The Smallest London Pub in the World

I am sorry that I haven't been able to supply the ongoing work on the harvest festival and Japanese identity but matters of a more urgent need pressed themselves upon my schedule.


Unfortunately I was called on to drive HMiL and the honourable Takayama to a Ryokan near Shiga Kogen in the mountains by Nagano. The photograph above shows me in a quality control experiment regarding the hot volcanic spring waters, a large wooden tub placed on a timbered balcony overlooking a forested mountain slope and a tin of Asahi. The purpose of this scientific research was to establish just what effect a cold Japanese lager had on the consciousness of an individual who had been soaking in the purifying waters of the mountain.

I can report that this study required an intense devotion to detail and forms part of a thesis I have been working on for the past five years. Such is the pressure of this work and the complexity of the empirical research that repeated experiments have had to take place in order to establish a credible sample. Sadly after this, my fifth visit to this particular wooden tub, I find that I am no closer to any answers therefore I have had to steel myself for a return visit sometime in 2011.


Unfortunately the area is quite remote and the intrusions of the modern world are mostly ignored in favour of the simple grace that is serenity. However, I am aware of my duty to report on matters of great import whilst here in Japan and so am pleased to announce that I have discovered the smallest London Pub in the world. This claim has to be verified but I think that the London Pub in Fuji Sawa Station has to be the top contender.


At first I was bemused as it was packed solid for two hours whilst I was researching Chinese Medicinal Practices in Fuji Sawa. So after a first glance I was unable to get inside the door and probe any further. The delights of a pint of Bass so loudly proclaimed on the sign outside would have to wait.

Fortunately I had to return to Fuji Sawa and as fate would have it this time there was room inside. On entering I quickly counted the bar stools, a staggering eight in total around an "L" shaped short bar. The five that covered the length as you entered were the "smoking stools" whilst the three at the dog leg were for "non-smokers". This facility, as the most reasonable of hosts Masahito Nagasu explained, was the only place in the whole station where you were allowed to smoke. Consequently, with about 5000 people present in the station either working or travelling at any one time, the London Pub tends to be packed with a queue outside.


I had a pint of Bass as I sat on one of the non-smoking stools. Such a pleasure to be able to sup your pint at the bar and then lean back against the wall with complete ease and safety!

This place my friends is the stuff of legends and Masahito is ever so congenial as he explains that he lived in America as a child but later his parents moved to Purley in Surrey. His own pride, and one I am sure a lot of the readers of this blog would concur with, is the fact that he lost his American accent and now places great store in speaking "English not American". A gentleman defines himself by his actions and there can be no doubt that Masahito Nagasu is a gentleman.

He serves draught Bass in pint glasses and speaks English, what greater definition is required? I give the you all a toast, "To the smallest London Pub in the world."

The Harvest Festival work will appear shortly.

Understanding Japan: The Bodhisattva's Business

I love coming to stay at HMiL's in Meguro and one of my greatest pleasures is in keeping and maintaining the pot garden I have built for her. For some time she did have objections to this activity because she felt that I shouldn't have to work so hard whilst I was supposed to be on holiday.

She also expressed a concern that I should not be doing tasks which, in her opinion, were beneath my station in life (She thinks I am a lot more Russel Square and not so much Hackney Wick). I managed to talk her around to my way of thinking over time and she has accepted the fundamental truth of the situation and that is my love for the task of doing her garden.


We began by putting in a solar powered irrigation system so that as the garden grew it didn't place the burden of watering the pots on HMiL. This has allowed the veranda and stairwell to now host about 70 pots or containers.

Such a resource allows us to provide fruit; strawberries, blueberries, grapes, apricots, oranges and we have now successfully started growing custard apples. There are also a small selection of seasonal vegetables but the mainstay of the whole operation are the flowers and an aim to bring colour and joy into her visual experience of home.

My wife obviously loves her mother and I have come to treasure her as well. She is quite remarkable. In polite society a gentleman never mentions a lady's age and let's keep that convention here. Besides there is no point in mentioning the numbers because you simply would not be able to relate them to people who hold similar numerical seniority in the U.K.

