Stimulus

Did you know they have been working on replacing all of the sidewalks on the main street in town since April? There wasn't anything wrong with the sidewalk before. Every day about 50 government wage receivers gather at the site of the former supermarket parking lot around 7:30AM to get their assignments.

80% of these people stand around with red and green flags, helping old ladies and pedestrians cross the street. The fat guys always get a job holding the red and green flags. Where they come up with fat guys in Japan is a mystery to me. But all of them get a job holding red and green flags at bogus construction sites. There's a fat Japanese guy hanging around at each corner of the construction area. This is good for the restaurant business.

Another 10% are just standing around, smoking, or they are sweeping or watering the street. That's not a typo, they spray water on the street to get the dirt off. And they sweep up the dirt using old fashioned brooms made with sticks and straw. No kidding, one of the klutztier guys dropped his broom on the gaijin (me) as I was walking by.

The remaining 10% are actually working on digging a hole or tearing out the old perfectly good sidewalk and installing the new one.

The town's main street runs about 3 Miles from end to end, counting both side of the street that makes six miles of pavement for the sidewalk. They've been on this job for 6 months and arn't finished yet. Not even close. Are they using chopsticks to do the work? No, it just seems that way. They actually have heavy equipment, like steam rollers and backhoes.

This is what they call "stimulus" in Japan. Does anyone in their right mind think that wasting money on this will help the economy? The economy here has been in recession for about 30 years. Betcha the construction companies working on projects like this make a lot of contributions to the politicians in power.