Every morning I have a twenty minute walk from the train station to my company. Every morning as I pass by a certain company I shake my head and wonder what the heck is going on. It may be the 21st century but apparently some customs from the good old days (read 18th century or earlier) are still being observed. No I am not talking tea ceremony. No I am not talking about Ikebana (flower arranging). No I am not talking about anything that could be considered truly cultural.
What I see every morning, and quite often elsewhere, is people taking hoses or buckets full of water and washing the sidewalk in front of their business or house. This is a year-round activity and takes place in the heat of summer and the dead of winter (mindless of the fact that they are creating slick pools of ice). Now at first glance this seems like a nice way to keep the country clean with everyone doing their part. On closer examination and questioning though you begin to wonder.
I’ve asked many people the reasoning behind why they are washing the sidewalk. It turns out that they are actually ‘wetting’ the sidewalk in order to keep dust down and to cool the area. Now take a moment and think about that. It seems reasonable enough but then you begin to look around and notice that everything is concrete and asphalt with little or no dirt to speak of and that the amount of water that it would take to actually cool the area in the heat of the summer is ridiculous. Gallons upon gallons of drinkable water is being sprayed, or rather I should say wasted on watering rock while millions of people would kill for just a glass. I should note that I have yet to ask the question during the winter for fear that my head would explode after hearing the reasoning.
This custom dates back a couple of hundred of years to when all roads were dirt or dusty cobblestone and it was a necessity for people to breath on a busy street. But why, after the roads have been paved with concrete (as well as many mountains and rivers), do they continue to do this? I once again made the mistake of asking the forbidden ‘why’ question and received in response blank looks and shrugs of shoulders.
‘Why?’ Becuase ‘it’s Japan.’
