We left Sato Shokai and walked to the main road. At the corner we could see the building that houses the Auto Registration Dept. Masayo had to renew her license recently and it took half a day. A few years ago she got caught in a speed trap, so she had to watch a video that showed the accidents that resulted from speeding. She said it lasted an hour and she had to wait for the showing after standing in line for a long time and then completing the renewal paperwork. She said that one of her friends had gotten in an accident that was not her fault but she had had to watch three hours of films.
The road reminds of Route 9 between Boston and Worcester back in the 1950s and 1960s - a divided road with lots of service stations, restaurants, and other stores.
At one place a building had be taken down and replaced with these metal boxes. The sign said that they were rental storage boxes. Places like this are beginning to pop up all around town. Japanese house have very little storage space. There are few closets and even private homes do not have cellars. I have heard two reason for the lack of cellars: [1] that the tax rate is based on the square footage of the house, including the cellar, and [2] that because of the humidity cellars soon become a health hazard. I have no idea what the correct reason is but both of these sound plausible.
This is a construction site at the point where we turned off the main road to walk the 500 meters to our mansion.
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