HMiL loves to dance, she goes social dancing at least three times a week (we would know that as ballroom dancing) and takes lessons once a week. Her favourite dance is the tango. Obviously she cycles to her dance class and this is her main form of transportation about the neighborhood. We joined her this week to take some photos.


After her dance class she changed, got on her bike and went out to do one of her community work jobs (I believe she has three). Off she went to look after a disabled boy whom she takes care of between the hours when he finishes school and his mum arrives home from work. Of an evening she likes to gather with her friends, play cards (small stakes just gives it that edge), have a few beers (pints naturally) and catch up on the news.

HMiL is an independent woman and in Japan that means that she runs her own small business, which of course is not any of our concern, and is a member of several local business clubs. These bring local business people together so they can discuss matters of mutual benefit and then, of course, have lunch together.

You may well feel that I have drifted into personal matters here but there is a very clear agenda in this, my last series of articles for this trip. The story of HMiL is not an exceptional case, there are many Japanese people like her. The streets in the local area are full of octogenarians, considered mere striplings here, riding around on bicycles.

"The estimated number of elderly aged 80 or older has topped the 8 million mark for the first time in Japan, the internal affairs ministry said in a report released Sunday."

source: The Japan Times 20 09 2010

This report also goes on to say that 5.5 million people over 65 are working. 3.19 million of these were employees, a figure which includes 1.58 million part-timers which means, if my maths serve, that means 4.01 million people over the age of 65 are in full time employment of one sort or another. Indeed I have seen a report last January of a doctor still working as a G.P. at the age of 100. His patients expressed confidence in him on the grounds that he was not only still alive but working as well!

The Japan Times report also notes that where the head of the household was over 65 family savings were approximately double those of families with a younger head of household. We have to bear in mind that one of the reasons Japan has stayed economically strong not just over the recent economic collapse but also over the last ten years of their own particular economic downturn is because as a nation Japan has more savings per head than any other nation. The Japanese have never really bought into the boom of the credit card in the same way we did in the west; they never saw the provision of credit as a reason either to borrow excessively or to stop saving!

All of this news from the ministry was released on Sunday as Monday was the Respect-for-the Aged Day national holiday. This is added onto the weekend which covers the harvest festival as part of the Happy Monday holiday system.

The lives these elders live are essential to Japanese society and to the identity of being Japanese and this is the subject I am going to look at with this set of articles. I want to try and show you how Japanese society as a mono-culture reinforces its own sense of itself and its standards through its social rituals. In order to do this I am going to start by following HMiL last Friday as she goes out on that most essential of all Japanese pursuits, hunting for a bargain.


HMiL wanted to buy a new clock for her living room and there is an area in Tokyo famed for its wholesale discount shops, Asakusa, which also just happens to have one of the most famous Buddhist Shrines in Japan, Sensō-ji. These two facts are clearly related as HMiL later explained.

On arriving in Asakusa HMiL could not find the wholesale discount shop she was looking for. She phoned friends, she searched hither and thither, but to no avail so she did the ovious thing, well obvious in Japan; she asked a policeman.

The local police station, a koban, can be seen in the photo above. These are dotted all over the communities of Tokyo and look more or less the identical. The kind policeman was able to help and guide the bargain hunter to her shopping serengeti.


As she passed the gateway to the shrine she mentioned to the honourable Akane that it was thanks to the Bodhisattva that the shops did so well and business was so good. All around the shrine specialist shops and trading outlets, a sort of cash and carry super park, thrive and prosper.


Whatever your requirement, from a sharp knife (a Japanese classic) to a living room clock, you will find it in the streets and alleyways around the temple. This is not strange or unique to Japan. Our own cathedrals functioned in the same way in building economies and indeed, in the middle ages sales of goods actually went on inside the great churches which were not used as they are today but separated off internally into different areas for different uses social and spiritual.


But for HMiL there is no separation between the worldly and the spiritual, it is all the same thing seen from different angles depending on your need at any one time. I have mentioned before the quality of pragmatism which I perceive to be the fundamental characteristic of the Japanese people, and it is only pragmatic that where there is a massively popular temple so too should there be crowds and so too should there be business opportunity.

