Archive for the ‘Osaka’ Category
To The City
The sign on the front gate gives you a detailed warning but the picture in its midst tells you all you really need to know. A crossed out hunting knife with red dripping from the blade leaves little to the imagination. My new school is not violent. But by the standards of my last place of work here in Japan it is like I have crossed the tracks and entered the badlands.
It is now some six weeks since I left the Tango peninsula at the northernmost tip of Kyoto prefecture – a green and pleasant land famous for its silk, serenity and scenic views. I had been seduced by two years of small town life. Knowing everyone and everywhere although pleasant was also numbing, I had begun to feel lethargic. If familiarity breads contempt then I left at just the right time.
I will remain intoxicated with the charms of the Japanese countryside but at my heart I am a child of the city. It feels good to be back amongst the bustle and grime. Osaka is a city of some 8 million people. Renowned by the rest of Japan for the warmth and brusque inhibition of its residents Osaka is often compared to Liverpool or Manchester in England. Like all big port cities there is a hardness to the people but also an intoxicating sincerity and readiness to relax.
In many ways it reminds me of my hometown. Not the international moneyed mega-city London, but the more weather worn, down at heel, ‘south-of-the-river’ city of a thousand stories. Osakan’s are not afraid to laugh, at themselves or with strangers.
I now live in Abeno, which is part of Tennoji, in the South of the City. A once notorious entertainment district tainted with the proletarian allure of gambling, prostitution, high times and organized crime. While the party has long since moved on and the area has the general feel of one that has seen better times, not abetted by its status as the home of Japan’s homeless community, it still has character.
At night the neon glows above red lit passions. From my house I roll down the hill. Passing through the prostituted lanes, checking my reflection in the blacked out window of the Yakuza’s car, under the covered markets and down the fish smelling shopping arcades. A sign reads ‘Welcome’ in four languages – people and their stories filtering underneath. This is where I call home now.
