m Gets the Job Done

On Saturday, we signed the builder’s contract. We dated it Sunday, which—like today’s start of destruction—we selected off of a special calendar that has all the auspicious and not-so auspicious days according to both the Buddhist and Shinto calendars. I’ll transfer the first payment today, but I guess Saturday marked the moment of no return.

A week earlier, we made our unofficial round of visits to all the neighbors, informing them of what we’re doing. We weren’t looking forward to it, since there had been some bad feelings with the people on the land straddling our driveway, but to our complete shock it turned out quite well.

Of course we let m present the package of senbei crackers (figuring it’s hard to be mean to a five-year-old bearing gifts), but everyone reacted to our news with real warmth, offering help (and gossip about other neighbors). We’d been worried about parking for the builder’s trucks since the road and driveway are so narrow, but two neighbors even offered the use of their driveways for parking. In most cases, we had to tear ourselves away from the extended conversation so that we could make the rounds before the week ended.

So we’re left with pretty good feelings about our move later this year. The driveway problem, which had been gnawing at me for years because the old man on the corner has made it all the more difficult to turn by planting a horrendous cast iron post box jutting out from his property and coming out and screaming like a drunk monkey when he thought I trespassed on an inch of his property, kind of melted in the light of the friendliness of his wife. Not only does she basically call him a stubborn old goat but she’s taught us that the way to deal with his poking his head around corners and grumbling at everything is to completely ignore him, which she does with such great gusto that I’m beginning to emulate her.

The old man on the other corner is now in an old folk’s home, his wife in the hospital. He’s even crazier than the first old man, and he’s never made much sense, but he showed up one day a few weeks ago (he’d escaped from the home for the day and swore he’ll someday make it back for good) and offered the use of his corner of driveway. I was stunned that he was being intelligible, and we had a long talk in which I learned that our old house had actually been first located down the coast a few hundred meters, and that it was disassembled and rebuilt where we are now around 1920. Which means that it goes back even further than I thought, and probably dates from the Meiji period. (We’ve also learned since then that he has a photo of the place when it still had its thatched roof, so I’m going to jump him the next time I see him and wangle a copy.)

So who cares about a driveway that takes a few minutes to maneuver into when you’ve got friends around? Or at least, not so many enemies.