Spot the American: the clue is the jeans!

Yet it is still the will and presence of the Bodhisattva which generates the business and it is a sign of his blessings that people prosper. You cannot divide this spiritual Japan from secular Japan and in many ways the word secular is culturally inappropriate to use in connection with Japan.


Everyone buys into the whole and indivisible way of being Japanese, even the rebellious rebel in the Japanese style; fashionably! The presence of plastic toys alongside sacred statues is nothing but the way of the world and spirituality can be found in crafted old wood or moulded modern synthetics, the only sin is an inability to make a profit, the only grace is to be able to pay your way in life. Social security is a safety net of very thin strands meant only as a temporary support.

Of course I am providing a very wide sweeping generalisation here but I believe at the heart of what I am saying there is a fundamental truth. The temples and the shrines of Japan are at the heart of what it is to be Japanese. But for that to function and provide a stable identity then you need to ensure absolute inclusivity from birth in this special social model.



The journey around the religious sites as a tourist doesn't open the individual traveller to the wider social experience. This can only be seen when you are fortunate enough to live within a Japanese home as part of a Japanese family. The obligations, duties and celebrations are then shared with you as a matter of course. Naturally, as a foreigner you are not expected to either understand much or take up the duties too seriously, you are always involved as a courtesy not as an obligation.

Over the next few articles I will hope to show you what I have seen recently and support my opinions with pictures taken on a journey around the harvest festival. But it all really began with HMiL and her certainty of the Bodhisattva's role in enriching the Asakusa area of Tokyo.


When HMiL stands before the large donations chest (large in size and able to take any amount of hard cash) she makes her prayer and casts her coins into the box. There is no doubt that she asks the Bodhisattva to keep her and her family healthy, she certainly asks for blessings on the family finances and the rest is her own personal business. All year around people pour money into the temples and shrines and the temples and shrines guard the Japanese nation and its wealth by reminding the Japanese who they are.

That is the Bodhisattva's Business.

In the next article I will look at how this is all actually achieved with the presence of a powerful mythic form driving a clearly identified mono-culture. I may even consider this in the light of our own powerful mythic disassociation within a widely fragmented multi-culture. Hmmm, maybe!

Understanding Japan: The Business of Festival.


The image above is of Izanami-no-Mikoto and Izanagi-no-Mikoto who are on the bridge across the sea of all being from whence, with the aid of a spear, they stir forth the sacred islands of Japan. This is the Shinto creation myth which accounts for the existence of Japan and all its people. So now you know who the Japanese believe themselves to be!

Asking the right question.

I am not sure what you will be doing with your Saturday night (it is 17.42hrs at your end as I write this) but the image above gives you a clue as to what we have done with ours (it is 03.20 a.m. here now).

This image was taken at about 9 this evening and the whole story will be forthcoming, very soon.

A Mixed Economy Japanese Style: Commerce (Part Two)

Contents so far

A Mixed Economy Japanese Style: Housing

A Mixed Economy Japanese Style: Commerce (Part One)

So far we have seen a brief look at housing and a glimpse at commerce with a focus on the cement factory and environmental matters. All of this has been within a very specific geographic area defined by my own short walk from the HMiL residence to Daia Department Store, a timeline of not more than twenty minutes.





The maps above mark my walk in the blue line. The top map is the beginning of my journey and where the blue line ends in the third map is Daia Department Store. Lets put this all in context with the satellite shot of Tokyo Prefecture as a whole:

What you are looking at in the satellite shot, in the context of this article, is the world's largest metropolitan economy with a GDP of US$1.479 trillion (as of 2008). The photograph is also showing you the world's most populous metropolitan area with a population measuring up to 39 million people (the UK in total has 56 million people). In order to keep all of this going in a polite and civilised manner with the traffic flowing, pollution under control, crime very low and the streets extremely clean there has to be proper management of the system both as a built environment structure and as a social organism.


