After growing non-stop since the snow melted in mid-April, the lawn in front of our apartment building has finally gotten a hair cut. Lawn maintenance in Japan is dramatically different than in the U.S.. You won't find perfectly manicured lawn anywhere in our neighborhood... you will see many beautiful gardens, but none of these maintained areas have grass.
Below are 3 pictures of what the lawn used to look like from the end of May. We wrote about it in this blog entry.
It was very green...
But very tall... in this photo, the grasses come up to my waist or my elbows. In another part of the lawn, they came up to my head!
Only a small path had been cut to the garden area.
Last Monday, we got a note in our mailbox saying that there would be someone cutting the grass on Wednesday. Since the weather forecast said rain on Wednesday, he came on Tuesday.
From the way the note was written, I was expecting that the whole lawn would be cut in one day (boy, was I wrong!). I was imagining what was common in the U.S., where a whole crew of people would arrive and work like crazy for 1 day.
But there is only this one guy with a weedwacker, and a very big lawn. A few times I've seen him have a helper who would pull large weeds but hand. But I never saw another guy with any equipment.
It rained Wed-Fri, so he didn't work those days. He started again on Saturday, working from 10 am to 7 pm. I think he will finally finish today (8 days after starting).
In the photo above, from early Sunday, you can see the area he cut on Tuesday (on the right) is more yellow than the area he cut on Saturday (upper left). He cut the rest of the grass in this photo on Sunday and Monday.
Another photo from Sunday.
From this morning. There are only a few areas on the edge of the property that need cutting still.
I'm very curious to see if they will remove the cut grass or if they will leave it in place.
Because of all the dead grass, it smells like a hay field outside our place. Brings back good memories of my youth.
That's all for now
-Bre (and Kyle)
an adventure in cultural differences...wait til you see the riding mower at the new house!
ReplyDeleteK
This is one cultural characteristic where I appear to be more Japanese than American -- I suspect that unless Charlotte shows up with her weed wacker, I will have a real hay/blackberry field by the time I return in August!
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The US is just obsessed with lawn mowing because it was a symbol of the "perfect family" to have a nice house with a white picket fence and a manicured lawn. To the point that now if you go more than a few weeks without mowing your grass in many areas, neighbors complain and the city will fine you.
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