
Tags
When You REALLY Hate Your Neighbors
Making my way back to Kamakura Station after tossing a few plates at the Dish-Breaking Shrine, I was walking through a totally normal-looking neighborhood when I chanced upon this.
A hedge. But not just any old hedge – isn’t this the freakin’ unfriendliest alt picket fence you’ve ever seen? I mean, it’s all thorns, all the time. No leaves. No flowers. Just thorns. And wicked sharp too!

From a distance, it didn’t look that scary…

…although if you came upon it from the creepily overgrown garage door side, the sheer size of the thing might make you think twice about popping over to borrow a cup of soy sauce

And up close? Yikes! And this sucker isn’t just long – it’s at least twelve feet high and four feet thick. It’s no joke!

Kinda makes you wonder what sort of evil overlord lives here, doesn’t it?
I admit, I had to kind of admire the cussedness of whoever owns the house. If nothing else, growing this thing took huge dedication, and a near-legendary level of anti-neighborliness. We’re talking years of nurturing and pruning. Which kind of suggests it’s not just a case of the casual paranoia that might inspire a homeowner to zip over to Prison Surplus Razor Wire Inc. for a little fence topper.
Kind of perversely made me want to loiter around and see who lives here. Or better yet, who lives next door?
•
Read a novel set in Tokyo

The #1 hostboy at Club Nova makes a handsome living, whispering sweet nothings in the ears of women who pay him a fortune for the privilege. But the party’s over when Tokyo Detective Kenji Nakamura is assigned to investigate the death of…read more
It’s bitter orange, if you were wondering. It’s a very strange plant.
http://www.al.com/living/index.ssf/2012/06/that_twisty_thorny_plant_with.html
LikeLiked by 1 person
Wow, interesting! Thank you for ferreting out the name of this plant! Now I’d like to go visit it in the season when the thorns are disguised by leaves and fruit – apparently, I chanced upon it in winter, when it was at its most forbidding. (Or is it worse that in many seasons those serious pointy bits are disguised by leaves and fruits? O_O)
LikeLike
aka Flying Dragon. I have one in my front yard!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Wait, YOU have one of these? Uh, it’s not surrounding your house in a forbidding hedge, is it?
LikeLike
Good one, Jonelle. I’ve been cooking a post on how the Japanese can be so much more human than we give them credit for, then this popped up. There are always exceptions, no?
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m looking forward to reading YOUR post, to restore my faith in humanity!
LikeLike