Japan has a problem with their rivers. Or at least they used to, after World War Two. Back then the rivers used to overflow causing massive damage here and there, and studies were made to determine the flow of water and how best to control it. The solution was to pave over the trouble spots, and it worked really well, and a lot of people in Japan's ever-growing construction industry made a lot of money doing a lot of river-paving. The problem is they couldn't stop. The construction industry in Japan employs an astonishing five percent of the population, and they're addicted to paving. They're not good at it - in fact it could be said they're largely a bunch of unqualified violent yakuza siphoning money off the unqualified violent yakuza government. I don't know if that's true, but I've read it in books I bought on Amazon and from what I've seen it seems to be at least a little bit true. The roads here are torn up and repaved for no reason. Massive roads and freeways are built in the middle of nowhere connecting two bits of nothing to each other. Rivers are, and this disgusts and saddens me, being paved and decimated on a constant basis. Unlike civilized countries that make an attempt to prettify or disguise their works. or preserve natural spaces and ecologies, Japan's untalented construction industry just tears up the natural earth and fauna and slaps down enormous concrete culverts. They're still using the flood data from the post-war study to justify this expensive raping of the environment. The government promises change, conducts new studies, and announces nothing will change. While Japan's natural beauty is being paved over or obscured by powerlines the half-hearted battle of lipservice and apathy slumbers on. This seems to be the best that Japan can do with her rivers. As near as I can tell the image above shows a nearly natural river, with short vertical concrete sides and what I imagine is a concrete floor, filled with garbage, mud and the occasional fish or bird. This is their idea of a beautiful work, in summer the sides of this creek are lined with the most incredible cherry blossoms, and you can almost forget about the refuse in the water and powerlines trapping your mind. About a hundred meters behind the above image is this, the final touches to a river seen from a 20-30 meter bridge that took more than three years to build. They're making much better progress here than on the bridge. This is the horrible truth about a society that values harmony and a lack of confrontation. When someone does break the rules there's no one to stand up to them. The Japanese who flagrantly get out of line, throwing their garbage, bikes and strollers into the river are the kind who are dangerously violent when confronted, so there's no accountabilty, for environmental assaults or any other kind of deviance. It's the kind of place where people will deny parking on your lawn as they're driving off it. A company recently lost a lawsuit brought on by one of their employees who asked for remuneration for the work he'd done for the company. THe company maintained they never made a profit from his invention, but during the trial it came out they banked over a billion dollars from his blue LED invention. Japan is a country in and about denial. It's hugely distressing. What beauty there is seems consistantly compromised by the sterility of the concrete surrounding it, and by the ever present and seemingly randomly planted power lines. They're literally everywhere, I cannot for the life of me take a picture of the horizon, within one hundred kilometers of my house, without a powerline in it. This creek connects to the one above, about two kilometers behind the above image. Instead of the sloping, somewhat artisticly curved lines it's a mere culvert of the basest sort, with fifteen foot concrete walls on both sides. When the water was at its lowest this summer I rode by and was astonished to see it was full of Pachinko and Slot machines. Nearby I met some children who had found a very large turtle, an abandoned pet that couldn't reach the water for the fence, and would likey have died if it could have reached it. There's no way, and no where, for him to have gotten out again. The fences in Japan are another story entirely. They're more common than powerlines, they're literally everywhere, even around vacant lots, because experience has tought the Japanese that, should you leave a space open, someone will abandon their old car there, and no doubt deny they ever did even when you find their driver's license in it. Parking lots are all, nearly without exception, gated at night. Those that aren't have rusting hulks of cars taking up space for years at a time. No responsibility, no accountability. Welcome to Japan.