I’ve started a new photo series, only a few days old at this point, but perhaps if some folks start to look at it I’ll feel compelled to keep at it. It’s called Inu to sanpo, which is Japanese for “walking the dog.” These are pictures I’m snapping of the neighborhood, taken as I walk the dog. It was proposed that perhaps I should do more chores around the house, ahem, and one of them was walking the dog. Now it’s not that I mind walking the dog, I quite enjoy it and don’t see it as a chore, it’s just that usually the dog is walked around 5 or 6 in the evening, at which time I’m at work. But there was no reason this time couldn’t be changed to 2 in the afternoon, and so the dog has a new companion on her walks.
Part of the impetus behind this is that after a year of living here in Japan, and in this house, I still feel like a guest, not really rooted. Perhaps walking the dog daily would help in this. Well the jury is still out on that one, but I am using it as an opportunity to further explore my neighborhood, and each day I set out in a different direction. Taking the camera along gives the walks a sense of purpose beyond tending to the dog’s needs. Interestingly, a foreigner walking a dog in the suburbs produces more than the usual stares we foreigners grow used to here in Japan. I have no idea of course what the minds behinds these staring faces are thinking but my impression is something along the lines of: Ooh look, it’s a foreigner walking a dog! If he has a dog, he must actually live here, must be a resident of our neighborhood. I wonder where he lives. I wonder if he’s married to a Japanese person. I wonder if he’s an English teacher. I wonder if he separates his garbage…. Well, you can imagine that walking through these neighborhood streets not only with a dog tethered to a leash in one hand, but a camera being carried in the other, really sets the local imagination ablaze, and really causes the rubber-neckers some serious whiplash. Ask me again if I’m feeling a part of the neighborhood….
Photography-wise, the dog walks are a challenge on the order of which I often take to, which is trying to find something interesting in the mundane, the pedestrian, the suburban. Whether it’s corrugated tin (as my last post mentioned, there’s a ton of it around here), hanging futons, monotonous new homes, and various other detritus of a neighborhood that wouldn’t know a zoning law if it bit it in its ass, there are plenty of candidates for this. One thing I’ve long been fascinated by here are the plethora of neighborhood signs admonishing local residents to do one thing or the other, or more often than not, to not do something. Which brings me to the images I’ve included here to accompany this post.
All three of them are about keeping pets, appropriate enough for a post about a new photo series called “walking the dog.” In the first one, above, pet owners are warned about the three things they shouldn’t do with their pets: 1. Don’t throw them away. 2. Don’t let them run around unleashed. 3. Don’t forget to put away their dung. I find it somewhat horrific that pet owners need to be told not to throw their pets away, but Naoko says that many folks do throw away unwanted puppies and kittens. This is hard for me to stomach, frankly.
Admonishing owners to properly dispose of their dogs’ dung is a popular theme of all these signs. In the sign above, a good little boy with a pageboy haircut is carrying a bag labeled, in red, unchi, or “shit,” while the text below asks for everyone to help keep the city clean. And in the last photo included here, the theme is yet again picking up your dog’s doo-doo, this time laying on the guilt trip even thicker. The sign asks, “You’re not forgetting your manners, are you?” The conscientious dog is shown worrily thinking of a pooper scooper, while the boy owner obvliously starts to walk away. (These signs always feature boys, although I’ve never seen a boy walking a dog around here.)
In my neck of the woods, “walking the dog,” is an euphemism for masterbation (I’m just saying is all). So, I guess that would constitute a chore around the house. Or not. I don’t really know you.
Oops! See, you got me so stirred up, I misspelled masturbation. Shame on me.
I think the Japanese are staring at you, not because they assume since you have a dog that you must actually live there, but because they’re wondering, “Hey, who’s dog is that? Did that guy steal someone’s dog?”
I remember watching a woman with her dog in Kyoto: she’d brought a newspaper on which the dog did his business. It was then quite convenient for her to fold up the paper and put it in a plastic back to dispose of it. What a clever system–and it gave a whole new dimension to my concept of a dog being paper trained.
The only sign like these in Kamegawa that I remember (and wish I had a photo of, but don’t) is one admonishing young boys (and old men) not to pee in the street. It showed a boy peeing and a dog looking on in surprise and disgust.
I spent Sunday sitting at my window painting the cherry blossoms outside. Since my window is at ground level, and faces a popular walking path, I get lots of people stopping to talk, but even more who excalaim “Bukkuri sita” when they see a foreigner (and walk on), and even more than that who just walk by slowly and stare in as if I wasn’t there. I’m assuming they are interested to see if I have a futon or a bed.
I’ve gotten used to it though, and nothing will ever suprise me after an old woman actually woke me up one morning looking in my window and yelling “Ohayo gozaimasu!”
(by the way, I’m a futon man.)
D’Lish-
I must say I’ve never heard that before. But I would hope masturbation never becomes a chore!
M-
I’ve actually thought that too, perhaps they think I pilfered this dog from somewhere. I hope they don’t think the same thing when I start to walk around the neighborhood with Kaika!
By the way, just the other day a woman in our prefecture (Saitama) was arrested because she was stealing her neighbor’s newspapers. Her explanation of her actions? She needed the newspapers to clean up her dog’s poop!
That’s a great sign you mention. Oh how I wish you had gotten a picture. I’m going to look for a similar sign around here.
Kevin-
I’m a futon man myself. Have never slept better in my life than I have this past year, on a futon mat on a tatami mat floor, with one of those pillows that’s filled with small plastic pipe sections.
Hmmm…. I’m full of questions about you and your dog! How difficult was it to find a place in Japan that would let you keep a dog (assuming you rent)?
I’m moving to Japan sometime this summer…