Here are some photos from my trip two weeks ago that I haven't gotten around to posting yet. It was a suburban town that reminded me a little of America. I walked down this huge road with wide sidewalks, lined with big office buildings. It was almost like they weren't worried about packing as much as possible into a tiny space.
This was a pretty little residential area off of the main road. Some of the houses had basketball hoops out in the street. One thing that I've noticed about Japan is that no matter how fancy a house is, it almost never has a lawn. If there is a yard of any kind, it's either a real garden with vegetables or decorative plants, or a so-called rock garden, which is a collection of rocks artistically strewn about with a little path running in between them. I don't really understand the attraction of the rock garden, except that it's low maintenance.
A consequence of this is that nobody mows the lawn. Summer arrives without the smell of freshly cut grass and a whiff of gasoline. You don't wake up on Saturday morning to the buzz of a lawn mower. I guess the concept of a huge rectangle of decorative grass would seem as crazy to a Japanese person as a tiny rectangle of decorative rocks seems to me.
The other reason this town reminded me a little of America is because although it had all these fancy buildings and artistic rock structures adorning the sidewalk, it looked like it wasn't being kept up very well. There were weeds growing in the cracks in the sidewalks - a thing which I definitely haven't spotten in my own town. Although to be fair, we don't have sidewalks in my town.
do you wait for people to clear out before you shoot? or is it as empty as it looks? also, the first two photos look like parkour spots.
ReplyDeleteI do usually wait for people to clear out unless I'm in a city. But this town was just really deserted. Everyone was in the park or at the mall.
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