My neighborhood

This may not be very interesting but I thought I'd give you some trivia.

Here are a couple pictures of the neighborhood where I live. Do you notice anything that isn't in American neighborhoods? Do you not notice something that is usually in American neighborhoods?

For one, that little blue shed at the side of the street is one of our neighborhood garbage stations. Families drag their garbage to these stations and homeowners take turns cleaning the garbage station and patrolling to make sure someone isn't delinquent about how and when they've thrown out their garbage. That is a whole other story...

Another bit of trivia... If you look at the street corners in the neighborhood you can see that there are no street signs. This has always been a pet-peeve or maybe a curiosity in my mind. With all the people living in Japan, with all the little winding streets, there are no street names and there are no house numbers. When I explain to people how to get to my house from the next city over I'll say,

"You have to take the main road, towards the next town, go through the tunnel, go past three stop lights, go under the over pass, and make a left at the mechanic shop hidden behind the trees. Now you're in the neighborhood. Go down three blocks, turn right at the fourth street, go to then end and we're the last house on the left. If you go past the construction company you've gone too far."

I don't get many first time visitors.

Of course Japanese houses have addresses but they aren't marked anywhere. Some of the more modern tract neighborhoods will have numbers but traditionally there are no numbers and no street names at all. Also no rhyme and reason to the addresses. It is all very confusing and almost impossible to find some one's house by just an address. The mailmen must go through a rigorous training session to remember where to deliver mail!

In the past 10 years most Japanese cars have satellite navigators built into them so it seems to be a fairly simple process of typing in an address and following the machine's little screen map, but according to friends, I live far enough away from everywhere that the navigator only takes them to the neighborhood and they still have to figure out where I live amongst the 80 homes or so...

One feature seen in Japanese neighborhoods (and all over Japan) are mirrors. These are indispensable for getting in and out of tight places. The two mirrors here stand guard at the entrance to our neighborhood and it is the only way cars can see if there is traffic approaching. The roads are small, the fences and walls built right up against the oncoming street, so the mirrors enable the drivers (coming from both directions) to see cars around the corner. It takes a little brain figuring (everything is backwards, right?) but mirrors have saved a lot of lives on Japanese streets. Some people will have mirrors placed strategically so that they can back out of their driveways without hitting other cars or bicycles.

And here is our house at the edge of the neighborhood, and at the beginning of the forest. There's my trusty mirror that lets me know who is coming and going. Now... with all those directions do you think you can find me?