kindling

It has been pretty windy of late. real whippy stuff, bringing with it a change temperature and the onset of autumn. I was riding east across the south of the city yesterday with lot's of fire engines going screaming by me when I realised I was approaching the smoke. human nature dictates that we stop and look and there was a quite a crowd - the locals knowing that in the complexity of the Japanese neighbourhood, a flame can spread like, as we say, wild fire. Add in some wind and completely wooden construction to the equation and it becomes a tough job to control. I watched as the fire started consuming another building and felt it was getting a bit sick to stay and watch.

I'd met another british designer down from Tokyo on Saturday night and we were talking about building standards here and how they were quite different from home. We had found large grey area's that you just talk over with the fire department. There is often no absolute.

I headed to the Conan Pro builders centre (after a pub and supermarket, builders centres are must visit places if you come to Japan) to pick up some wood and had a browse through the many different implements. An interesting difference is the paint brush - in japan, the fine hairs are held in a vice like grip by a split piece of timber - the design refined to the fundamental elements. saw's are also pretty mad looking.

When I passed the site of the fire on my return, I was shocked to see it was still going. My clothes smell like they used to when I'd been down the beach drinking in summer.