Town and Country

Understanding town and country might seem a simple task. Indeed Japan has lots of country-side. The government, not wanting to rely on all it's food from their friendly neighbours, China and North Korea, gives huge subsidies to farmers to keep growing rice.

Indeed consider this rice-harvesting, country-side scene:



But all is not as simple as it seems.

I remember last year teaching first years the difference between town and country, because we were looking at the Town and Country Mouse story. I got into a lot of trouble.

Teacher: Country! Country! (lots of repetition and hand-movements).

Student 1: 何？（I will translate here into English) What?

Look! (Teacher points out the window) Tree! Grass! This is country.

Student 2: I think he wants us to go outside.

Student 3: No, he's going outside, he'll be back soon.

This is generally how the beauty of immersion education works. The teacher continues, as children discuss amongst themselves what their English teacher might be talking about - kind of like a group of humans observing with much confusion as to why the new pet dog is jumping around and barking.

Tree! Flower! This is a tree! This is a flower! The teacher continues. Look! Tenjin and Fukuoka is a town and city. But here it is just trees. Just flowers. No buildings. No houses.

Student 3: Maybe he lives in Tenjin.

Student 1: Is it lunch time yet?

Student 4: No, we've got Maths after this.

No walls or windows! Teacher is now jumping over tables to tap the wall, and hit the window so as to indicate the lack of buildings in the country. No walls or windows! Just flowers and trees!

Student 2: He's clearly nuts.

Student 3: Yeah can't even speak properly.

Student 5: Maybe we should teach him Japanese, then he'd get on fine.


Some time passes in this fashion...

Student 1: I think he's saying Fukoka is "city".

Student 2: Must be how you pronounce it in English.

At this point they start to contest the pronounciation of "Fukuoka". I say City! They echo back, "No - in Japanese: Fu-ku-o-ka".

This is a city! Buildings!

Students: Fuku-oka!

Finally something starts to click...

Student 1: Ahh, he's talking about the place where there's just plants and flowers.

Student 2: The park?

Student 1: Must be it.

Student 4: No it's about places far from Tenjin.

Student 3: Oh the shopping centre! Diamond City!

It was only after a while living here in Japan that I started to understand the root of the misunderstanding better.

The thing is, Japan seems to work differently when it comes to town and country.

You see Japan is basically either flat or it's mountains. Where it's mountains, Japan is forest. Where it's flat it's buildings or rice-paddies.

The forest is real forest as well. We're not talking about strolling through autumn leaves under the shade of gentle oak trees. We're talking about thicket. Bush. This is the kind of stuff you have to hack through - full of bamboo, untrekable ground and lots of big spiders.

Thus people tend not to go into the mountains - I mean not even hiking, let alone building their homes there.

And so Japan has (statistics vary) between 62% and 73% forest cover.

"But I thought Japan was crowded" I hear you say. Well yes it is, but it's all stuffed in around Tokyo and Osaka. The rest is mountains and thus forest.

So although Japan is actually very big (just under three times the size of England) - it is (with all those trees) really quite cramped.

Thus wherever it is flat they build houses. Lots of houses. Wherever they can. Even in the middle of the "country".

Which is how you get scenes like this: