People really don't like to throw things away, making their already more narrow homes, even more crowded. And whats more, is that families will live together, a daughter and her husband might live with her parents and if they have kids as well...Well the picture gets very crowded already. But then you have to account for all of their belongings, and if you know how many toys I had as a kid, you would think they lived in their very own house.
So of course you have the normal packrats, who just can't throw their own stuff away with things like 'Oh, I loved that! I have such fond memories of it! I am sure I will use it again....someday...'. And then you have people with their parents old things and heirlooms of their family 'Oh this is my grandmothers kimono she had it since before World War 2 and its such a beautiful and classic antique nevermind that it smells like it is made out of musk'. I mean how could you possibly throw that away or resell it for an incredible price. And then you have the families with families, which pretty much just combines the two. And honestly some of the things I have seen in these peoples homes. It is just better that they find a nice spot of lawn and bury a little time capsule to be forgotten about immediately. There are some really grotesque antiques in there. Some of the worst is the 70's and 80's pottery, those shiny little pastel figurines that are made grossly out of portion? Yes, those. There was a whole trophy case full of them.
And then if you think all of that seems perfectly normal and not that weird, I come to the main point of all of this: the mega-you-shall-not-walk-a-step-of-doom packrats. These people literally do not have enough space in their own home, that they have started flooding the sidewalk with their possessions because it cannot fit inside. And since I live in a city, people just do not have lawns, not unless you buy a house and a half. So it is the sidewalks they fill up. At first if you come across one of these, you will think that someone just moved out and they have yet to pick up their trash, but that would be an incorrect assumption. You see, all those stacks of decades worth of newspapers, all the umbrellas, and rusted bicycles embedded in the newspapers? Yes those all belong to a person. A person who has the serious misconception that one day they will have use of all these items. And if this is the outside, I must admit my morbid sense of curiosity really wonders what the inside looks like. Are there tunnels? Secret passages? Does the person keep things in certain hidden locations only know to him/her? And what kind of things clutter the inside? I also wonder about the person and what time of physios they must have and how they act in public, but seeing as they(at least this person(s)) do live in a city, they probably have a fair chance of interacting with a fair amount of people. Makes me wonder a good many things...
I am sure that there are certainly people like this in America, and I can certainly attest that there are not many of this kind of person in Japan, but in discovering it, it shocked me enough to find this kind of living situation, let alone in the midst of a city, that I thought it was worth a mention. Though I am sure in America, with our larger houses, and acres of land, our sheds, and storage units, it is much easier to conceal this pack-rattyness behavior than it is in Japan. Also I had to do SOMEthing with this photo ;)
I must admit. At least he/she is very neat about it.
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