Photos of our city #5

As I wrote in my first post of this series:

Wikipedia says: "Higashikurume is a city located in the western portion of Tokyo Metropolis, in the central Kantō region of Japan. As of 1 February 2016, the city had an estimated population of 116,896 and a population density of 9,070 persons per km."

That would mean most people live in apartments and high rise, right? After all that population density is higher than the densities for places like Singapore (7,987 people per square kilometre) and Hong Kong (6,442) that definitely have lots of high density accommodation.

Well actually, no. That's one thing that surprised us and continues to surprise people we talk to in Australia when we're there. We live in a house and so do many other Tokyo-ites.

Here are some photos of accommodation in our city:

A new house built just this year down the road from us with an
old house next to it.

This is across the road from the previous photo. Agricultural land that has rarely been cultivated in the last five years that we've lived here, with houses closely behind it.

Rotating to the left from the previous photo and you can see the high rise buildings
surrounding our train station.

These are older than the previous buildings and not so close to the train station.

This is also just down the road from our house. Lower standard accommodation than those close to the station. They come with car parks, which is a bonus!

The best view of the sun setting that I could get the other day from our upstairs balcony.

So yes, we do live in a high density city, however it doesn't feel that bad, especially with the two rivers running through it and agricultural land sprinkled through too. It doesn't feel "inner city" as you might imagine a CBD to feel. It's very quiet at nights, definitely a bit out of the big city life. Inner-city Tokyo (the 23 wards) has 9,375,104 people living in it with a population density of 15,146 people per square kilometre. Those places "feel" inner city! Especially for David and I who grew up in Australian country towns.