Mountain Door Town

I live in a small part of Hirakatashi which I like to call the Mountain Door Town (because you could read the address kanji like that). The neighborhood is quite small and as I find it to be a family and student area (but it also has some sketchy spots). I base this on the fact that the people I have talked to is usually students living in the small apartments or family's living in the traditional Japanese houses that you also find here. There is also kids playing on the streets almost everyday in this area and across to my apartment house there is a traditional japanese house and every afternoon I can hear a Japanese boy coming home from school and calling out "Tadaima" to his family.

The local supermarket is a hotspot in the neighborhood, and why would not it be, we all need to eat right? Usually I see women doing the shopping and rarely men, this would indicate that most of my neighborhood is a tradition bound area where women take care of the house and the men bring home the cash. But nothing is ever for sure, I would only assume that this is the case. But one thing to back up my logic is the woman I sometimes run in to when I am doing my grocery shopping. She speaks English with me and talks about her life, which goes in the line of what I earlier described. I have not asked if I could use here stories for this assignment since it was awhile since I last ran in to her so I will sadly leave the details out. But the supermarket is not only a place for shopping, it is also a place for talking with friends and catching up on the neighborhood gossip. I see people coming to the supermarket and spending a long time talking to friends and then only buying something small that you might have gone without for one or two days more.

Another thing that ties the Mountain Door Town together is the small farmers market that is crammed in between two houses on my street. The market is not open everyday nor every week, yet it seems to have some kind of schedule that everybody in the neighborhood except for me have the hang of. But when I occasionally pass by when it is there I always see a lot of people coming to indulge themselves in what I presume is locally grown vegetables, but I have also seen the small market selling flowers and the range has been changing with the seasons and this would indicate that it is in fact locally grown. The people I see going there is again usually females, but in a higher age group and everybody seems to be well acquainted with one another and stand by the market to talk just as at the supermarket.

There is also agriculture going on in the middle of the neighborhood which I am very fascinated by. People that in this "modern time" in a way continues with a tradition we humans have had since we settled down and stopped being hunters and gatherers. It must be a hard task to grow good crops in the middle of an urbanized area and I can only start imagining the hardship they must deal with regarding pollution and other effects or their crops. But it is one way in the right direction of saving this planet so I would just like to say "keep up the good work"!

I think that the neighborhood inhabitants have a lot that connects them together and I can only assume that there is a lot going on beneath the surface that I haven´t been able to penetrate since I am a foreigner and have a lack of understanding, connections and language skills to be able to take an active part in the society.

Cultivation in the end of my street

Just missed another small farmers market