My Neighborhood (新之栄町)

Hello! Today I'm gonna talk about my neighborhood in Hirakata, it is called "Shin No E Chou" (新之栄町) and we could translate that into something like "the new prosperity village". True or not, the fact is that the neighborhood is prosper... but just half of it.

The neighborhood is limited by Kansai Gaidai University on the East, Yamada Elementary School on the West, Kaida Cho on the north and the "main street" (street name given by all KG students) on the south. My neighborhood is basically residential, with a very few shops and restaurants, and it is divided by the stream/river/canal/waterway (I am not sure how to call this). We could say that the so called prosperity seems to have arrived only to the western side of it.

On one side we can find really nice houses, some of them in that kind of modern-traditional construction style, as long as new "mansions", the japanese name for the apartment buildings.




Here you can see the kind of buildings i amb talking about:















And this is the most frequent kind of buildings on the east side, which unfortunately is also my side:

My house is one of these old, small, cold and not really fancy houses, but it is cheap and gives me the freedom I didn't have in the Seminar House. People park their bicycles in the very street, and even being a humble neighborhood it doesn't seem to be a problem to do so without getting it stolen. I guess this is why some people may have thought: "If I can park a bycicle, why not a wheelchair?" Sounds weird but in my short no-way-out street there are two wheelchairs parked permanently, and I remember have seen some others around.

Every afternoon, around 4 o'clock and until it gets dark all the kids gather in the short street next to mine to play catch, jumping rope or soccer. I can hear them laughing, yelling and singing from my house, but it has never been a problem for me because it makes me remember my childhood, which was very similar - spending the afternoons and all weekends playing with my neighbors in the street. Sometimes we got too noisy and the adults complained, but you know, I don't want to be that guy we always cursed after closing his window.

It is weird to find Kid's street so empty

I honestly think that this is a good place to raise a child, maybe it would be better if there was a park or an open area but the streets are a quiet and safe place to play because cars rarely enter the neighborhood. In the house right next to mine it seems that they are rising an artist, I am posting here one of her first works, stay tuned for future works.



Despite the two very different parts of the neighborhood, one with new fancy buildings and the other one with more humble and old houses, both have one thing in common: the passion for flowers. Every single house has flowerpots if not a tiny cute garden, and growing different kinds of plants seems to be a common hobby throughout the vecinity. Obviously, Tanukis are also present everywhere.


To end with, I will talk about the supermarket. FRESCO, or Saint Fresco I could say. It is very convenient to have a 24h grocer's shop right next to your place, and this is actually one of the things I like the most about Japan. Combinis and this kind of supermarkets never close, so no matter how weird is your lifestyle, if for example you feel you NEED some sushi at 4 o'clock in the morning, there are people there waiting for you to come to say: Irasshaimaseeee...!

Image taken from www.ji-mo.net
Copyright © 2010 JIMO | All Rights Reserved