Destination: Oyama

After waiting until I'm less than 2 weeks away from the move, I've finally been told where I'll be living for the next year! I'm going to be in Oyama city, in Tochigi prefecture. A place I'd never heard of and knew nothing about, so let's do some digging.

The Oyama city flag, according to Flags of the World depicts "a mountain shape in a circle, the circle standing for harmony of the citizens and the mountain shape/arrow for the (rapid) development of the city." It's a simple and bold design with a unique colour scheme - I like it.


Oyama city in Japanese is written 小山市, meaning small mountain city. I've never come across 小 being pronounced "o" before, I'd have thought it'd be shou or ko, but maybe it's an irregular thing. Anyway, it's a cute name. When I first read the romanisation of it I was expecting to see 大山 once I looked up the kanji, but apparently the opposite! Having looked at some views from Google maps I can't spot whatever mountain the name is referring to, so it must live up to the name. Through Oyama runs the Omoigawa (思川) or "Thought river" which is a pretty neat name for a river. A river of thought running through the city sounds like the basis for a psychological sci-fi novel. The city's about an hour and a half from the middle of Tokyo by train, which is handy!



Tochigi prefecture (栃木県) seems to refer to aesculus turbinata, or the Japanese horse-chestnut tree. "Horse-chestnut tree prefecture." Looks like the region has cold, dry winters and humid, wet summers. I've lived in Scotland for long enough now that any amount of rain is probably going to seem dry in comparison to what I'm used to, but the humidity will be something new for me. I'm a little worried I'll be red-faced and sticky with sweat all summer long, especially since the schools don't tend to have any air con in the classrooms.

Oyama also has its own mascot character called かぴょ丸 / Kapyomaru, who is an... anthropomorphised calabash gourd? The type used for one of the big exports from that area - dried gourd strips called kanpyo. His personality is described as 内気な出不精 but I'm having a hard time translating that. 内気な seems to mean that he's shy, and
出不精 is something like... not-going-outside energy? Pretty relatable!

Right now I'm in the middle of sorting through everything I own and dividing it into piles depending on whether to throw it out, whether to leave it at home for safekeeping or whether to bring it with me in my very limited luggage space. Only a few days left to go now.