In the 1990s when we rented an old house in Saitama Prefecture, we needed a parking space since we had a car at the time. There was none on the property and so we talked the landlord into tearing down a decrepit prefabricated storage shed that stood next to the house. He did, and then, at our own expense, we had a carport erected on the newly vacant lot.

Our house shared a narrow street with one other family house opposite us, and one day we returned home to find that our neighbor, a carpenter, had put up a fence in the middle of the street, driving metal poles into the concrete. Because of the position of the fence and the angle of approach from the street to our carport, it was almost impossible to maneuver our station wagon into the space. We contacted our landlord, and he told us that the street was not public, but private — half owned by him and half owned by the neighbor, who, having seen that we were going to use it to access our carport, preemptively guaranteed access to his own space by putting up the fence.

The landlord refused to get involved, and we ended up renting a parking space 10 minutes from the house by bicycle.