Curse This Infernal Contraption!

~I hope everyone has been sleeping well over the past week, because I sure haven't. Construction work has begun next to my apartment, which would be bearable...if it weren't for a certain maddening machine fifty feet from my door:



The horrific machine you see pictured continually hammers at the ground every 1.5 seconds or so, with a vibration that shakes my entire apartment building. It also makes an excellent alarm clock (by 'excellent' I mean good at waking you up), as the smashing begins every morning at the same time like clockwork. Even with a degree in English, I still find it difficult to express my undying hatred of this infernal contraption.

You're probably thinking to yourself, "That's nice, David, but what exactly IS this machine?" Interestingly, I wondered the same thing myself for over a week. The continual smashing baffled me. If it's trying to dig a hole, how would compacting the underlying earth help? Wouldn't a drill be better suited for this?

My second hypothesis was that the machine is pushing concrete/steel foundation blocks into the ground to increase structural stability in case of an earthquake. This hypothesis held until I did a quick calculation and realized that if the builders had to do this for every foundation section, at this speed it would take them several years to build a house.

The third hypothesis (which still holds) is that this is an Infernal Machine from Hades that sucks the soul out of all those who hear it. With every pounding of the hammer, somebody, somewhere, winces in annoyance. With every wince of annoyance, they lose a small part of their soul...which is pulled into the machine and powers its endless labor as it attempts to breach the very Gates of Hell...

Ahem. After asking around a bit, I discovered that the machine is, in fact, digging (smashing?) to the aquifer to create a well. However, the well water will not be o-mizu, which is Japanese for drinking water (as opposed to plain mizu, which is water that is not to be drunk; the kanji for mizu is at right). The water is intended for Nagaoka's street sprinkler system.

Why, you ask, does one need to sprinkle the street? The answer is that the Japanese have developed a new, highly advanced technique for actually growing asphalt using genetically-engineered bacteria. When spread over soil and watered regularly, the asphalt literally grows into a road!

Okay, so I'm full of BS. The sprinklers are actually used in the winter to melt the abundant snows that blanket Nagaoka. The reason well water is used is that underground water in Japan is quite warm due to volcanic activity in the nearby mountains. This is the same reason that Japan has so many hot springs (or onsen in Japanese).

By drilling/pounding deep into the ground, this naturally-warm water is sprayed onto the road, quickly melting the snow...although it gave me quite a surprise when I first arrived in the city. I was walking in the road during a light snow, when all of the sudden, BAM! Water sprayed out from the middle of the road in all directions, including on me. I was irritated at first, but laughed about it for the rest of the day.

The sprinkler system is nearly as ingenious as my fictional asphalt bacteria. But I'd like it a lot more if it didn't require these damn machines pounding into the ground. Why don't they just drill? I don't pretend to understand the method to their madness. I can only hope that they finish soon.

As fate would have it, while walking downtown today I heard an all-too-familiar pounding noise. Sure enough, there was another one of the damn machines beating the ground just a few hundred feet from my workplace.

CURSES!!!

~Oyasumi.