I live in Sagamihara (相模原), a city in north-central Kanagawa Prefecture, bordering Tokyo, Japan. It is the third most populous city in the prefecture and the fifth most populous suburb of Greater Tokyo with over 700,000 residents, I know this because I read it on Wikipedia. The part of Sagamihara I live in is mostly residential, with lots of restaurants near the main roads and the railway tracks, and very quiet and business-free areas everywhere else, with single family houses instead of apartment buildings and mansions (Japanese mansions are just bigger, a bit more luxurious apartment buildings; nothing to do with the Western “mansion” house). Elementary schools, high schools and convenience stores are equally spread around the neighbourhood. There are also parks, which look really gloomy and dark lately because of the weather. I took some time and prepared an excellent map for anyone to easily spot Sagamihara in Japan:
You can see Machida (where I went for my first nomihoudai) to the south, and Tokyo to the east. Shinjuku, Roppongi, and Shibuya are some of the main wards/districts of Tokyo. A train journey from Sagamihara to Shibuya costs 520 yen, while a train journey from Sagamihara to Roppongi costs 1080 yen, and a train journey from Sagamihara to the Todai (Hongo campus) is 720 yen. The price difference is usually due to doing transfers between railway companies throughout a journey, but that still does not justify Roppongi being twice as expensive as Shibuya! Bottom line: no more partying in Roppongi. It takes an average of 1 hour to get to anywhere in Tokyo from my place.
Now, if there is one thing you can do in Sagamihara that you can’t do in Tokyo, that is eating space curry; or any of the other extraterrestrial meals available at the convenience store of the space agency.
This is the main entrance to the campus:
These are two giant toys around the campus too, shown below. The rocket on the right is a huge M-V. It is located in the playground area so one can either play with it during a break from work or strap it to a space probe and send it millions of km away to land on an asteroid, get some dust samples and return to Earth. The rocket on the left is a less scary Mu-3SIII, but also very useful if you ever need a rocket.
Finally, these are the selected kids that the space agency will send to Mars in ten years:
LOL, JAXA!!!