Today's expedition: to find the house that we used to live in! I was akachandler (just a little baby) when we lived there so I had no clue what I was looking for.. but I did have directions. From my parents, who haven't been back to Japan in about 20 years, so let's just say it was quite the scavenger hunt! The directions that I got from my parents were, "Get off at Senzoku station, walk straight out of the exit with a grocery store to your back, go down a hill, take the second street on your right and it's a white house." So I wrote those helpful words down, the address of our house and the address of our neighbors houses and I was ready! Our address is 7-4-2 Koyama, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo. Still don't understand how the address system works since you almost never see house numbers or street signs in Japan. This is gonna be fun! I also somehow managed to convince two friends to come on this scavenger hunt with me since they didn't have any classes today either.
This is the view with the station at our backs. As for a the 'grocery store', I wasn't sure what that meant since there really wasn't one to be found, just convenience stores on every corner. Also the station was on a hill, so no matter which way we went we would be walking down a hill.. we chose to walk down the hill with the station to our backs.
The hill we walked down dead-ends and the only way to go is right, but according to the directions we had it seemed to fit so we assumed we were going the right way. The last bit of directions from my parents just mentioned that the house was white. I don't know why they thought that would be helpful since the whole neighborhood seemed to be full of white houses. Funny story about this house (Big T and Pampers: do you recognize it?) we saw this one and talked about how cool it would be if I had lived in this one.. then we turned down the street it was on. (We found out later that if we had just gone straight instead of turn, we would have been about 2 houses away from my house)
Since the Japanese address system is completely foreign to us, we decided to ask for help. This lucky lady was the only one on the street at the time so she took about 10 minutes to use her iphone and try to figure out where the right street is. Being a typical Japanese person she started leading us in the right direction, instead of just telling us which way to go. Turns out we ended up walking the wrong way, she had to ask someone else for help, and she kept trying to take us to where we were trying to go but clearly she was not from around here so eventually we told her that she didn't have to help us anymore. She apologized profusely for letting us down and went on her merry way!
This is a white house.
Another white house.
This is what a Japanese street sign looks like. It's a good thing the name of the street we lived on was koyama (small mountain). The sign is read from top to bottom, 小 (ko) is the kanji for small, 山(yama) is the kanji for mountain. The rest of the sign says 7 chome 4. This is where the 7-4 of my old address comes in. We thought we struck gold once we figured this out but it took us a while longer to find the right house. I think the way the house numbers work in Japan is something like by blocks but in circle? I actually have have no clue.
We ended up kind of circling around the block and looping back around, this street had a nice city view.
This was yet another white house that wasn't mine. On the bright side the house numbers were getting closer to what we were looking for. I just liked the garden and entrance to the house. This was a really nice area, lots of big houses, everyone seemed to have some sort of garden area.
And we eventually found it! I'm pretty sure every other house had a gate, except this one. I wish I could say a flood of memories came back as I stood in front of the house but that didn't happen. So I just took some pictures for the parents. 懐かしい（なつかしい, natsukashi）This is a word you hear often in Japan, it means something like nostalgic/longingly.
I think I tried to show the house numbers in this picture, obviously I failed, but I didn't want to get too close since they did have a security camera installed.
This is the neighbors house across the street from our old house. The Mizutani family. I didn't have the guts to ring the doorbell and attempt to explain who I was. (if I had a picture of the family from back in the day maybe I would have, but I figured my Japanese wasn't yet good enough to explain why there was a random foreigner knocking on their front door)
水mizu 谷tani
Family name plaque on their front gate
山yama 本moto
Family name plaque of our next door neighbors.
While I was busy taking pictures, turns out the woman who was trying to help us earlier managed to track us down and make sure that we found the right house. The complete kindness of strangers is still so amazing to me, people will go completely out of their way to help you in this country. Across the street from this house is the first house that I took a picture of.. we were so close, we just went the wrong way)
This is the street we used to live on! Do you see any signs? Not that I was expecting a flashing, neon arrow pointing to my house or anything, but at least an easily visible street sign would have been nice.
This is a little shrine that we passed on the way to finding my house. It was hidden away next to a big apartment complex but somehow is was very quiet and peaceful inside.
My first time ever seeing a pomegranate tree !
Senzoku Station
Ookayama station is one station away from Senzoku. Ookayama is about 10 minutes walk from my dorm. It's funny how my old house in Japan is so close to where I live now! Also, I have a new found respect for the mailmen in this country.
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