Living inaka is not that bad. Honest.
Jul 14, 2008 • Japanese Culture, Personal
If you get placed in a non-major city, “inaka” is probably going to be one of the first words you learn. It basically means the countryside, or the boondocks, and a lot of people are less than thrilled to find out they are being placed in a small population town.
Living inaka is not that bad. Honest.
One of the best things about Japan is that it’s a very small country. Order something on Amazon and there’s no such thing as 7-10 days shipping; try 1-3 days. I am surrounded by cows, rice fields, and old people who only speak dialect but within 1.5 hours from 1 major city and 1 hour to 1 major city and 2 minor cities. Between these 4 cities, I have McDonalds, Mister Donuts, Freshness Burger, Moss Burger, Pizza Hut, KFC, and Baskin Robbins. I have major shopping options in 2 cities and enough shopping options in the others. I am 30 minutes away from a beach, 45 from a good one, and the mountain to climb is in my backyard.
Image by Nathan Duckworth1
Now, it’s true that there is absolutely no nightlife in this town. The mom’n'pop shops still close by 8 PM and the 1 pachinko parlor, which somehow manages to stay in business, is the only neon light for kilometers. There’s no club, movie theater, or manga cafe and the bus to any of these events runs only 5 times a day. If your sole purpose in coming to Japan is to party and blow your money, living inaka is not for you.
However, if you’re here for the culture or the language, it may be the best thing. For starters, communication is more difficult - all signs off the main road will probably not have English and the menus will not have pictures. Similarly, people are less used to dealing with foreigners so the chances of them understanding a little English are quite low. And finally, there is less familiar food around, forcing you to try Japanese food…sometimes with interesting stomach side effects later.
In other words, living inaka means that you have to try harder. It’s less like a paid vacation and more like a long-term anthropological observation study. When I did my study abroad in Sapporo, it was easy to forget you were living in Japan - American culture was 30 minutes away on a sanitized subway system. Living inaka forces you to deal with cultural barriers as they happen and does not give you the option to ignore them.
- I’d use one of my Tokyo photos but they were all lost in the hard drive crash earlier this year [↩]
Comments
Good job introducing the word ‘inaka’ to the city folks =P
I’d seriously like to try living Japanese inaka full force (my area is like half inaka with the hills and paddy fields, but fast being eaten up by monorails and whatnot), but it looks like my homestay application this summer has been rejected :(
Ah nice photographs, especially the one on the building scape at night. Thanks for introducing “inaka” to us. Will we be getting to see other posts on inaka in the future? (Eg: food, transport, places in inaka, etc) ^________________^
@melancholy: I encourage getting out of a big city, even just for tourism. It’s a very different experience.
@issa-sa: If you have a monorail and a regular bus system, you’re not inaka. :P
@Hynavian: Thanks, unfortunately, that’s not mine. T-T There will be some future posts but I am officially going home in March 2009 so they will become limited. I can still post about Japanese culture though, it being one of my hobby research projects, but I’ll be back in the US.
The only time I left Tokyo was to drop by at Saitama, and even that was to visit the famed Washinomiya Shrine xD
I’m really excited ‘cos a japanese student will be coming over to my house in another week, so I can ask her about this :D
it sounds really nice for vacation. but i don’t think i can stand living in a place for very long - i’m a city mouse.
Rural parts of Hokkaido have seemed more fascinating than Tokyo to me, always.
@lelangir: Hokkaido is a wonderful place. There are also other parts in the Tohoku region that are very removed from the Tokyo-style version of Japan. If you have a chance, I’d strongly recommend checking out the Tohoku area as well. ^_^
Sounds fun, mountains!!! 30 minutes to the beach :/ aaaaaaerrhrhh.
I’d like to study abroad, or just get into a work-exchange program or w/e, but I only know my remote future. Anyway, the inaka sounds more of my bag (standing under waterfalls, etc), than the concrete jungle :) … but I needs the beach!!!!
Nice word
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i’ve never heard of inaka :O but judging from the pictures and your post i might want to visit it the next time i go to japan