Someone asked me for a bit of physical context for where I’m living in Japan. I’m at a Guest House owned by Meiji University for visiting scholars. It’s near their Ikuta campus (not actually on it, but very close to the Ikuta railway station so handy for getting in to Tokyo).<\/p>\n
The complex includes 7 single person rooms (self-contained like one of those US “medium term suite” motels). These are on the first floor (UK terminology; ni-kai or 2nd floor in Japanese\/American counting). The ground floor includes four larger family flats which have two separate bedrooms, a living space and a (I assume bigger) kitchen as well as a bathroom. The place has a small courtyard and a “common room” which contains the pigeonholes and quite a lot of tables and chairs, a bit like a cafe. They’re hard chairs and high tables. Not really comfortable. The single rooms contain a bed, desk high shelf down one wall and an office chair along with a built-in wardrobe. It’s quite spacious for Japan, especially given the price.<\/p>\n
Ikuta is a very developed suburb. I haven’t come across any parks in my wanderings around it. Very urban. Someone asked me for a bit of physical context for where I’m living in Japan. I’m at a Guest House owned by Meiji University for visiting scholars. It’s near their Ikuta campus (not actually on it, but very close to the Ikuta railway station so handy for getting in to Tokyo). The complex includes 7 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-japan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.a-cubed.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.a-cubed.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.a-cubed.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.a-cubed.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.a-cubed.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.a-cubed.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.a-cubed.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.a-cubed.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.a-cubed.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAnyway, Ikuta is basically in a valley (hence the canalised river that I posted a picture of when I arrived). There’s ridges to the south and north. The railway runs along the river course, crossing back and forth a lot. I’m just south of the railway and north of the river. The river runs east-west. I have taken a bunch of photos of Ikuta<\/a>. I noticed on the way up to the barber that what I thought was a small wooded area on a raised piece of ground overlooking the main road up to the ridge at the south is actually a combination of trees and the kind of big bamboo you get in Chinese movies – House of Flying Daggers\/Crouching Tiger etc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"