They go up and down so quickly here...

Buildings never seem to last as long in Japan as they do in the States. All my childhood and young adult life in the US, I rarely saw a house knocked down. Usually they are passed to kids and then kept or sold. Eventually one of the owners will renovate and then they will keep going. Sometimes the neighborhood takes a bad turn, and in that case the houses may end up abandoned, and that is usually when they will eventually be bulldozed. Commercial buildings are knocked down more often, but still not all that much. Usually if one business fails, the building will just stay there empty until the next business decides to try the location.

But in Japan? Commercial buildings are being knocked down constantly, and residential houses only a little less often. Usually as soon as a couple dies, rather than the house being taken up by the next generation or sold, it is knocked down and the lot is sold to have a new house built on.

On one hand, it always seems a bit wasteful to me, but there are some benefits to this system. The earthquake code is updated fairly often, from what I understand, so new buildings benefit from that as well as any new anti-earthquake technology.

But regardless of if it's good or bad, it is. An interesting thing about this is after you have been here long enough, you start to see the neighborhood and city change before your eyes. Just in my neighborhood, I've witnessed several houses being knocked down, new houses built on the lot, then those knocked down too. There was one place, the couple living there died and the house was knocked down. The lot was sold to a couple in their 60s. They were building their dream house for their retirement years. Unlike most houses that are thrown up within a few weeks, this one was built from quality parts and took several months to be built. It was really very very nice when it finished. Just a few years later though, it was knocked down. Seems like the man died, the woman went to live with her son, and her son decided he couldn't afford to keep their house so he had it knocked down. Such a shame...

One of my foreign friends has lived here 40 years. He's in his 80s now. He tells me that his hometown in America still looks almost exactly the same as it did when he was a kid, while our adopted city in Japan looks completely different.

Anyway, I was taking a walk a few days ago with my boys when I noticed a house being knocked down. I remembered when the previous house on that lot was knocked down and when this one was built, and now it too was being knocked down. Amazing how fast they go up and amazing how fast they go down.

No kigo (season word) here. Only traditional haiku require them and many modern haiku no longer use them. I'm sure if I looked carefully in my saijiki (kigo encyclopedia) I'm sure I could find something echoing the idea of the passage of time, however. Evoking the feeling of the passage of time, highlighting the briefness of life, these things are very very common in haiku.

David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku.