unless it can be verified.
I call BS because the Japan of the early 1970s is far different than the Japan of today — considerably less internationalized, very parochial, even regimented in its tastes regarding food — and I STRONGLY doubt “green tea ice cream” had been invented then.
Traditional Japanese would have been intensely outraged at the very idea. Japan was a lot poorer then. The industrialization export boom had just started and the affluence of the bubble years was at least a decade in the future.
I vividly remember a train ride from Yokosuka to Tokyo in 1976, at which time most houses were still roofed with corrugated galvanised iron, air pollution was ungodly and the “honeypot” smell of human waste was prevalent in even the best districts because they were still upgrading the sewers.
Green tea ice cream? The idea would probably cause expressions of nausea even among what passed for internationalized Japanese of the era.