The Japanese smoke excessively, that isn't arguable, but when they light-up, and they do almost everywhere and with great frequency, they do it in a manner that typifies their regard for the immediate environment. It is almost encouraging.
Early this morning a maintenance crew, all smokers, doing remodeling work to our tower entrance, caught my attention with a couple of pieces of equipment they unloaded off their van. Aside from the step ladder, the power drill, the saws and the many other tools of their trade, outside, on the blacktop by the rear door to the tower, they set down a battered metal bucket and a bright red metal box with five holes the diameter of quarters on the lid. The box was clear of the ground, fixed to a collapsible metal stand. All four sides of the red box showed white Japanese characters, but I could not read them. Later, on closer inspection, I saw that the bucket had a couple of inches of loose sand at the bottom. What the bucket and the box represented was the maintenance crew's outdoors smoking center, their focal point during their breaks throughout the workday.
After a while, as if on cue, they would set down their tools, leave their work, and gather round the elevated red box much like cowboys would round a campfire at the end of a long dusty day driving cattle. The Japanese labors would talk, laugh, or nod in agreement with one another, all taking satisfying drags on their cigarettes, being careful to flick their ashes through the five holes on the lid of the red box. Then, one by one, they would take the butts and mash the ends down into the sand at the bottom bucket. Like the ashes that preceeded them, the butts, too, would drop through the quarter-sized holes. When the break was over, indeed, when the day's work was over, there was no evidence that a half-dozen men had enjoyed so many smokes at that location. Only the bucket and the box fixed to its stand remainded where they were set that morning, ready when the half-dozen returned the next day. What a fastidious operation. The enterprise was very telling of the Japanese people. The words propriety and civility come to mind.
The sun, never having made an appearance today, was cause for an overcast sky with temperatures in the low 60s. I chose not to go exploring. Instead, the smokers and the telling vignette they produced, was my highlight today.
