In apartment complexes, elderly people are dying all over the place.
In the case of a single family home, if their children do not take over and live in the house, it will be demolished.
So now, houses are being demolished here and there.
NHK's "Demolition Kingdom" honors the greatness of demolition craftsmen.
The show features difficult projects, such as the demolition of a building with almost no space between it and the building next door, and the demolition of a bridge directly above a building with cars passing by incessantly.
The demolition experts who work there are not paid much, but they work day and night.
It is a beautiful story of dedication to a difficult task, using perhaps the best skills in the world.
The demolition of a house in the neighborhood, however, is anything but dramatic.
Usually a single piece of heavy equipment goes in, a big iron arm thumps, and the once-dreamy house crumbles without a second thought.
Even to demolish a single house, various preparations and procedures may be necessary.
For example, one person may be constantly spraying water with a hose to prevent a fire from starting due to friction during demolition.
However, once the heavy machinery starts tearing down the house, the work is quick. The power of heavy machinery is amazing.
In no time at all, the site of the house was cleared. This is the skill of Japanese craftsmen.
Nowadays, it is probably more difficult to transport and dispose of waste materials.
Also, because of the excessive demands for safety compliance, in some cases they hire guards who just stand there the whole time.
In this way, the costs keep piling up.
In the past, demolition did not cost that much.
The work was rough, and a bad contractor would have dumped a lot of waste into the forest.
Nowadays, environmental protection requires detailed waste disposal, which again costs money.
It costs tens of millions of yen to build a new house, even in the countryside.
If it now costs millions of yen just to tear down an old house, the Japanese people will no longer have the desire to build their dream home.
The wisest thing to do is to buy an old house as cheaply as possible and renovate it if necessary....
But Japanese people want to build new houses, and the builders are probably desperate to get them to do so.
I guess Japanese people will have to force themselves to take out a big loan and die with their dream house!