My neighborhood, Kuzuha

This time I will take a closer look into my neighborhood. I currently live in a single and rather small T1 apartment in what I would call a cluster of tall buildings in Kuzuha city. It is a somewhat new area since fifty years ago no one lived here, at least not to this degree. It is then not surprising to see tall and impressive buildings such as fine city kuzuha; kuzuha mall; and Osaka Dental University (depicted in the picture bellow left; middle in the back; and right respectively) or golf fields across the railway.

In particular, the group of buildings I live in are made out of six numbered 15 store tall buildings. As depicted in the image below in the middle of the buildings there is a small park with a playground for children and behind it a hospital (seen between buildings). Due to the large amount of people there are several services at the resident disposal. For example, a day care service for old people or a bus to pick up children for school. The buildings were also built to have rooms at ground floor that are used for small shops and clubs. There are several types of clubs: dance, exercise, cram school, calligraphy, etc but they share the same rooms though not concurrently. It is interesting to see different age here attend different clubs. For example, the dance clubs is attended by kids, the exercise by adult women and the calligraphy by the elderly.

Next to my cluster of buildings is yet another set of buildings divided in two groups of six buildings. One belongs to NTT (brown building in the picture bellow) employees while the other to public officials (white buildings in the picture bellow). The separation between each group is done by a small wall and trees and each has their own playgrounds which made me wonder if the separation is more than just physical affecting also the relationship between families in different group of buildings. Unfortunately my Japanese skills as they are now were not enough to delve deeper in the matter.

In the end my knowledge of people behaviors in my neighborhood is ultimately limited to the small amount of time I have lived here. I can only describe what I see. Therefore I am looking forward to seeing what surprises my neighborhood has stored for me.

Early Impressions of Japan

This will be my first post about the adventure that is discovering Japan. For the remainder of this semester I will explore and report some of my experiences and views while here in hope that others might understand Japan from a different perspective, my own. For this first post I will go into my first impressions, what surprised and amazed me when first entered this country.

Surprisingly my first thought when I arrived was “wow... So many Asians in one place...” Even knowing that I am in Japan and that it makes perfect sense that I see Japanese people around, actually seeing it is a completely different story. The picture above was taken from wikipedia since it portrays the confusion i first encountered when going outside the airport. Personally I come from Portugal, a small country in west Europe whose overall population is lower than that of Tokyo prefecture alone. The Asian community is quite small so I have never been around that many Asians before. Since I arrived at Osaka, the second largest city in Japan, I was struck by the sheer amount of people living in a big city and all of them being of Asian origin.

In the Osaka district the cities stretch out as far as the eye can see and the boundaries between each become nothing more than a line on a map. Yet I was surprised to see the mountains untouched. I have learned that in Shinto, the native “religion” of Japan, mountains may be considered gods due to their awe inspiring nature. Such preservation of heritage is quite formidable and provides us with magnificent views. Japan has a strong tie with religion and throughout the country we can see old temples and if we are lucky with timing witness century old traditions.

On the other hand Japan shows a rather highly technological side. Toilets equipped with heating and spray mechanisms, the generalized used of gps navigation systems on automobiles, televisions that can store everything that was showed the previous day, and the list goes on. This harmonious mix of old and new, of tradition and advancement are perhaps what surprised me the most when arriving here at Japan.