The Tokyo Metropolitan government administers the twenty-three special wards of Tokyo, each governed as a city, that cover the area that was the city of Tokyo as well as 39 municipalities in the western part of the prefecture and the two outlying island chains.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo

All waste disposal is recycled, the pragmatic Japanese would consider anything else as a reckless waste of resources. There are regular domestic and commercial collections with days designated for the collection of metals, plastics, combustable general rubbish, paper and anything that does not fit those categories. Every home and business is issued with a chart which provides the cycle of collection and everyone knows the designated collection point for your waste. A net is provided at the collection point to keep the crows (Tokyo's version of the London fox problem) from spreading the rubbish about.

People, generally, simply wouldn't think of not sorting their rubbish and putting it out in the right order on the right day. That would be to deny the efficiency of the recycling system and be a negative influence on the economy, besides, polite Japanese families don't behave like that anyway.


Does it all work? Well the picture above is of a main arterial road, a rough equivalent of the notorious Holloway Road, and can you see the difference?


Here is a junction on the same arterial road and do click on either of these pictures, look at them in the larger format and then imagine what a metropolitan area with up to 39 million people would look like in the U.K. under our sort of management!

This is some of the structural background which lies behind all I have been showing you in this small series of articles on the Japanese mixed economy. The walk and all it contains is possible because the macro management is in place and that management is delivered to a community which sees both the sense and the benefit in following the "plan". Why would a Japanese father or a Japanese mother want to bring their children up in filth and squalor?

Perhaps now you know why when I sit on a train in my own country and look at the discarded fast food containers, dirty floors and ripped seats whilst hearing people shouting down their phones, I feel utterly ashamed on seeing a Japanese person sitting quietly opposite me. They are far too polite to comment and besides, they are in a foreign country where the people simply are not Japanese! What do you expect?


So as I walk back from Daia I find in amongst the housing all sorts of commercial activities taking place. The photo above is of a small textile design factory I think. Now that I have really laboured the point about rubbish and cleanliness you should immediately see this photograph in that context.


A quick peek through the entrance of the factory shows the worker's shoes lined up neatly where they have taken them off and put on their working shoes. This is such a simple picture but when you begin to consider the implications of the image you can see the detail that is being followed through at every level.


At the side of the factory is what is probably a storage area. the entrance to this is made from three old doors hinged together; a pragmatic and cost efficient recycling of materials. This is where recycling, commerce and art meet, this could well be an installation in the Tate! Diagonally across the road from this textile factory is an older style operation, something to do with carpentry I think.


This is just a large warehouse structure and you can see a block of flats off to the left of the image. Indeed, there are residential homes all the way up this short street in between the businesses, or, there are businesses in between the residential homes! This mixed economy is seamless.


The photographs I have been showing you in this small series on the mixed economy are all in sequence of my actual journey. I didn't see the need to alter the order (hey, perhaps I am becoming Japanese!!!) and so in reality the "distance" between each photo ranges between a few seconds to a couple of minutes at most. The image above shows a sign writer, perhaps a less industrial and more artisan element in the make up but once more I am trying to illustrate how the "mix" is actually borderless at all levels.

You will immediately observe that the frontage is in English. This is because the use of English in signs and slogans is seen to be very cosmopolitan and reflects a cultural value. Obviously therefore, you need a sign-writer who has mastery of script and font in this form.


Almost opposite this artisan trade we have the entrance lobby of a rather plush set of appartments. You will note that the tree carries a notice informing people of various important bits of information including where along the road it is appropriate to smoke!

Obviously, in such places there is good provision for the smoker. You do not get a hopelessly inadequate tin tacked onto a wall for cigarette buts, no, you have a proper stand, usually with an awing of some sort and a large sized purpose designed bin, regularly cleaned, for the smoker.

Yes it is better to organise smoking in specific places but that doesn't mean that you treat the smoker disrespectfully as some sort of 21st century leper.


Just a little further I found a house, a very traditional house with an immaculate traditional garden. Once again the image tells us a lot more than would appear on first glance. A connoisseur of detail would pick this up but he would have to be good, very good, to read it from a photograph. However the point is really important in terms of understanding something about the Japanese psyche that is radically different to our own. As ever, pragmatism is the key!


