Meet the Neighbors

I think it's about time to share a little of our neighborhood with all of you. As you may have gleaned from one post or another, we're living in Osaka* (emphasis on the asterisk): technically, we're in the outer reaches of Osaka prefecture, meaning a city called Tondabayashi. It's a lovely little bedroom community, meaning that it's only a convenient hour-long, 600 yen train ride and subway ride to downtown Osaka, with the added benefit that no one in Osaka has ever heard of it! Whee!

It is a nice little place, though. We've become thoroughly acquainted with the route between our house and the train station...and that's about it, really. It's surprisingly easy to get lost in a place where the streets don't have names, and even if they did, we wouldn't be able to read them. Here are a few pictures from around town:


Anytown, Japan, population: us! As far as I can tell, we're pretty much the only gaijin in town, meaning we're constantly greeted with amazed, bemused smiles. Just down the road is a bakery and a place that does fantastic katsudon. From what I can tell, we live in a pretty upscale neighborhood, as evidenced by the fact that roughly 90% of the real estate is either dentists or hair salons (neither of which is covered by the stingy health care service here...fascists!). Now for some details (read: complete speculation/lies) about our fellow Tondabayashians:


I wish I had anything more than speculation about this particular house. Please note the two identical Statue of Liberty replicas and what I can only assume is a batting cage on the roof of the house. Truly, the most All-American home I have ever seen. Also, there is laundry hanging only from one window, which, according to my Sherlock Holmes-cum-Lenny Briscoe detectivery, indicates that it is the home of a single family only.


This car is always parked in the lot directly across from our house. Considering this is the land of futuristic robot-cars, a bright green early-'70s Impala with gold rims really sticks out. I put it to you: is there any way that this car is not owned by gangsters? I took this picture in a bit of a hurry for fear of getting Hattori Honzo'd by paranoid yakuza.


Junko and Yuki, our upstairs neighbors. Yuki is crying in every known photo of him, though he is instantly hypnotized by the sound of the ABCs Song.


Tomi, Junko's husband, with his dog, Coo-chan. Coo-chan and Yuki make raucous noises in shifts for maximum efficiency. Tomi and Junko periodically turn up at our door to give us Japanese textbooks, meals, and candy, which clashes dramatically with the American cultural practice of ignoring your neighbors and occasionally complaining to the police about them.

We haven't really made the acquaintance of any of our other neighbors, though we are on nodding-and-bemused-smiles terms with many of them, especially the older folks. The old man next door, judging by the plate on his door and our poor literacy, is probably named "Mr. Old." I'm sure we've been introduced to a few more people in our neighborhood, but Jenn and I both suffer from American-Onset-Japanese-Name-Forgetfulness, a terrible disorder where any Japanese name (as well as most Japanese words) lose most of their meaning between our ears and our brains. So most of the people we know in our area remain Bakery Lady, Liquor-Store Guy (and his wife, Liquor-Store Lady), and Post-Office Man.