I have been living in Hirakata for two years now. I am from a country side of Mie prefecture so my first impression of Hirakata was more like “urban”, although 大阪人（osaka people） says Hirakata is not “urban” but “country”. So in order to talk about my neighborhood Makinochonmachi, I would first like to introduce why Hirakata is “city”.
In Hirakata there is the station called “Hirakatashi” station. Japanese call it “shieki” because it is located in the middle of Hrakata. Hirakata station is big station because almost every train stops at Hirakata. Moreover, keihan trains come and go at least once every 3 minutes. This is very different from my hometown where they only have train once every 30 minutes. From this point I feel Hirakata is more on “city” side.
Now that I’ve explained why Hirakata is a city, I will talk about Makinohonmachi. I live in an apartment and my neighbor is also a Kansaigaidai student. However, I barely know about this Katahoko Honmachi(place where I live) so I will talk about Makino Honmachi since I have friend who lives there.
If you live near seminar house, Makino Honmachi is pretty close and you can go there by crossing the bridge. From Makino Honmachi you can still see Kansai Gaidai building. However, as you can see from this picture, there are so many apartments and houses that are closely located. This Makino Honmachi has super sanko, which is a super market near the bridge. My friend told me that she goes to this supper market very often because they sell it in reasonable price.
What surprised me the most in this Makino Honmachi was that people were like that of my hometown. When I was busting her house people came to her house to おすそわけ（giving away something）vegetables by saying つまらまない物ですが(this is boring thing). I thought this was only custom in country side so I was really surprised. Furthermore, even there are more convenient transportation or houses that are really closely built, how Japanese interact with neighbor does not really matter if you are in city or country. The important thing I learned from this is to form a good community by doing おすそわけbecause we are Japanese.
☆Link about Osusowake if you want to learn more: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ukvje_NI-1w
You have lots of interesting information here, but it is rather unfocused. Perhaps you should have focused on your home town in Mie. If you were to describe Makino, perhaps the Makino eki would have been more appropriate to discuss (especially now with all the construction - the area is changing so much!). Remember, we are looking for specific case studies and examples in these posts rather than a macro vision.
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