As you can see the garden takes the traditional use of stone and plant, it is open and spacious, this is not the home of a working class family. This is the place where the aesthetic plays a part in Japanese life. This Japanese sense of the aesthetic is extremely powerful as I hope to illustrate in my forthcoming article on the Japanese department store and why it is possible to pay up to £300 for a melon. However that will come later!

If you go back to the first picture then the lesson in spotting detail is always to look for either what is an anomaly or to look for what is not there. The second skill is obviously the harder but our challenge in the first picture is spotting what is present and that means correctly identifying it.

The first give away is the colour differential. This is anomalous. What we have is a yellow fence and closer inspection by the skilled eye will conclude that it is in fact a plastic sheet replicating bamboo fencing. This is important because it demonstrates that the Japanese aesthetic is much more flexible in respect of materials, there is not a prejudice against plastic or the 'modern'. What we are considering here is the different construction of mix which allows for a different understanding of what works in context.

In terms of our look at the mixed economy we can see that the placing of commercial, industrial and residential in the same space does not effect the understanding of the aesthetic or conflict in terms of context. This is a very Japanese quality of psyche.


As we continue down the road a bit we come to a junction and there on the corner is the aesthetic of the traditional Japanese cake shop. Look at the space, consider the design, we are five minutes walk from the cement factory and in between is all that I have been describing.


A side view into the cake shop reveals this aesthetic in all of its glory. This is a commercial space in a city where space is at a premium. Imagine for a moment that this was an American sales oriented selling space. An American entrepreneur would look at this and think the shop was just being fitted out:

"My god there is hardly any product on view, no point of sales materials, no promotional or marketing going on, there are empty spaces everywhere. This is a commercial disaster zone!"

What we clearly have here is the minimalism Japanese art has been famous for; the zen appreciation of the moment, the grace and beauty of the small movement. This is a Japanese high quality cake shop and I can assure you that what you are looking at is the complete lack of willingness or ability to compromise on those Japanese standards. When the American style business entrepreneur looks at this selling space they see lost opportunity, when the Japanese look at this selling space they see traditional quality.


In the photo above we see the view down the street taken from next to the side view of the cake shop. As you can see, there are residential houses and appartments all along. If we just glance to the right from this position we see the Jeweler.

This small high quality jeweler is almost opposite the side window view of the cake shop. The building he is in is mostly residential appartments. In this image we can see the minimialism of the cake shop design reflected in this shop front, the surface of the building and the street furniture. But just down the way from this very high quality jeweler and high quality cake shop, in fact just after the point where I am standing in the street view above, wait for it, yes, we have the meat packing factory!


Not more than forty yards down from the cake shop, just past a few houses there is a meat packing factory which takes truck loads of animal flesh and turns it into all sorts of packaged and processed products.


Everything is clean, neat and very, very tidy. The dust cart with the broom probably comes twice a day to deal with the rubbish. And inconvenience to local people is kept to an absolute minimum if any at all.



Amazingly considering the occupation, the staff unloading the lorries are resplendent in a full array of white protective clothing that seems impervious to blood stains (when I first saw this place I thought it might be a secret biological weapon research plant!). Once more I would ask the reader to picture the image of a British worker in a similar occupation. The comparison defines the Japanese demands for hygiene.

And even if you live next door to the meat packing factory, just down the way from the cake shop and a short walk to the cement factory, you still grow your sharon fruit tree through your front porch so you can enjoy its tasty bounty during your lunch break at the light engineering plant around the corner.


And so now we are almost home, just cross the road and wander down yet another short street where houses are crowbarred into spaces we wouldn't think possible and our journey ends.

What you have seen is really just the faintest scratch of the surface, the experience here on the ground is one of wonder and amazement. The implications in terms of planing, building construction, social management, service provision and everything else that goes into not just building a city but creating a social model leave me ever more saddened about the opportunities we miss in our culture.

Is there any less health and safety regulation here than there? Absolutely not, in fact there is probably more here. Is there any less bureaucracy here than there is there? Most certainly not, bureaucracy here is enormous and ever present. So what is the difference then? Well I would suggest it is all about attitude and how that attitude is shared across the community. In Japan getting the job done is seen as the obligation, being polite and efficient is seen as the duty and being Japanese is seen as the shared value.

