My neighborhood lies in the city of Neyagawa. From what I can gather, my new neighborhood named Suehiro-cho is a quiet, middle-upper class residential area. There are approximately 200 residences including small shops, which run along the main road coming up from the closest Keihan station called Korien. There are also a couple apartment buildings, a catholic church and a preschool. My experience has been limited, however I have seen what I consider to be a great neighborhood. In the morning, I walk by the preschool a couple minutes before school starts. At this time, I see all of the mothers in the area either walking or biking their little ones to school. All of the little kids are dressed in the cutest uniforms with red backpacks and straw hats. Every student also has a thermos draped over their shoulder for what I assume to contain either hot tea or their favorite lunch drink. Once I saw a father taking his child to school. He was acting very awkward as all of the mothers were socializing together and it seemed like he knew he was out of place.
I have also had the opportunity to meet a couple of other neighbors. Down the street from our house lives an older woman in a tiny little house. I was told that she has been single her whole life and that she teaches dance in her home. When meeting with her, even though I couldn’t understand the language she was speaking I could still tell that she was genuine and loving. Down the street another 20 steps by the main road lives a couple that owns a store/shanty selling rice. My host mother told me that since the economy has been down, they have been struggling to make ends meet. To help out a little, my host mother gives them all of the tabs from the cans of beer that my host father drinks (which is 6 per night).
Fortunately, the house that I live in with the Aoyagi’s is at the highest point in elevation in the neighborhood. This provides for some great views of downtown Osaka as well as the sunsets. I used to consider my home city of Salt Lake to be pretty big, but it pales in comparison to the greater Osaka area. One can travel hours on the trains and never see country.
Other important markers near Suehiro-cho are the Shinto shrine and the Buddhist temple. While I am as uneducated as it gets when it comes to their main religion of Buddhism, I can still see how important their rituals and traditions are to them. It is common to see a kind of hand washing station at the front of every shrine to make sure at least your hands are clean before entering. There is also usually a place for one to write their wishes on a paper to leave at the shrine. At this neighborhood shrine, there were origami cranes bunched by the thousand left by people hoping for good fortune.
Cranes at a shinto shrine
I like many things about this post, namely the way in which you define and describe your neighborhood and the nice photos (especially the first one). I like hearing about the people there and their relationships. What do those people do with all the beer tabs? You start to lose your edge a bit when dealing so generally with the shinto shrine. But hopefully you can see more happenings there before our religion week. This is a great improvement over your first post. Keep up the good work.
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