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.