Extraordinary Ordinary Guy In Japan

DANCHI

DANCHI means a housing complex. You can see the dozens of gray apartments without individuality were built on Japanese DANCHIs. After the WWII, Japanese population increased rapidly and many residences were required. The government organized the Housing Corp and made DANCHIs all over the country. In order to lower the construction cost, the corp purchased the cheap land of the suburbs and built many apartments with the same design. People of those days, who lived in their traditional houses made of wood and paper, yearned to live in those concrete buildings in the Western style, and a large number of people moved to DANCHIs. Consequently, more new DANCHIs were needed and the huge DANCHIs which can accommodate hundreds of thousands of people were built in suburbs of Tokyo or Osaka in the 1950's to 70's. They called those huge DANCHIs as "new town". I'm one of the person who grew up in DANCHI. We played running up and down the stairway of our apartment, dropping spit from the highest floor, or throwing mud balls to the walls. Can you imagine what it's like to live where your classmate lives in the other side of the thin wall? The sceneries of DANCHIs remind me of those days and make me nostalgic. When the children who spent childhood in their DANCHI grew up, they have moved to the apartments in the center of their cities to get more convenience. Some of them have bought their own independent houses. Young people left DANCHI in these 30 years. So, many of the residents of DANCHIs are getting aged now. It's hard to find young people in DANCHI. The rooms which have no lights at night because they lost their owners are increasing. Though the residents used to watch over each other's safety, the decrease of population has made their security low, and it became a serious issue. Those buildings are already antiquated. There is no wonder if you feel lonely from these photos. Some other photos of DANCHI

Curved Bamboo

A bamboo tree was bent down from the weight of the snow on it. Don't you think this is symbolic of something important?  I feel like this is pointing us to  something instructive, moralistic, metaphorical, and ironic. Just like what some Chinese wise man said. But ...I can't recall what is it. Let me think.

There is a Japanese saying: "Willow branches can never be broken" (YANAGI NI EDA-ORE NASHI). Willow branches are always hanging down to the ground and not firm. So they don't seem to be strong. But even if the heavy snow piled on them, they are only bent down and hardly broken. This saying means that the real strength is a flexibility. It's very close but I think there must be something else more suitable for this curved bamboo.

Speaking of Japanese saying, there is an interesting story. There is a saying: "Kindness is not for helping others". Many people believe the meaning of this saying as that "being kind to a person is not necessarily beneficial to him/her because we should solve our problem by ourselves."  But its actual meaning is: "If we are kind to others, we will get kindness back. So we should be kind for ourselves." The real meaning is more selfish than the common belief. It is off topic from the bamboo though.

I show you another funny Japanese expression. We sometimes call the front zipper of the pants as "social window" (SHAKAI NO MADO). As you are guessing, we say like this because the zipper is the border of the public/society and our very 'private' area.
Since my head was filled with that bamboo, I forgot to zip up my pants in the whole of today. So I had walked around outside keeping my social window widely opened. While I went to the bank, supermarket, drugstore, and video shop, my window was unlocked to everyone in the society. But I did not intend to offend by such an antisocial act. What a shame...

Hey, finally I figured out the meaning of the bamboo! It had warned me to "look down".