My Placement

Okay! I'm going to break down where I'll be living in Japan. For reference, the country of Japan is only about the size of the US state of California. Crazy huh?! Let's start out with a cute pink map of Japan that shows its 4 main islands:

I will be on that (comparatively) little southwestern island labeled SHIKOKU. Did you know - there are no volcanoes on the whole island of Shikoku. Yay!

Shikoku's kanji are 四国 which means "four provinces." This is because it contains only 4 prefectures (roughly equivalent to states in America): Kagawa, Ehime, Tokushima and Kouchi. I'll be in the seafoam-colored area on the map, Ehime prefecture. I love the idea of living in Ehime because its kanji (愛媛) translates into "love princess." I'm going to be living in a place called Love Princess, how cute is that?! Ehime is famous for growing mikan (tangerines) and these bright orange fruit can be seen in tons of trees dotted along the hills and mountainsides of beautiful Ehime. And I'm so excited because it's the same prefecture that my Japanese teacher is from! She's from the capital though, Matsuyama. Matsuyama is home to Dogo Onsen, the oldest onsen (hot spring) in all of Japan. But I'll be on the western border of Ehime, right underneath the peninsula there, so let's examine...

I'll be living in the purple Nanyo B area. Specifically, Yawatahama! I'm right next to the coast and also right beside Japan's narrowest peninsula, the Sadamisaki Peninsula. Yawatahama is a port city and contains the largest fish market on the whole island of Shikoku! So I'm in for a wide variety of fresh fish.

The light pink border surrounds the Yawatahama area on this map and the red A bubble marks Yawatahama City but that's not exactly where I'll live. I'll be a little bit farther northwest, in an area that used to be known as Honai but actually merged to become part of Yawatahama in 2005.

Here's a closer look. The red A bubble is still Yawatahama City so we're now examining the area just above it. Look on the lefthand side of the map and you'll see "City Office Honai Branch" and "Kawanoishi ES," which is essentially my neighborhood! I'm literally a 3-minute walk from the water. So, I live in the Honai area of Yawatahama but to get even more specific about that little area, I live in Kawanoishi, Honai or Honai-cho-Kawanoishi. Just like Honai Town merged into Yawatahama City, Kawanoishi was once its own little town before merging to become a section of Honai. A cool tidbit about Kawanoishi is that the construction of a bank there in 1878 marks the very first event in all of Yawatahama's history, according to their city website.

Click to zoom!

Now to get insanely specific, I made this huge detailed screen shot on Google earth of the Kawanoishi area that shows the exact locations of my apartment (the white star), the Yawatahama Board of Education (the white pin), all 5 of my elementary schools (pink pins) and my 2 junior high schools (blue pins)!

It amounts to me living in Kawanoishi, Honai, Yawatahama, Ehime, Shikoku, Japan and now you know why. That's about as specific as I can get as far as the geographic location of my apartment. The anticipation is really overwhelming me and Google earth has made me feel like I can almost taste the juicy mikan! Hopefully the land of the Love Princess will be perfect for me ^.^