Kunitachi City |
| Kunitachi city is a west suburb of Tokyo and well knwon as a college town. This city has a broad avenue which runs straight from Kunitachi station to the south of the city. |
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A symbol of this city is the train station building. You can see the building with a lovely brown gable roof and a half circular window. Famous writers, painters, sculptors and a cartoonist like Kunitachi and live there. They love the residents and write stories set in Kunitachi and paint landscapes of their city. Citizens of Kunitachi proud of roadside trees and stylish street lights on College Avenue. This avenue often appears on television love stories .You can perform in the role of here or heroine of your real love story on this avenue. |
| Spring The spring days of sakura(cherry blossoms) ,here on the avenues and streets are simply marvelous. The Sakura festival of the city opens each year in early April on the avenue. Many people crowd together and stop to admire cherry blossoms. One of the most popular activities of Japanese people since the old days has been "Ohanami", namely ,people enjoy the cherry blossoms. They eat and drink sitting on ground under cherry trees. Sometimes they perform music and dance themselves out of breath. In this season, there is also enjoyable music in the outside field. It's the music of a stream. Japanese, especially children, love songs about streams in spring. |  |
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Students return to this town in early September after their summer holiday. The school term starts in April and the first part finishes in late July in Japan . It is very nice to go for a walk on College Avenue in early Autumn. The leaves of cherry and ginko trees are beginning to turn their colors. There are many shops selling food, clothing, books, and so on .There are many restaurants and coffee shops too. If you have time to ramble down the alleys you can find some second hand book shops selling interesting old books. |
| University Hitotsubashi University is one of famous national universities in Japan. It was founded about 125 years ago. This auditorium, European noble architecture, was built in 1927. There are the departments of law, economics and sociology. Though it is very old and traditional, it has a spirit of an enterprise. It has produced a great many successful people in the economic and political world. Do you know the Japanese education system? We have a " 6-3-3-4 system " The system was established by the School Education Law in 1947. Compulsory education is six years of primary school and three years of junior high school. If we wish to take higher education, high school is for three years and university is for four years. We don't have to pay tuition for compulsory education years, while the costs of higher education are high and increasing year after year. There are not sufficient scholarship systems, so Japanese parents need to bear the burden to pay for them. In recent years (1993), 95% students went on to high school, 28% students went on to university and 8.2% students went on to graduate school. |  |
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Soba Shop "Soba" is Japanese traditional noodles made from buckwheat flour. We like soba very much. Many Japanese working in cities eat them in lunch. Students studying for examinations late at night often eat them, because they are nutritious and easy to digest. Buckwheat is planted in some mountainous districts where rice won't grow. It was a way to survive. There are many kinds of soba, such as soba with fried prawns in soy sauce soup or cold soba with some spices. We can get them in every soba shop soon after we order them. It is also Japanese special fast food. |
Tokyo, Japan December 12, 1998 "We love email" |