Dear readers, life in the quiet suburbs can have its exciting moments, and the cycle of death and rebirth, destruction and reconstruction, is not confined to the natural world.
For example, since most detached houses here are prefabs with an eminently disposable quality, they are torn down and rebuilt every 20-30 years, depending on the quality of the building materials, degree of wear and tear, and their owners’ willingness to shell out more money for another overpriced low-quality dwelling.
My house is now 21 years old and is in still decently good conditions, so we are going to squeeze a few more years of service out of it.
The house pictured below was past its expiration date and was recently gutted.
A few days after I took the first photo, I walked past the same site and found a nifty piece of empty land, ready to be redeveloped. In Japan, they like to work fast.
This one is a bigger plot near the station.
Then there are the unpredictable happenings, the accidents.
One night, I heard the sound of a fire engine approach and stop not far from my house. Then a second and third one, and an ambulance. It sounded like a seemingly endless parade of vehicles converging to my neighborhood, sirens blaring.
I stepped outside and found a fire engine blocking the small intersection near my house. Other people were out in the street, wondering what was happening.
Japan has had a long and painful acquaintance with fires. Particularly in the past, when all the buildings were made of wood, fires big and small where almost a daily occurrence.
In Edo (Tokyo’s former name), they were so frequent and destructive that vast urban areas were repeatedly leveled by fire. As an old saying goes, "Fires and quarrels are the flowers of Edo.” Even in the modern days, Edo was still remembered as the "city of fires."
The fire near my house was much smaller and luckily nobody died. But it could have been much worse. It happened in one of the two buildings belonging to the local newspaper distribution center. You see, in Japan many people still subscribe to paper dailies and every morning a physical copy is delivered to their houses.
I don’t know if it was a case of spontaneous combustion. As you can see in the photo above, the building in question stands next to another house. More houses are behind it. Miraculously, they managed to keep the flames inside, and in the end, only that one building was destroyed.
The day after, I went out for a stroll and took a few pictures. The air was still saturated with the foul smell of burned paper, plastic and chemicals.
Those distributor’s two buildings have always been quite dirty and neglected. I went around the mess and even climbed to the second floor.
Well, that’s all for today. Take care and don’t play with fire!