Tokyo Kills Me

Although within city limits Kodaira is, Rumi tells me, considered more a part of the inaka, the countryside, that surrounds Tokyo. She should know, being a country girl herself, though when I look out the window I see more bedroom community than rural holdout. I guess what she means, in part at least, are the little plots of agricultural land jammed between new five-storey mansion-style apartment buildings. No rice paddies here, but we do have apple and persimmon and kiwi fruit orchards and vineyards and, spotted just the other day, even a field of strawberries, in addition to the usual gardens of cabbage and daikon radish which fill every unoccupied scrap of land (a tax dodge, I've been told). 

The air out here is fresher. We drink water straight from the tap.

But we won't be here much longer. Rumi's new job is in Ginza, in the heart of Tokyo, and suddenly her commute time is one and a half hours, double what it was when we first moved out here four years ago. So we have started the hunt for a new place to live. Details to follow...