My Place is a Good Place

One of my favorite things about living where I do is how convenient it is to everything. Withing walking distance I have a drugstore, a supermarket, a 24-hour 99 yen store that also sells alchohol, a convenience store where I can pay my bills, a recycle shop (where I bought my brother's sword), and a couple good looking restaurants. Within biking distance I have three train stations, my gym, a shopping center that includes a department store and a mall-type area, a video rental place, and a Japanese style covered shopping street complete with local produce vendors. I am about 30 minutes from the city proper, and 45 minutes- 1 hour away from the two major entertainment districts of the city.

I also live about ten minutes from school. Technically, I am supposed to take the long way around. The only direct way runs through a small farm patch owned and worked by some local farmers. There is a dirt road that runs through it that they open to the community, but my students are not supposed to ride their bikes through it. That much traffic would damage the silty soil and cause it to erode more quickly than it does. But i really like this road, so I park my bike outside of the farm near the chain link fence. It takes five minutes to bike their from my apartment. Then, I walk through the field to my school, and that also takes about five minutes. Comming and going to school are sometimes the best parts of my day. The early(ish) dawn hours are nice, the quality of light is mellow and sweet. And after Judo in the evenings, especially during the long days we have now, it is extremely pleasent to be surrounded by nature. There is no where in America you could do something like this.