This year we delivered in London a very large project involving three London councils, 19 primary schools, one art gallery, two libraries and over 600 cardboard DOGS. The brief for the Tower Hamlets Borough events team was to collect two lots of crated DOG sculptures and store them safely for six weeks. Then they had to deliver these crated DOGS to the event site. A very simple logistical exercise.

We wasted four full working days of our time (there are two of us so that is 64 man hours lost) because of their collection, storage and delivery of these items. Because in the first collection they were patently incompetent beyond belief we abandoned the second collection and consequently had to reduce the size of the event. On delivery to the site the DOG sculptures were so extensively damaged the artist had to spend two full working days repairing them.

This is only a very short description of the managerial incompetence I put before the events team manger in a meeting one month ago. An apology? No. Any sense that they had done anything wrong? No. Any sense that things would change or there would be managerial lessons learnt? No, the manager said, "I think we shall just keep this in-house".

Imagine these clowns trying to run Tokyo!


Footnote:
In 1990 the police identified over 2.2 million Penal Code violations. Two types of violations—larceny (65.1 percent of total violations) and negligent homicide or injury as a result of accidents (26.2%)—accounted for over 90 percent of criminal offenses in Japan.

In 1989 Japan experienced 1.3 robberies per 100,000 population, compared with 48.6 for West Germany, 65.8 for Great Britain, and 233.0 for the United States; and it experienced 1.1 murder per 100,000 population, compared with 3.9 for West Germany, 1.03 for England and Wales, and 8.7 for the United States that same year.

Japanese authorities also solve a high percentage of robbery cases (75.9%, compared with 43.8% for West Germany, 26.5% for Britain, and 26.0% for the United States) and homicide cases (95.9% , compared with 94.4% for Germany, 78.0% for Britain, and 68.3% for the United States)

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Japan

A Mixed Economy Japanese Style: Commerce (Part One)

Contents so far

A Mixed Economy Japanese Style: Housing

As I began to try and put this section together I realised that it required dividing into two parts if I was ever going to reveal anything concrete. As you have now had an extremely limited view of the diversity of the housing the next stage is to show how commerce and industry is woven tightly into this urban landscape. This is a construction and combination of urban space the like of which we simply do not know in London and, I would hazard, in the western world.


The picture above shows the space below a domestic house from which someone appears to be running either the supply of or the re-cycling of specific items of commercial catering equipment. The mixture of occupation and the level of skilled and semi-skilled workshops operating in any street defies our comprehension. Just four minutes down our street there is a small workshop complete with two lathes, a decent size bit of block and tackle on a steel girder frame with an assortment of drill benches.

A father and his two sons run their own small precision engineering business there and in conversation explained that they mostly make components for Toyota. There are literally a dozen or more such workshops on the twenty minute walk between the HMiL residence and the Daie Department Store.

Leaving aside the wonder you feel when you walk around and discover that the bloke next door is actually engineering parts for Nippon Electric's Nuclear Power Plant (yes they may only be the widget that goes on the bluffer's valve but....), as I said, leaving the wonder aside, you have to be amazed by the economic implications of this ability to spread national corporate business out amongst very small local producers.


Such an incredibly eclectic mix with boundless diversity acceptable within very small spaces could not operate if it was not for attention to detail (Deets, I know you are appreciating this). If we take a look at the photo of the rubbish truck shown above then the most obvious juxtaposition is the shiny and spotlessly clean rubbish truck, packed with modern technology, carrying a broom of a design that hasn't changed since we lived in caves. But for the expert in this area of detail appreciation the real cherry on the cake is the fact that on this very, very modern truck there is a "broom holder" which I can absolutely assure you was designed with this type of broom in mind. You can see the tech drawings on the designer's laptop:

"Yes, and this is the broom holder and as you can see we favour the traditional broom as it really has no peer when it comes to efficiency and cost."

Once again, Japanese pragmatism at its finest expression, for my money this is one of the key qualities that has helped to produce a premier powerhouse economy.

