Community Weed Picking by cogdogblog
posted 5 Oct ’08, 1.11am MDT PST on flickr
As I was waiting for the airport shuttle van, my friend and host here in Japan, Bert, pointed out one more item of Japanese culture- posted in the notice board of his apartment is a flyer letting him know when he has to show up with the rest of the building residents to participate in weed picking.
This odd sense of collective duty is pretty foreign to an American, but I am not making fun of it. It is just a different way, and as we talked about it, we thought about the creation of more "ownership" or our shared environment, of the social networking and community building that happens when you pick weeds with your neighbors. At home, we stay behind our fenced in yards or inside our air conditioned boxes glued to a TV.
Maybe it is "WeedSourcing"?
My culture is not your culture and that is okay.
