Neighborhood Hirakata

Hirakata has been my home for a couple months now, due to the fact that I have been a student at Kansai Gaidai. Being told to write about Hirakata I realized how little I actually knew about the neighborhood. The one thing that really stood out in my mind was how this somewhat smaller city in Japan had the addition of around four hundred foreign students every semester; a fact that seems like it would have an impact on the city itself. Has the city integrated certain foreign aspects or have the foreign students just been grafted into the city like a branch that grows different fruit onto a tree? On the road to get to the school there is a shrine that has probably been there longer than anything else in the city, but what seems strange about the shrine is the fact that in front of the shrine has become a small playground. There are often groups of children playing there, usually ignoring the playground equipment to instead play with their video games, and every so often a group of children being supervised as they clean the area. I mention this shrine to show how something that seems out of place and from a different time landed in this residential area has been integrated into the everyday function of the lives of the people who live here. Maybe it is a bad example, but if a shrine that the Emperor once worshipped at has an added playground and is now at times just a place for youth to spend time together it would make sense that for as long as Kansai Gaidai has been in the area and having hundreds of foreign students come that some western ideas may have made a transition into life here. However being tall and white on the same bike ride that I pass the park I have some students say a quick "hello" to practice their English, but more often am just met with stares. Then I noticed the fences around the school and the seminar houses where the students live, and wondered if theses were only to keep people out or maybe to keep some things in away from the city. Was there no integration, no grafted on branch, and rather just a potted plant sent over every year. Besides shop owners having English language menus and specials for haircuts, there was integration and a much better integration. Japan and Hirakata had made themselves part of my life. Knowing which side streets to take, lining up with everyone buying the vegetables outside of Fresco, crossing the street where it is not marked, and many other things from the day to day life in Hirakata have ingrained themselves into my person; I have grafted another branch onto my tree. Just like the older shrine made itself part of the modern city, the older city has made itself part of my life. Hirakata has incorporated itself into all of our lives out here and isn't that what being part of a neighborhood really is not leaving an impact, but rather letting it leave an impact on you? Sorry its so long and my camera battery is dead right now so the pictures will go up tomorrow after its had a charge.