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Well, it only seems appropriate to finally talk about our home in Japan:

Numazu is a small city of approximately 200,000 people which is surrounded by several cities of about 100,000 - Fuji, Mishima, Gotemba and Susono. In other words, despite the fact that the Japanese think of this area as “countryside,” it has a significant population, comparable to several American cities that make it into the Biggest 100 American Metro Areas. We are located at the northeast corner of the Izu Peninsula, at the southeastern foot of Mt. Fuji, and approximately two hours by car, one hour by shinkansen east of Tokyo. Numazu station is located on the Tokaido Line and the Gotemba line, connecting the city quickly to most of the surrounding area.
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Perhaps part of the reason the people of Numazu think of their city as rural, is because it maintains relative obscurity to many Japanese. While both Mishima and Fuji, although smaller than Numazu, have shinkansen stations, Numazu does not. Additionally, there seem to be very few attractions for tourists and, as my student who happens to be a city planner explained, it is still recovering aesthetically from the poorly organized post-WWII building boom that left the city a messy cluster of concrete boxes and radio towers. There are moments of beauty, however, including Numazu’s Imperial Villa, a longtime summer home of the Imperial family, and Mt. Kanuki and it’s beautiful five-storied pagoda (shown below):

There is also a relatively famous tsunami gate, designed for reducing the damage caused by a tsunami by lowering a very large concrete block into the entrance of the port. The view from the observatory at the top of the gate gives an impressive look at Suruga bay and the area surrounding Numazu, hence it’s name “View-O”:

The port area around View-O is well-known for its exceptional seafood.

Of course, for all my talk of Numazu not being so small of a city, it still has a relatively small town feel. Most of the central city is relatively compact, with a few shopping areas on the south side of the station, including one covered pedestrian shopping street known as Nakamise. We have access to a meager selection of foreign food, and a great selection of Japanese food. There are two movie theaters close to the station that sometimes show English films, although they’re usually several months behind the United States. We buy most of our food at a grocery/everything store that is just a two or three minute walk from our house.

Overall, we are happy with our home for the next year. While we are not in the fast-moving world that is Tokyo, we’re also not in the middle of nowhere despite what our students would have us believe. This small town-city mix allows us to experience both rural and urban aspects of Japanese culture at the same time.