Hanging out in the 'Hood

Here's a little about our neighborhood and our day-to-day life in Kyoto. We live in an area of Kyoto called Hanazono, after the Emperor Hanazono who founded a nearby temple. Hanazono is in the northwest of the city, slightly off some central city maps, but quite close to Ritsumeikan's main campus and about 2 miles from the law school. The apartment complex is large (we're in Building #24) and quite basic, as I've mentioned before. We are fully into the spirit of Kyoto life--we air our bedding and hang our clothes to dry on our little balcony, which is for exactly that purpose, not sitting.

The neighborhood has the usual Kyoto blight but also some lovely old wooden homes, called machiya. For a number of reasons (fear of fire during possible World War II bombings and misplaced "modernization"), many of the machiya were torn down and replaced with parking lots and apartment complexes. But we are lucky in that many of the streets we walk down daily have retained some machiya. Interspersed with these lovely old houses is the common Kyoto sight of a vending machine--they are found everywhere, dispensing coffee, tea, and other drinks.

Around every corner is another temple or just a little shrine next to a house like this one. There are two major temples quite nearby, Myoshin-ji, which I have mentioned many times, and Toji-in (next picture), which takes up lots of the land between our apartment compex and the Ritsumeikan main campus. Many professors' offices look down into the temple grounds, which are quite beautiful and include a splendid little tea house.

We often see monks in the neighborhood. Here are two hurrying back to Myoshin-ji at 5 pm.

Our little "main" street, Ichijo-dori ("First Street"), has a series of wonders, including Japan's only shop that sells custom-made chopsticks. I bought a pair made of ebony that were custom fit to my hands.


Another wonder on Ichijo-dori is a place called Jumbo, a little dump with lines of customers standing outside the door all the time. We finally succumbed to our curiosity and ate there. We, of course, had to wait. Then we were seated on the floor at a low table with a grill in the middle. A mixture for "Japanese pancakes" is poured onto the grill and once it's cooked, you just eat it off the grill. Oishy (delicious)!

There's lots, lots more. The neighborhood includes two high schools, so gaggles of students, in uniforms, are always around. We can hear them cheering at an athletic field close by, but the field is completely screened from view, so we don't know what they're playing.

Our time here is rapidly drawing to a close. I have only two more classes next week. This past week, Bill and Sondra visited my Wednesday class, the second of two on Sex Discrimination. Given somewhat rigid gender roles here, I thought the students might find some of the American law quite odd. But here's a surprise--Japanese sexual harassment law is actually almost just like the US version with quid pro quo (called compensatory here) and hostile environment. It is, though, a separate cause of action in Japan and not shoe-horned into general employment discrimination law. They also have something called "Power Harassment"--fascinating. Next Thursday, I'm giving a presentation to the Gender Studies group at the main campus, on Saturday we're invited by a colleague to a "Summer Music Party" at a small museum . The famous Gion Festival starts next week with a parade of floats and days of activites. So, we continue to be busy, but as we move through the days we feel less and less like the tourists we were six weeks ago. In some kind of way we have gained a sense of place that is uniquely our own.