If something happened to you, and it didn’t happen to me, it doesn’t mean that either my experience or your experience isn’t true. They can both be true.

I have heard stories of how hard it is for people to integrate in Japan, and I have no comment about that, but only want to share experiences of my integration into my neighbourhood. It’s nothing special and completely ordinary.

I mentioned previously how it is my household’s turn to take part in the neighbourhood association this year. My wife doesn’t find said tasks very interesting, and I do find such tasks very interesting, so it is I who has spearheaded taking part in it and doing what needs to be done.

As I have previously mentioned, it is very boring sometimes, but in a nostalgic way. Things aren’t bit sized 30 second videos with glitz and glam.

Before this year, my participation in the neighbourhood was me greeting people when I saw them outside, paying neighbourhood association fees once a year, being in charge of cleaning up after garbage pickup maybe 4 or 5 times a year, and passing around the notices to the next house when they came. People were friendly enough and greeted back.

The average age is probably around 70 for my neighbourhood. We bought our house four years ago when someone died, I assume their relatives sold the land to a construction company, and they built two houses where there was one. It is not a super skinny house, but it’s not a big fat house from the 1990s either. Somewhere in between, but leaning on the skinny side. As our neighbours go past the final frontier, I feel more houses will be torn down, and more cookie cutter houses will be put up, and the neighbourhood energy will change then.

Anyways, this year it is my turn to take part. I have two duties, one is to organize all the messages to be passed around, and the other is to support general affairs. I am doing nothing to support general affairs, and my neighbour has taken it upon himself to do most of it. For the organizing of the messages to be passed around, I do it, but I am not exactly punctual. The point I am trying to get at is that I’m not a super person doing his best. I am tired after work, and I know I have these duties and I try to do them when I can, while greeting and apologizing to people as I see fit.

The neighbour with whom I do general affairs with is a great guy. He saw me at the supermarket the other day, and we chatted about my trip to Canada (I am missing the summer festival, which is the big event of the year), and about the duties he will do when I’m gone, and about the security patrols for the year and when I am free. It was lovely, and when done, as he was walking, I rode ahead on my bicycle. I didn’t want to wear out my welcome.

Two houses down from me is an old woman, and I thought she was one person that hated me because she never really greeted me back. In our first year here, her husband passed away. I know this because it was one of the messages that got passed along. She now lives alone, and I think I’ve seen kids come by every now and then, but I’m not sure. Some notices I need to give people don’t get passed along, but everyone gets individually, and when I was putting those in mailboxes, I saw her in her yard and passed it directly to her. She had a big smile on her face, and thanked me for passing them out, and said with a childish grin that she “graduated” from neighbourhood duties a few years back. She didn’t hate me. Huh.

Another guy I thought hated me it turns out is just hard of hearing. Huh.

The woman beside the previously mentioned old woman (three houses down from me) I would guess is in her sixties, and talks to me the most. When I left my air pump outside she recommended I didn’t. When she saw me weeding, she gave me advice. She told me about specific weeds and what to do about them. When I neglected the weeds in front of my house, I think she cut them and just left the remains there in a passive aggressive action. I have no idea if it was her though. My wife wasn’t the happiest about that. I found it weird too, but I weed more now.

Everyone is nice to me, or there has yet to be reason for conflict, but the neighbour behind me (house built on the same former old house’s plot) has given reason for conflict. They didn’t join the neighbourhood association, which is a more common thing these days. You have to pay money, and it’s a hassle, so why join? Fair enough perhaps. In our tiny plots of land and narrow private streets, they have an Alphard van. It’s a behemoth. One night, they had their car in their driveway and must have been putting groceries inside from the car or something, and the headlights were blaring into the neighbour across the street’s living room. This must have not been the first time, because there was a massive shouting match. The neighbour with the Alphard had no consideration for how their actions affected others, and their neighbour couldn’t take it.

That’s a bit of an aside though.

The head of our neighbourhood association we call by her title: kaicho. She’s done the job for years. This probably sounds rude, and maybe is, but she looks very old and poor. However, she is very respected as the leader of the association, one reason because no one else wants to do it, and the other reason that she does a good job of it, making sure that everything done needs to be done, and giving opinions. I think I mentioned before that every now and then in meetings she uses very rough casual local language that I had thought was unique to Chiba and Ibaraki, but I guess it is also used in Saitama. The way she uses it though feels like it’s off television and not passed down from the local cultural pool. That’s just me making things up in my head though.

I should put in another aside and say the neighbourhood is not old. What I mean by that is that it was swamp or fields or whatever until the 1960s or so, and then it was made into a neighbourhood. Other neighbourhoods that I have known in Japan in the countryside were there in some form for hundreds of years if not longer, and talking to the elderly I heard stories of before and during the war. This is not one of those neighbourhoods, and it gives it a different flavour.

Anyways. I was cleaning out the drain in my sink yesterday. I took apart the pipes, and used the sink outside my house to wash out the gunk or whatever that was inside there. As I was doing this the kaicho was making her rounds as she does. Stopping to talk to people from the neighbourhood who were outside their houses and puttering or whatever. I think her eyesight isn’t the best, but as she came by my house, I greeted her, and she stopped for a chat. She knew I couldn’t make the summer festival and I talked about going to Canada. I talked about how it was my grandmother’s funeral, which is always a topic that leads to confusion. I said how she died in January, but there’s no obligation to have a funeral right away, and they were having it when family from around the world could come back. She accepted this right away, and was interested in the practical matter of where the body was now? I said I didn’t know, but in fact I know that she was cremated and somewhere being stored until we could go out and scatter her ashes on her favourite mountain. The next practical matter to get to was the sekihan, the red bean rice that everyone gets the day of the festival. I said that my neighbour would freeze mine for me, and I would have it when I get back. She said that would taste horrible, and she would get one early for me so that I could eat it fresh before I go. She gave her sympathies, talked about the beauty of family gathering, and the fleeting nature of it, and then was on her way. I continued to clean gunk out of my pipes.

That’s basically all I wanted to show in terms of integration with neighbours, but I want to say one more thing. My Japanese is of a level where I can do most things comfortably, but when I am tired cleaning out gunk, or half asleep buying breakfast at the supermarket, my Japanese isn’t the best at all. But I can convey what I want to convey, and people patiently listen.

It’s nothing. It’s boring. But it’s nice.