Important Places in My Hometown

Everyplace people live has some important places. I was listening to a man telling a story about a small town in America. His name is Mike, and he was walking across American.

It is a small town in the Great Pains. It is very flat there, and very difficult to see far away, because there are no high spots. The town grew up around a rare hill. Early settlers from Europe could see for long distances from that hill, so it was a safe place to be.

That small hill became an important place, and so a town grew up around it. I imagine some buildings in the town are taller than the hill now.

Important places to you don’t need to be important to anyone else. They don’t have to be famous or well known to others. Some important places are only important to us as individuals.

There are places around that are important to someone, and interesting to me. They are places that were very important to people a very long time ago.

One is a settlement where people lived during the Jomon Period in Japan. Some workmen found it as they were building a highway. People lived there thousands of years ago, before people started eating rice in Japan. They left pottery, stone tools and outlines of their houses.

Other important places include some Yayoi Period tumuli and shell mounds. The tumuli are concentrated around a small area near a river. The Yayoi people buried some important leaders there.

There is also a shell mound in that same area. There are various explanations for why they made shell mounds, but they are important places for people, even now.

The final important place is where there was once a castle. Its ruins are located on top of a hill. There is a story about the well that was at this castle.

I like to think about these places and the people who used to live there. Those places excite my imagination. Maybe they are not that important to many people, but they have existed, relatively undisturbed, for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years.

They are also important enough to people that they have made signs and monuments that help others know about them.

Maybe some important places are those that are significant to you, too. For example, some shopping areas are important to giving a place identity. Osu in Nagoya is one place like that. So is Kurokabe Square in Nagahama, Shiga. 

Environment is important, and places where we can go to enjoy natural wonders. Takachiho in Miyazaki Prefecture has a very old history and a breathtaking natural beauty.

No matter where people live, there are features that give their hometown an identity. Whether they are historical, economic, natural, or a combination of all of the above, they give our hometowns identities all their own.