"Eric Takabayashi" <etakajp@yahoo.co.jp> wrote in message

> Yes. Right now, I can walk 1.5 km to work, the city's largest shopping
areas
> in various directions, the bus terminal, and the shinkansen station.
Within
> maybe 300 meters, there are seven hospitals including one of 600 beds, and
> numerous dentists, elementary schools, junior high schools, a high school
> hidden somewhere, a nursing college, my children's nursery school, two
> supermarkets, the main police station, and restaurants. City Hall and the
> employment office are two blocks from the train station. The City and
National
> hospitals, as well as many others offering emergency service, are about
three
> kilometers away. The highway IC and the Immigration Bureau are three or
four
> kilometers away.

Same for me. Same for anyone in Osaka. There are shops and services
everywhere.
Commuting for work can be longer or shorter, that depends of the job and the
personal situation, exactly like in Fukuyama (you found a job next door, not
your wife. If you lose that job, you'd have to commute to Hiroshima no ?).

> For 67,000 yen per month.
>
> Beat that, anyone.

People that are not too fussy rent bunka houses for 67 000 yen or less.
That's also what you'd pay for a 3 LDK public housing (inside the flats are
nice, outside that's Hong-Kong...). I wonder if in addition, you couldn't
get housing benefits from Osaka-shi.

> > In your muddy island, that's the space between 2
> > macdos,
>
> No, in the rural area where I come from in Hawaii, there are numerous
> McDonald's miles apart,

I stayed a week on your island, I don't remember where. I
don't care about fastfoods, What I meant is that Macdo was the only
"restaurant" I could have reached by walking only 15 km.
We hitchiked to the supermarket or to the tourist ghetto. Nobody seems to
live
there without a car.

BTW, what do you want to do with a car in Fukuyama, if you live in a so
convenient place ?
In Osaka, 90% of the people don't need a car (except 3 days a month, so they
should rent one), many families buy one mostly for the status. But you don't
care about
social status and things like that. So ?

> There is only one America Mura or Dotonbori.

I never go there. I don't have the slighest interest in prostitution or
other tourist rip offs. And even if you work in that field, there are other
red-light areas in
Osaka.

>If you don't live in that part of
> Osaka, you're out of luck. 30 minutes by train or bus.

You talk like my students that ask me "When you lived in Paris, how much
time did that take you to commute to the Champs-Elysees or to Versailles ?".

You have never visited  the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto area ? Someday, you should
bring your wife and the kids to Universal Studio (another place where I
never go, but convenient for you : there are direct buses from Fukuyama) and
while they visit that, take the train to see the places where most people
actually live and work.

CC