From the 28th of January until the 3rd of June Hirakata is my home… it is no longer just a place in Osaka, Japan where my exchange university is located but the place where I live. I’m realising this is quite a special thing. Live. By live I mean adapting to a new place, discovering its shops, its language dialect, its unique sights, culture and locals and most importantly discovering the feeling of no longer being a tourist.
Hirakata is the home to an international university. Hundreds of international students walk its streets rubbing their experiences of living in a completely foreign place off onto it’s sidewalk everyday and in amazing way this gives the city so much character. I think its not only the students having to adapt to Hirakata but also Hirakata having to adapt to the students. How could it not, being the home base to people from all over the world experiencing Japan. It’s kind of like culture shock from both ends. Hirakata is so typically Japanese…apartments cramped next each other, power lines filling up space in the sky and little family owned shops and restaurants hidden away in the most unexpected places but nearly everywhere there is something that accommodates a foreigner.
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| Vebarage Time. The “Okonomiyaki place across the park” |
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| Kansai Gaidai |
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Japanese Garden…and a french cafe down the path |
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| A tipical Izakaya under a friendly invasion |
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