Now & Zen

Day 5 Friday 13th August 2010. Kameoka Japan.

Guess what?  Its hot and humid again. The day started by finishing the weed removal in our huge garden. In with all this vegetation is an extraordinary amount of crap. Pots, pots, and more pots. And I thought my mother had a stupid amount of pots in her garden! She is just an amateur in the pot collection business compared to these people. Also included is a dog house, several bags of set cement, car tyres, some old TV antennas and even a unicycle. We also discovered some golf clubs, umbrellas, a buggered air conditioner and and worst of all, a snow shovel. Nobody mentioned snow when we bought this place. I hate snow. On the upside I claimed an aluminium baseball bat. 

Abandoned Unicycle

Having a garden is all great until you have to mow the lawn or pull out weeds. Stuff that. We are having a Zen garden. This is Japan after all. White gravel, maybe a mossy rock. Brilliant. Ok need some weed mat and a bunch of gravel.  Went to buy some weed mat for our Zen gravel garden at the local home centre. Now this place has everything .....blows mega mitre10 away......except weed mat.
So I ask why not. Answer. We only stock it in May and June.
Apparently the Japs do all their gardening in those two months only. Must be written somewhere in the big Japanese book of knowledge. So we settled on some black polythene. Luckily white gravel is on special so we ordered a 1000kgs of it. At home they deal in cubic metres. Here it comes in handy 10kg bags

The road over the mountains is very scenic but quite narrow and twisty. It is also a bit of an obstacle course right now because of the road works going on. In Japan where ever there is road works or any construction there is always a special kind of person present. He is the indispensible lightstick Man!!!!

 

A very important job

 Easily identifiable by his red flashing lightsticks, this guy specialises in confusing and pointless gestures. All of this waving and pointing could mean absolutely anything but on the balance of probability, it seems he wants us to stop. Lots of bowing then ensues. After a lengthy and animated conversation into his walkie talkie, he then proceeds to further flummox us with another series of gestures which seem to indicate that we can now go. There are a least 6 of these dudes on every roadwork site. All that waving and bowing is hard work and requires special training and a snazzy uniform and helmet.  A close cousin of lightstick man is Flagman. Flag waving is a different language to lightstick waving, a bit like comparing Japanese to English. The flags are red and white and are waved vigorously and incomprehensibly . Now red seems the obvious sign for stop but what the hell is with the white flag?  Does it mean go? Is he trying to surrender to us? We all know the stories of Japanese troops holding out until long after the war was over so that’s not as ridiculous as it sounds. Even Shizuka thinks that it’s a silly system.

We have to drive through 2 lots of roadworks at least twice everyday so you would think that after a few days these guys would recognize you and figure that you know what’s going on. No way!! Every time is the same full display of flag or lightstick waving like you’ve never seen this before. A stop-go man from home would not believe how much effort is required to do the same job in Japan!