But this pragmatism extends into a deep consideration for the urban environment. You see we could not operate this intensity of industrial and commercial interests in the very heart of residential areas because who would want to live next to, for example, a meat packing factory or a cement works? If you get within 100 yards of either of these two types of establishment in England you are going to be up to your eyes in dust, packing materials, stench and god knows what rubbish strewn around. That's why we have designated areas called industrial parks (yeah parks, that's quaint eh!) well away from where we live.


But this is Japan and business is business so if you have a cement factory then you have a responsibility to your environment and to the local people. Business needs to be done, people need to be employed, profits need to be made, there is no point having your cement works miles away from where the building is going on. So the pragmatic solution is to make sure everything is clean.

Now we all know that the Japanese worship the God of Clean but when it comes to the combination of the word business and clean, with the possibility of profits suffering if the job is not done well, then these guys are fanatics. Above you will see two cement mixers that passed me on my walk to Daie. Please study the picture carefully, please note just how clean these operational cement trucks are!


These beauties could have just pulled out of the cement truck showroom, I mean they are gleaming. You may ask why there are cement trucks around on my short walk to Daie, well it is because there is a cement factory in the neighbourhood and when I say factory I do mean factory! (remember you can click on these photographs to get a larger image!)


Please also take the time to digest just how clean this cement works is. This could have just come out of the cement works showroom but no, this has been there for years. In your minds eye, you may need a few valium before you do this, in your mind's eye conjure up any image you recall of seeing a British cement factory. Hold the image for as long as you feel able and then look again at the picture above.

Can you see it, do you see what is missing from the Japanese cement works; its the rust! There's no rust, and there isn't anything blowing about in the wind, there isn't a dirty grey cloud issuing forth.


I have been coming twice a year to Meguro for many years now and believe me when I say that on the first time of seeing the cement works I just couldn't believe what I was looking at. Check out the tyres on these lorries, are they caked in dust, mud, grime etc., look at the ground, is it a pot holed puddled mess of mud and slime which the lorries can pick up and discharge across town? I can stand for hours watching this place as literally hundreds of lorries come and go each day.


Now you may know many annoraks; petrol heads, train spotters, plane spotters but I bet you haven't ever come across a cement works enthusiast before! But you just remember over the next few days when you are out and about and see a cement mixer, remember these pictures and take a look at what our offerings in the genre look like. Lift the veil from your eyes and look at how your environment is treated by business.


Ultimately this high density of mixed resources, this cornucopia of productivity which doesn't compete with the domestic environment but co-exists side by side with it, is possible because of a simple basic of Japanese society; good manners. Manners are a code of social behaviour which a group of people agree and buy into. There would be immense shame for the directors if the cement factory caused distress to the neighbours through being careless with the management of their process. A small engineering works can exist in a domestic street precisely because until the sliding door opens you do not know it is there. Piling rubbish up outside of your business is not an option if you want to stay in business! It simply isn't Japanese.



All around these quiet back streets you will see people waiting at the traffic lights for the green man to flash and say you can cross. I watch as people stand there when there is absolutely no traffic whatsoever. They stand and wait until they are given permission to cross, to do otherwise is to break the rules and when you break one rule all rules are then liable to be broken. Do you know what, I also wait for the green man to come on. To do otherwise would simply mark me out as a rude foreigner who has no respect. Even the children wait at the lights for permission to cross, what sort of example would it be to set them if I just strolled over because there was no traffic?


So there it is and isn't it strange. We think of the Japanese as a regimented people who all have this odd habit of bowing and being dreadfully polite. We think of their identities being submerged in the social mass where being different is frowned upon. We think of them as part of a social machine, part of an inhuman surge of social conditioning. I say we, perhaps this is not you but I am sure for the western reader these words have a resonance because they do exist in our history of racial stereotyping.

But when we really look at it, we wade through the inconsiderate rubbish in our streets, our businesses run for profit without any sense of social responsibility and our culture is like a pressure cooker which boils away any sense of respect in our communities. One has to ask exactly who are the victims of a "social grinding machine"?

I like the manners and the clean streets, that's why I come here.

Coming Next: A Mixed Economy Japanese Style: Commerce (Part Two)