When I first heard that I would be living in Kyoto I began to dread the thought of long commutes to Osaka; after all, Kyoto and Osaka are two completely different prefectures. However I am very fortunate that my host family are situated in Yawata City, directly on the border between Kyoto and Osaka. It also happens to be the next city over from Hirakata City where Kansai Gaidai is situated, and so in total it takes me only 40 minutes by bus and train to commute to uni. By car it takes about 15 minutes. So every day I get to cross the borders and I am able to compare two very different neighbourhoods.
I am still amazed at all the beautiful homes that are in my neighbourhood. They all look very well maintained, new, and expensive. I feel Yawata City is a far cry from the stories I’ve heard about the Japanese living in cramped areas in their tiny one room apartments. When compared with this, Yawata seems to be the luxurious, rich side of Japan.
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(I apologise for the poor quality of this photo. I will upload a better quality photo next month)
When compared with JapAnthroLog's impression of Kuzuha (the closest station to my house and the closest shopping centre), I am astounded at the amount of greenery that is here in Yawata City. From my experiences, while Hirakata feels more like a city with the number of tall buildings and apartments all crammed into one space, Yawata reminds me of the typical suburbs I’d find back home in Australia, though perhaps with slightly more concrete and less huge gum trees. The area is rather hilly and so most homes are on retaining walls. The homes here in Yawata City appear to merge very nicely with the surroundings, with a nice mixture of green nature and grey or brown human modernization.
While the new houses show Yawata City’s modernisation, the city also takes pride in maintaining its cultural heritage. Iwashimizu Hachimangu. “One of the three great Hachimingu Shrines of Japan” (Kyoto Prefecture, KYOTO Prefectural Government Tourism Division), the shrine is located in the North-western region of Yawata City – at the peak of Mt. Otokoyama (KIIS 1996, Kansai Digital Archives).
This shrine is surrounded by a magnificent bamboo forest, which in itself is a recreational area for the community. This forest makes up about one quarter of the area of Yawata City.
(Taken from http://www.kiis.or.jp/kansaida/yawata/index-e.html)
This shrine was built in 1634 in the Momoyama Style (Kyoto Prefecture, KYOTO Prefectural Government Tourism Division). The shrine hosts various festivals throughout the year including the Otokoyama Cherry Festival and the Iwashimizu Festival. (Kyoto Prefecture, KYOTO Prefectural Government Tourism Division).
However despite the desire to maintain cultural heritage and the environment, no matter where you go in Japan you will see the inevitability of modernisation creeping into the scene.
More opinions on Yawata City can be found at もっとFoto
2 comments:
Hi Rychelle!
Thanks for being the first to comment on my blog earlier. It sounds like the area you live in is a little different from mine.
I am impressed with how you have really embraced the whole hypertextual thing. I like it. I could learn a lot from you.
You could do a little more with the pictures though. The picture quality of a couple of them is not so good, and when you tell us about the magnificent bamboo forest, I find myself looking at a tree and a white building.
However, I like the tone of your text a lot. Though I'm a rookie at this, your blog post feels like anthropology to me. And I feel like I learned something about Yawata City.
While I would have preferred you to describe your immediate neighborhood rather than your city, you still did a pretty good job of providing the highlights of Yawata-shi. I also like that you are linky to both outside sources and student blogs.
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