I went to the dentist the other day to get my teeth checked. Normally, it’s a ten minute drive, but I ran into no less than five teams of men digging up the road between the J-List office and my destination. It’s all part of living in Japan, of course: the end-of-year road work, when government agencies hurry to use up their budgets before the Japanese fiscal year ends March 31. Japan is a country that’s addicted to construction, and by law all car- and gasoline-related taxes must be used to build roads and only roads, even if there are other priorities. As a result, March always marks a huge increase in road work throughout the country, despite there being no actual benefit to anyone. Because roads are usually more narrow in Japan than in the U.S., it’s common for construction areas to employ one or two “road guides” whose job it is to guide cars safely around the site, holding a flashlight to indicate whether it’s okay to go or if you need to wait for a car coming from the opposite direction to go past. The only thing you can say about roads in Japan is that they are well maintained — I do believe I’ve never hit a single pothole on a Japanese road.
