Part of settling into a new house is getting to know the neighbors and the neighborhood. In Japan things work generally how you would expect: a visit to the neighbors, a gift to them to start the relationship off right, and a big smile when you walk around outside.<\/p>\n
There are some differences, however, and they grow from the deeply-rooted group culture here. As a new neighbor we are now part of the neighborhood group, and we are entitled to all the privileges and responsibilities that go with it. One example is the \u00e5\u203a\u017e\u00e8\u00a6\u00a7\u00e6\u009d\u00bf (kairanban). This is a folder with information for the neighborhood. The people in each house review the information inside, sign off that they’ve read it, and then pass it on to the next house. We’ve already had it go around twice since we’ve been here. Usually the notices are pretty generic and cheesy (5% off the sushi place down the road, kids will be collecting cans next month) but I guess if there was something muy importante they would put it in there as well. It’s a pretty easy way to distribute information and everyone can see if you are on the ball or not by whether you’ve signed it or not.<\/p>\n
The other day the doorbell rang and Kuniko ran downstairs to get it while I was working on something upstairs. It was our neighborhood’s leader, saying hello and welcoming us to the group. The leader position rotates through each house in the neighborhood, and it rotates every year. The leader is responsible for the things like putting together the kairanaban, going to city meetings and representing the other houses for boring community outreach seminars. <\/p>\n
Anyway, he handed over the list of houses in the community, and as the newest members Kuniko added our name to the list. Our slot comes up in 2022. That’s right – mark your calendars because we’ve got a job to do in 13 years! What will I wear to my first community meeting? So little to do and so much time to do it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Part of settling into a new house is getting to know the neighbors and the neighborhood. In Japan things work generally how you would expect: a visit to the neighbors, a gift to them to start the relationship off right, and a big smile when you walk around outside. There are some differences, however, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOpl7-pp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1575\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}