September 04, 2004
Japanese cemetery ad

joenAd.jpg

Usually our mailbox is stuffed with pizza menus, real estate ads and lists of porn videos, but the other day this appeared—a flyer for a nearby cemetery.

“Come tour Koishikawa Jo-En every weekend from 10 - 4. New plots available! Good views, good sunlight, no surrounding buildings, barrier free!”

A 0.48 sq meter plot with a permanent lease (I think that’s what the kanji mean, please correct me if I’m wrong) is 600,000 yen at a minimum. To convert for my American readers, that’s about 5 square feet for $5,000. Pricey real estate. Fortunately, they offer a 10-year payment plan.

If you want a monument like the ones shown, add at least a 1.18 million yen (about $11,000) to the price. Tax included.

Posted by kuri at September 04, 2004 11:21 AM

Comments

Yup, they are permanent. But we’ve all seen what happens in Japanese graveyards, with the mass crowding of the funerary statues of the forgotten dead.

Posted by: Maktaaq on September 4, 2004 06:05 PM

There’s a John Donne poem, ‘The Relic’, that starts with the ‘breaking up’ of old burial space.

It’s the same old grave, brand new tenants. Makes me think of Big Brother series 2.

‘http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/relic.htm’

Posted by: womble on September 5, 2004 06:24 AM
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