Life in Tamagawatown

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We now return to the regularly scheduled series of my
adventures in Japan, after a brief interlude into
Japanese/American history last week. OK, so I have
been here for two months now, and I have learned most
of what there is to learn about this town. At
orientation six weeks ago, they taught the word
“inaka.” Inaka means countryside, but that is not the
definition they gave us. Instead, they told us that
inaka means nothing. It is not far from the truth.
Tamagawa boasts neither a library, nor a movie
theater, and the stores are small and poorly stocked.
The main selling points for the town are a rest stop
with several restaurants and a small grocery store and
an onsen or hot springs. The population of the town
is 3,900 and shrinking. Because there is no high
school, kids leave after junior high and often never
return. They seek the charm and faster pace of the
big cities instead of the land of rice paddies and
fishermen.
However, Tamagawa does have vending machines. Vending
machines are a very interesting phenomenon in Japan.
There is approximately one for every five residents of
Japan, or about 25 million of them in total. In
Tamagawa, they only have the most common variety:
cigarettes, beer, and drinks. Yes, there are vending
machines that have beer! I have heard rumors that
after 10:00, the beer and cigarette machines become
inoperable. In other cities, there are all kinds of
machines, ranging from ones that serve hot French
fries and hot dogs, to rice and potatoes, to used
women’s underwear. No, I am not making that up. For
a large sum of money, one can purchase a pair in a
vacuum-sealed plastic bag, although the government has
been trying to cut down on the practice.
Tamagawa defies most stereotypes of living in Japan.
Houses are plentiful and rather large. Trains come
only several times a day, although they are always on
time to the minute. There is no pollution and
virtually no crime. This is a place where total
strangers will greet you and give you pears and grapes
freshly picked from their orchards, and the bus driver
will apologize for being late and ask you where you
would like to go.if The instant I press the crosswalk
button, the traffic light turns green. That is only a
very slight exaggeration. Tamagawa’s scenery is
something you would expect to see in a postcard, not
in real life. I wake up every day to see rivers that
twist and turn through endless rice fields amid a
backdrop of low-lying mountains. On clear nights, I
can see a broad stretch in the sky that is dimmer than
the rest. That stretch of stars is none other than
our own Milky Way galaxy.
This place is a tiny town in every sense of the word.
The town newsletter had an entire page devoted to me,
complete with picture, biography and my words of
greeting for the town, written in English and
Japanese. Every day at 6:30 A.M., 12 P.M., and 6:00
PM, from the radio in my kitchen, I hear the daily
news of the town. I am fairly sure there is no way of
turning the radio off. Even on the lowest volume, it
never fails to wake me up bright and early every
morning. By now, I am sure that everyone in town
knows my name and quite possibly a lot more. Every
once in a while, someone tells me something that I did
the previous day before I have a chance to tell him or
her. Random people start talking to me. For some, it
is their first contact with a foreigner in fifty
years.
Living in a rural town definitely has its advantages.
I never have to buy fruit because so many people have
gifted me with them. I have received everything from
Japanese pears, to grapes, to pumpkin, to sweet
potato. At one point, I think I had a dozen full
sized pears in my refrigerator. The people are
really friendly here, too. Once I went to the post
office to send money home. The clerk realized
afterwards she had made a mistake so she tracked me
down to the school I was working at to tell me and
give me a free ceramic bank. There are also the
endless surprises. Today, when I went outside, I saw
there was a little frog on my bicycle. I gently
shooed it off and went on my merry way.

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