Yesterday was an absolute cracker; sunshine, blue skies, 23 degrees and a gentle onshore breeze to take the edge off the unseasonal heat. Unfortunately I couldn't enjoy the day as I was too busy with the Chonaikai.
Ahh the Chonaika. Sounds a bit like the name of a particularly fierce band of Aleutian inuits who used to pillage and plunder their way across northern Japan, but the truth is a bit more prosaic. The Chonaikai is in fact the local resident's association and they are a kind of civic version of the Corleone family. They represent power and you do, not, ever, refuse the Chonaikai. So when they came a calling last week with an offer I couldn't refuse, I didn't. Which meant Sunday morning found me scouring the backstreets of Tenjin-cho for paper and cardboard rubbish of all sorts.
The Chonaikai organize such collections every two months and they collect a fair amount of paper - 4 truck loads in fact, which they take to the recycle center and get paid for. And after that the financial trail runs cold. I'm not sure how much money they get and what they do with it, but it is surely more than the few hundred yen it cost for the bottles of Pocari Sweat we got at the end of the morning.
There were though a number of positives to participating:
(a) Me and my family didn't get "whacked" for not helping;
(b) I got to visit parts of Tenjin-cho I didn't even know existed. Who knew there is a small dam only half a kilometre from our front door with apparently, very good trout fishing?
(c) Despite my 44+ years I got called the Japanese equivalent of "young fella" all morning
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