Housing

Catherine Fennell (2015) analyzes societal structures through sensory perception. From 2007-2011, I participated in the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) which is a top-down government program administered in Tokyo (Council of Local Authorities for International Relations, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications) http://jetprogramusa.org/about/. Anthropologist David L. McConnell details the problems of the JET program as a top-down initiative in practice. The Fukushima Prefecture Board of Education served as my contracting organization which provided subsidized housing, furnished my house with a futon, a kotatsu heated coffee table, a bike, a bathtub, a kerosene heater, air conditioning. While the apartment had two bedrooms, the only family with children living in the complex was an Australian man with his Japanese wife. One of my older coworkers lived in the building with his family decades ago. The housing had no insulation and it was so cold that my neighbors from Michigan frequently complained. A friend from the Winnipeg, Canada who lived in the warmer southern part of Fukushima prefecture decided to return home after a year due to the indoor cold. Unable to withstand the freezing indoor cold, during my first winter I spent nearly every weekend in Tokyo visiting the sites and staying in a capsule hotel that provided an affordable and well-heated all-female floor. However, at the end of my first winter, a coworker invited me to go snowboarding with his friends. I was tense on the slopes as I spoke almost no Japanese so I had no clue what everyone was trying to tell me. After I learned to snowboard, I rarely went to Tokyo and spent the subsequent three years mostly in Fukushima. Those who learned to snowboard or ski seemed to be the happiest. While my housing had no insulation and it was drafty and old, it was strong enough to withstand the Tohoku earthquake. It was an average Friday afternoon on March 11, 2011. I was sipping green tea with my supervisor and talking about weekend plans when we had to evacuate. Wolfgang and Silver (2006) describe Kreuzberg and Marzahn as sites of diverse community life despite images of decay in popular imagination. While the situation differs, Fukushima has become a site of waste and decay globally. However, I remember my fourth floor, un-insulated teacher’s housing and its surrounding parks, schools, shrines, markets as home for four years. 

I lived and worked in Koriyama City which is the commercial hub of Fukushima prefecture. Though Koriyama’s population is only about 300,000, the downtown area connects by bullet train to Tokyo.