Hirakata is a very residential place. Houses as far as the eye can see, or at least that's been my impression walking to and from campus each day. Sure, there's the university (and the Komatsu plant, and probably a ton of other stuff I haven't seen yet) but I like residential Hirakata. I love the houses, the statues and trees in the tiny parks, plants that line the street, and the pretty decorated manhole covers. One thing I don't like, however, is how narrow some of the streets are. This is something that normally wouldn't bother me, but add motorcylists and cars to the mix and it can be a treacherous path for a walker at times.
On my 2nd weekend here, I had a encounter with some of the locals. It was evening, and I was walking back from the grocery store. A middle aged couple turned a corner and ended up walking a short ways in front of me. I thought nothing of it, until I noticed the woman had been glancing back at me. The woman kept looking back at me, until they slowed down cause they wanted to talk. They asked me if I was American, and the man asked if I was from California. I said (in Japanese, these people didn't speak a word of english) that I used to live there but now I lived in NY (which is indeed true). They also asked me if I was good at Japanese, to which I replied "ehhh, chotto... ( a little...)" The woman gave me a candy, and then they said "bye bye!" (towards the end the guy started saying other stuff, but I couldn't understand cause he was talking too fast. I just giggled awkwardly, and he asked 'wakaranai'? [you don't understand?] a few times.) I'm disappointed I couldn't converse a bit better, but they kind of caught me by surprise as I was zoning out while walking back to my seminar house. Oh well. Very nice little encounter, but random. Guess I'm just not used to friendly strangers.
