A few years ago, one of my university students moved to Tokyo for the first time. Several months later, she told me something that surprised her. Although she passed the same people in the hallway of her apartment building almost every day, she could not name a single person who lived on her floor.
Some residents nodded politely. Her experience is hardly unusual. Across Japan, people often live in close physical proximity to one another.
Apartment buildings house dozens, sometimes hundreds, of residents. Yet many of us know remarkably little about the people living next door. My own experience reflects this change.
My family and I moved to a quiet residential neighborhood in western Tokyo about a decade ago. It is a pleasant place to live — safe, orderly and largely free of problems. Yet after all these years, many of us know surprisingly little about one another.
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