Watering Concrete

One thing I noticed when I got here was people watering the concrete in front of, and around their shops and houses. At first I thought they were cleaning it, but there was no scrubbing, or detergents, just someone holding a hose (or if it was kind of hot, sitting with a hose, or even just leaving the hose in the street and going inside for a nice cold Kirin Ichiban..beer) .

I approached a friend of mine about this, as I was curious. I know concrete is really popular here, and I thought maybe it had become some kind of shinto deity, whereby if you watered the concrete it might grow, or give birth to little concretes or something. Apparently, it's nothing as interesting, as it's called 'uchimizu' (in italics to show it's a real Japanese word). So I decided to go and find out a bit more about it and found quite an interesting webpage about it from a Osaka based group here in the section titled 'water to feel'. Indeed uchimizu is for keeping the dust level down in summer, and easing the heat a little.

I should say though that while that site is interesting for a while, bits like ,"The sensitivity that seeks taste and poetic sentiment in water, however, perhaps has developed only in Japan, where people have long lived with nature as it changes from season to season." That sounds a bit strange given that all Japan's rivers are banked and bottomed with concrete, and several mountains are covered in it too.