My Neighbourhood - Yamanouekitamachi

My current neighbourhood is an area called Yamanouekitamachi (山之上北町)  which is part of Hirakata shi, and is roughly around 10 minutes by bus from Hirakata city station, but whenever asking many of my Japanese friends if they know where Yamanouekitamachi is, I get blank expressions or a sudden quick search on a iphone, which leads to the impression that Yamanouekitamachi  is a small neighbourhood.

But in reality Yamanouekitamachi  is a neighbourhood with several large pachinko parlours, a love hotel, a swimming lesson building, internet café’s and a various range of café’s and restaurants, as well as the combini’s such as Lawson’s and family mart.

But sadly, the most I really see and experience of the Yamanouekitamachi  neighbourhood starts from around the door of my homestay family house, until the bus stop about a four minute walk away (two minutes if you are going to be late and run instead)

A common sight for me

But it is hard to not notice a few things about this neighbourhood during that four minute walk, first of all, the area is a mixture of really nice big well cared for houses (by Japanese standard) and the smaller apartments, and the less cared for small houses and apartments, with random warehouses thrown in around the way.

A assortment of  nice houses

A block of apartments that have probably seen better days

Then you also bring in the pachinko parlours, combini’s and various restaurants, leading to a rather mixed message of what kind of neighbourhood Yamanouekitamachi it.

A huge pachinko place in a small neighbourhood???

But unfortunately with the pictures I took on my quick two minute dash to university (because as usual I was running late) I am afraid that I was unable to capture what kind of neighbourhood Yamanouekitamachi is.

All I have provided here are pictures of houses and apartments, sure they are a big part of a neighbourhood, but the most important part of a neighbourhood is the people that live in it.

And here there are no pictures of the people I meet on the quick dash to the bus stop, the people like the grandmother and her young granddaughter that greet me with a happy “ohayo gozaimasu” and tell me to have a safe day at school and return in good health and spirits, the kids that play in the empty lot near my house, my host brother fiancés family (who also live in the neighbourhood) who saw me walking to the bus stop one day and insisted they give me a ride to the university.

Buildings are only part of a neighbourhood, what good would a house or apartment be without the people living in it.

I will once again end this blog on a slightly different but connected note.

Every morning when I walk to the bus station, there is one house that has a plum tree out the front, usually the flowers are bloomed a lovely pink, but once again, in Japan things can change so suddenly.

Such a lovely bloom

But even they hide in the snow