Falling down

He was a rather round man. You don't really see so many overweight people in Japan. The average person is pretty slim their entire life. Of course, some women do get a serious complex and become anorexic, but in general people's weight is healthy.

This guy didn't look quite so healthy. He was about 45 but had the veins on his face of an older man. When we flagged him, he was about to go into a little public toilet in a park where taxi-drivers often take a break during the quiet hours of the day.

I asked if he was working. Many of the drivers will go ahead with their break and don't mind losing a customer. This guy wasn't going to let his toiletary duties get in the way of business. I kept saying we'd wait a minute, but he ushered us into the car and off we went.

His father's family is from Nagano, so he spent some time up there when he was a kid. He wouldn't like to live there now though. Too much snow. In his father's old house, they used to get two meters of snow. Unbelieveable for me - I've never seen more than a foot of snow. Funny - I was just up in Nagano and Niigata the other day. We saw some heavy snow, but the really heavy stuff seems to fall out in the country. I guess that's a good reason it's in the country - there was too much snow to build a city out there!

But no, he wouldn't like to live their now. He said that he was fat and might slip, fall down, and crack his head open. We all laughed at that. People are strange creatures. Why do we laugh at misfortune or the thought of it?

But the people up north in his father's generation were tough. They used to have huge columns in their houses to hold them up. A lot of houses built recently have been suffering stress problems and some have even fallen down.

People in the past knew how to keep things standing.