Comments on: On the road to nowhere… part deux (with signposts) http://www.lo-la.co.uk/2007/08/13/on-the-road-to-nowhere-part-deux-with-signposts/ Laurent Fintoni's online portfolio and blog... music, travels, life Fri, 02 Jul 2010 21:04:28 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 By: laurent http://www.lo-la.co.uk/2007/08/13/on-the-road-to-nowhere-part-deux-with-signposts/comment-page-1/#comment-2625 laurent Fri, 17 Aug 2007 03:15:29 +0000 http://www.lo-la.co.uk/2007/08/13/on-the-road-to-nowhere-part-deux-with-signposts/#comment-2625 thanks for the thoughts and explanations - definitely makes a lot of sense to me. Am looking forward to the next trip, going up the river I originally intended to follow, and see if it's more of the same or something different. thanks for the thoughts and explanations – definitely makes a lot of sense to me.
Am looking forward to the next trip, going up the river I originally intended to follow, and see if it’s more of the same or something different.

]]> By: Alex Case http://www.lo-la.co.uk/2007/08/13/on-the-road-to-nowhere-part-deux-with-signposts/comment-page-1/#comment-2624 Alex Case Fri, 17 Aug 2007 01:26:55 +0000 http://www.lo-la.co.uk/2007/08/13/on-the-road-to-nowhere-part-deux-with-signposts/#comment-2624 I quite agree about the housing estates and industrial estates. I work in a chemical plant on an industrial estate once a week and it's the nearest thing to the countryside I see. I don't know what it is that makes it a nice break- no tall buildings so get to see the sky for once, no barbed wire (unlike the UK), just the right level of plants being left to grow wild plus a few planted ones. Ditto with the housing estates. You do see some really run down ones, but they actually tend to be company housing rather than council housing. I think one factor is that companies always have tight budgets but until recently the budgets of local government in Japan were anything but tight- especially when it came to pork barrel projects like construction (e.g. housing) that kept the local voters in work and put money in the pockets of their contractor friends. There are other factors, of course. For one thing, there are very few immigrants. There are also no families with two or three generations unemployed or people living on welfare (almost impossible in Japan), and no big distinction between blue and white collar workers. The drop outs who might end up on an estate in Europe really drop out in Japan and end up back with their families or homeless. Because of all these things there is no particular stigma to living on a housing estate and middle class people (and until recently 90% of Japanese defined themselves as middle class) are quite happy to live there. In fact living in a "mansion" (high rise) like this is considered more modern than living in a house- something not true until very very recently in London. If they have moved out of a rundown wooden family home in the countryside you can see how it might be seen as a step up- as it was for the first 10 years or so when the slums of London and Glasgow were cleared and rebuilt in concrete, and people were happy just to have an inside toilet. In Japan, that might be being happy not to have to spend all year fighting off the insects. Two other factors: - Most Japanese are used to living close to other people, either in a village or in a city, and they feel "lonely" in a silent rural house where they can only hear the birds - The Japanese have a talent for appreciating the details and ignoring the big picture. If they have personalised their balcony with a few pot plants then they seem able to ignore that it looks the same as 400 others from a distance. Wow, that ended up longer than I thought. I might borrow it back and use it as a post on my blog! TEFLtastic blog- www.tefl.net/alexcase PS- Walt Whitman. No idea! I quite agree about the housing estates and industrial estates. I work in a chemical plant on an industrial estate once a week and it’s the nearest thing to the countryside I see. I don’t know what it is that makes it a nice break- no tall buildings so get to see the sky for once, no barbed wire (unlike the UK), just the right level of plants being left to grow wild plus a few planted ones.

Ditto with the housing estates. You do see some really run down ones, but they actually tend to be company housing rather than council housing. I think one factor is that companies always have tight budgets but until recently the budgets of local government in Japan were anything but tight- especially when it came to pork barrel projects like construction (e.g. housing) that kept the local voters in work and put money in the pockets of their contractor friends.

There are other factors, of course. For one thing, there are very few immigrants. There are also no families with two or three generations unemployed or people living on welfare (almost impossible in Japan), and no big distinction between blue and white collar workers. The drop outs who might end up on an estate in Europe really drop out in Japan and end up back with their families or homeless.

Because of all these things there is no particular stigma to living on a housing estate and middle class people (and until recently 90% of Japanese defined themselves as middle class) are quite happy to live there. In fact living in a “mansion” (high rise) like this is considered more modern than living in a house- something not true until very very recently in London. If they have moved out of a rundown wooden family home in the countryside you can see how it might be seen as a step up- as it was for the first 10 years or so when the slums of London and Glasgow were cleared and rebuilt in concrete, and people were happy just to have an inside toilet. In Japan, that might be being happy not to have to spend all year fighting off the insects.

Two other factors:
- Most Japanese are used to living close to other people, either in a village or in a city, and they feel “lonely” in a silent rural house where they can only hear the birds
- The Japanese have a talent for appreciating the details and ignoring the big picture. If they have personalised their balcony with a few pot plants then they seem able to ignore that it looks the same as 400 others from a distance.

Wow, that ended up longer than I thought. I might borrow it back and use it as a post on my blog!

TEFLtastic blog- http://www.tefl.net/alexcase

PS- Walt Whitman. No idea!

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