My Hometown Essay

I have spent my 16 years of life in two very different places: half in Kichijoji, Tokyo, Japan, and half in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia (it is not further divided into towns, since the country itself is much smaller

than Japan). I consider my hometown to be Kichijoji, since that is where I spent my preschool years and my current residence.

Kichijoji is the most popular town to live in Japan, presumable because of its almost ideal balance of safety and entertainment. In the residential area, the houses, not the apartments probably accounts for the

majority. They are middle-sized (with small gardens, if any), which is typical in Japan. But the appearances of the houses are not what I would call orderly because there is too much diversity. Approximately half of

them are traditional while others are more modern. The traditional houses are, as far as I can see, typically larger than the modern ones, probably because they belong to people who owned the land before it got

expensive. The streets are mostly narrow, concrete, and smooth; you wouldn 't feel a bump when you are riding on a bicycle (a very common way of transportation in Japan). The residential areas in Kichijoji are

occupied mostly by small families of two or three kids. Kichijoji has good public facilities so there are a lot of nursing homes, too. Obviously, these people speak in a Tokyo dialect. Like most Japanese people, they

are methodical, which can be seen in the tidiness of the streets.