{"id":871,"date":"2008-07-17T20:49:59","date_gmt":"2008-07-17T11:49:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2008-07-17\/871"},"modified":"2008-07-17T20:49:59","modified_gmt":"2008-07-17T11:49:59","slug":"the-mystery-of-japanese-road-repair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2008-07-17\/871","title":{"rendered":"The Mystery of Japanese Road Repair"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
<\/a>\nNikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f\/2.8 @ 17 mm — 1<\/sup>\/<\/big>250 sec, f<\/span>\/6.3, ISO 250 —\nmap & image data<\/a> — nearby photos<\/a><\/span>\nJapanese “The Way of the Bump” Road Repair<\/span>\nugly, careless patch in the middle of a newly<\/span>-paved road\n<\/div>\n\n

You know the old saying “If you want it to rain, wash the car<\/b>”..., well,\nsomething along the same lines in Japan might be “If you want someone to\nhack up your street and leave it a bumpy,<\/span> jumbled mess of uneven bone-jarring patches,\npave it.<\/b>”<\/p>\n\n\n

A stretch of Teramachi St. near Anthony's kindergarten was, for years,\none of the worst streets in Kyoto. It was paved<\/span> recently, but before that\n– I really<\/span> should have taken a picture<\/span> – there wasn't an inch\nof the stretch I used<\/span> that was original. It was a<\/span> literal patchwork of\nyears of cut-dig-patch cycles.<\/p>\n\n

There's apparently a lot under Japanese roads – especially the\nsmaller ones in residential areas – that someone always seems to need\naccess to. One house<\/span> needs to replace the water line... another the gas\nline... a third<\/span> the sewer line... oops, the water line that was replaced\ntwo weeks ago was the wrong color, so it needs to be replaced again. It never<\/span> seems to end. With each, the construction company that gets the job\ncomes out, sets up their orange cones and disrupts traffic while they use\na big<\/span> cutter to slice through the road asphalt. After they do whatever they\nwhere hired to do, they dump some hot asphalt into the hole and run away. No one seems<\/span> to care that they've now left a big<\/span> uneven bump where the road\nused to be.<\/p>\n\n

What I find particularly amazing is that when a road<\/span> is<\/i> repaved,\nit's almost inevitable that it will get one of these bumpy patches in\nvery short order. I've seen it happen time and time again. You suffer<\/span> through the construction while the road is repaved, and a week<\/span> or two\nlater, before your rejoicing at the beautiful, smooth, not-ugly-looking\npavement has even started to subside, someone comes and puts a big<\/span> ugly\nbone-jarring wart in it AND NO ONE SEEMS TO CARE!<\/i> (except me, I\nguess<\/span>).<\/p>\n\n

And so it was with Teramachi St. It's the most<\/span> convenient access for\nAnthony's school, but it was so bumpy that I tried<\/span> to avoid it until it was\npaved recently, after which it was smoooooooth<\/i> and wonderful. A few weeks<\/span> later, right on schedule, boom, a big<\/span> ugly bumpy patch in the\nnewly-paved street and the newly-paved sidewalk. Sigh. At least<\/span> this patch\nwas smoother than most, but that counts for little because I'm sure it's\nonly a short<\/span> matter of time before the next dozen careless, bumpy\npatches. \ud83d\ude41<\/p>\n\n

\n\n

So, I went and<\/span> took a picture<\/span> one day with the intent to write this\npost, but I waited<\/span> to long to do the writing. Had I actually<\/span> written and\npublished the post when I took<\/span> the picture last month, it would be with\ngreat satisfaction to report that this week, the ugly patch was replaced by\na much<\/span> smoother, much less ugly width-of-the-street patch. I've never seen\nthat, and so would have taken credit for it. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know the old saying \"If you want it to rain, wash the car<\/b>\"..., well, something along the same lines in Japan might be \"If you want someone to hack up your street and leave it a bumpy, jumbled mess of uneven bone-jarring patches, pave it.<\/b>\"<\/p>

A stretch of Teramachi St. near Anthony's kindergarten was, for years, one of the worst streets in Kyoto. It was paved recently, but before that – I really should have taken a picture – there wasn't an inch of the stretch I used that was original. It was a literal patchwork of years of [...]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}