My Neighborhood

I have been living, playing and going to school in Hirakata-shi now for about a month.  I feel like I've learned a lot here and made a lot of wonderful friends, and I really love my Seminar House and the people who live here.  However, if I was asked to choose which part of Hirakata-shi constitutes my neighborhood for me, I wouldn't pick the streets surrounding my Seminar House, even though I've spent so much time sleeping, playing, studying and shopping around the area.  Even though I feel comfortable here, I can't say I have ever interacted with my neighbors, apart from a "Konnichiwa" here and there or a stare and uncomfortable silence.

For me, Kansai Gaidai and the surrounding student apartments and hundred-yen stores are my neighborhood.  Kansai Gaidai is like a safety bubble--while I'm here, I sometimes forget that I'm a foreigner. 

And right outside of Kansai Gaidai are my friends' apartments, where I go to have dinner and hang out, or the aptly named "Seminar House 5"--Cafe Istanbul, the bar where you're guaranteed to run into a friend or classmate, the Lawson hundred-yen store where we buy most of our essential groceries, and New Delhi, the Indian restaurant where you can get curry, rice, mango lassi and unlimited naan for about 700 yen if you make it in time for the lunch special. 

                                          Nabe stew and Yakisoba at a friend's apartment.

To me, the neighborhood stretches from end to end of Kansai Gaidai, encompassing the student apartments, the nearby Top World and Lawson 100 yen store on one end, and Shimamura and Avail on another.  This is the place that feels the most like home to me.  That may be because it's mainly a community of students like myself--they work at the grocery shops and stores here, they shop here, they play here.  This is the community that I feel the most a part of.

First Impressions of Japan

So do you want to know something really crazy? The other night I went to a moon viewing festival in Kyoto.

Every so often I have these moments--I've somewhat adjusted to the daily grind here, and I'll just be going about my business, maybe worrying about my homework or complaining about the heat, and I'll stop in my tracks and think, "Hey... I'm in Japan!" 

I think that if I had to summarize my first impression of Japan I would focus on how closely the wonderful and the mundane coexist.  You could spend the night listening to hauntingly beautiful traditional Japanese music at a full-moon viewing festival in a beautiful temple in Kyoto, and spend the next day browsing second-hand manga shops in a heavily industrialized city setting.  Perhaps this is true of many countries, but I feel that in America at least the two extremes are not so close.  Before coming to Japan I was even told that Kyoto was ugly.  I don't think so.  The train station may have been all gritty concrete, but I felt as if around every corner were scenes of spectacular beauty.

This is a snapshot from Kiyomizu-dera, which I was thrilled to visit.  In this one trip to Kyoto, I made a wish at a Shinto shrine and drank from a fountain said to bring things like love, health and prosperity to the drinker.  I also went shopping in a department store, visited an underground mall and ate at a "Ninja Cafe" that catered mostly to tourists and served a great deal of Western food buffet-style. 

When I make a mental inventory of all the things I've done in my first few weeks here, I'm most astounded at their diversity.  To note: I have visited Kyoto twice, once to visit Kiyomizu-dera and shop and once to attend the annual Tsuki-Mi festival.  I have also been to karaoke four times, gone drinking at a middle eastern-style bar, taken purikura (print club photos) and had a birthday party at Sweets Paradise, an extremely pink buffet-style restaurant that specializes in pastries and girls' birthdays. 

These things seem unrelated, but they're not.  They are all part of the tapestry that makes up Japan.  As I see more and more of this wonderful country of neon lights, boy bands and hauntingly beautiful temples, shrines and castles, I hope to learn how they're connected.