Setting the Scene

Now that we all know I’m in Matsuyama, perhaps I should talk a little about the area in which I live.

Matsuyama City (松山市) is the largest city on Shikoku, one of the four main islands that make up Japan. Matsuyama is home to Japan’s oldest onsen (hot mineral water spring bath house), and is the birthplace to the poetry form now known as haiku. (Two semi-famous authors were holed up in a shack just out of town, a la Walden, and one started writing in the form while the other was laid up sick.) Matsuyama is also famous for its citrus fruit, which I just found out today is exported all over the world, and the quality of the fish available here. This last bit is great for sushi lovers like myself- you can actually walk into most supermarkets here and buy sashimi-grade fish.

My area of town is Kuwabara. I still haven’t figured out how to search for Japanese addresses using Google, but here’s a map of my neighborhood.

Here’s the post office nearest my apartment.

The Japanese postal addressing system doesn’t use street names and numbers as (the normal parts of) the US does. Cities are broken down into named neighborhoods, which are then broken down into numbered sections, blocks, and buildings. F’r instance, here’s the address of Matsuyama City Hall, from their English web site:

7-2, Nibanchou-4choume, Matsuyama city, Ehime, 〒790-8571 Japan

From widest to narrowest piece, this tells you that it’s in Ehime prefecture, Matsuyama city, Nibanchou neighborhood section 4, block 7, building 2. The T-looking thing (“〒”) is Japan’s postal mark, to identify a postal code. Basically, what all this means is that unless you know a neighborhood, trying to find an address is essentially a fool’s errand. They do try to give you some help by posting nameplates on the blocks and individual buildings, though.

Here is my block’s nameplate posted on someone’s fence near my apartment, and a closeup describing the information it presents. All you have to do to find an address is already know where a neighborhood is, then circle each block in that part of town until you find the nameplate of the block and building you want. Simple, right?

Anyway, the area around my apartment is pretty sweet. There are about a dozen restaurants, ranging from ramen shops to robo-sushi to nice Italian to pizza joints, the hair salon pictured at left, and a dry cleaner in the building next to mine (thankfully, because I don’t have a car to drive my work clothes to and fro). Ten minutes by bike will get you to two department stores, two home improvement stores, half a dozen pachinko parlors, half a dozen supermarkets, a local onsen, two shrines, and two car dealerships.

Fifteen minutes gets you downtown to those shopping arcades I visited right before I got lost (fifteen minutes one way, four hours the other ;-)). Everything you could want to buy is right there, including a really nice shopping mall, a movie theater, and a 10-story ferris wheel on top of a 10-story building.

From the left, there’s a shot of my apartment building (that’s my futon hanging out the window), a shot west along the street, an eastward shot taken from the base of the white pillar visible from the other two shots, and my rustbucket of a bicycle (the closest one in the covered parking area for my apartment and the juku downstairs). I just realized that last picture shows my building’s address plate on the wall below the juku’s mailbox, so there’s another example of that.

There’s always more to say, and I’m probably forgetting something important, so tune in next time for more of the ongoing story.

さよなら,
-David