Traffic jam in our street back in Tokyo

A friend in Tokyo posted this photo on Facebook the other day. it is of the street we live on in Japan, the road the boys walk to school. The taller buildings in the background is the train station precinct, just seven minutes walk (or four if you run, says our oldest) from our house.

There is no footpath. The gutter is just to the left of the photo. Yes, the power poles are on the road. Just the other side of the gutter are walls of properties. We have to walk on the road. Many people walk and ride on this road. Some people drive too. It is just wide enough for two cars to slowly pass when there are no obstacles like power poles or community rubbish collection bins, which also live permanently on the road.

This is my friend April's description of the situation pictured:

This isn't an uncommon problem in Tokyo. A two-way street that can't fit two cars side by side. All it takes is one inexperienced or scaredy-cat driver and everything gets stuck.

In this case, there was another car behind the bus, and the silver car on the far left couldn't get around him or the telephone pole because he was scared he was going to scratch his car. Eventually the kindergarten bus driver hopped out of the bus to direct the silver car, but it took a lot of prodding to get the guy to go. But no cars were hurt in the making of this traffic jam. smile emoticon

This is further back down the road, facing the same direction as
the photo above. Our house is the third on the left of this.
You can see the "footpath", but this is actually a wider piece of road
where cars may pass at greater than 5 km/hr.