Except for a few well-seasoned apartment buildings, the street I moved to 10 years ago was lined with old-style houses. Now only one remains. It is still a quiet street in an upscale neighborhood, but nearby are several small industry suppliers engaged in cutting, shaping and shipping metal forms. They stay busy in spite of the recession. One has a coal stove that sits on the sidewalk alongside a busy thoroughfare -- Sakurada Dori -- that provides a few seconds of warmth for people walking by. A kettle on top heats water for tea, though I have never seen any of the workers stop long enough to have any. There is a neighborhood temple and a shrine to watch over our spiritual requirements and an assortment of shops assuring that any need can be filled within a few blocks. In other words, it is like any other neighborhood just about anywhere in Japan.

Even the sounds of Japan that I remember from my earliest days here have not disappeared, like the chant of the man who specialized in bamboo poles used for drying clothes. The technique is to slide the pole, supported by a framework of hooks on the wall, through the sleeves. Sheets and towels are hung double and secured by a clamp along the edge on either side. Even now, though residents have found other ways to dry their clothes, once a month a man comes through our street selling them, calling out his melodious "saodake." Today his poles are made of plastic but they still look like bamboo, although they have gradually become more on the blue side of Japan's green. I smile whenever I hear the sound of his chant, rather sadly, though, because I have never seen him make a sale. Today he came again and I went out on my balcony to watch him go by, wondering why he still comes since no one uses them anymore. Then I looked across to our oldest apartment building. The new -- and young -- tenant was putting up a pole to dry her laundry. I hope she bought it from man who has served our street so well with so little support from its residents for so many years.

There may be something to be learned from the pole seller, that even though things change, there is a proclivity to continue with the way they were. It can be a recommendable attribute or a barrier to progress. Our next question deals with a problem that has no answer, a testimony to many foreigner's need to ask: "Why?" Often there is no answer. It is just the way it is.