ESSAY
When I lived in Sacramento, there was one thing I never questioned: that water was free. No Water bills ever came. The lawns were impossibly green. And I built my own explanation to make sense of it. Thirty years later, that story collapsed in an instant.
I Truly Believed Water Was Free for Over 30 Years
For several years starting in 1990, I lived in an apartment in Sacramento, the capital of California. The electricity bill arrived, the gas bill arrived, and the phone bill arrived without fail. But the water bill never came—not even once. “So that’s it. Water is free in America!” I moved twice, and the result was always the same. Young as I was, that was where my thinking stopped. “America really is on a different scale.” Youth, after all, is just another word for confidence without evidence.
The Overly Blue Lawns as an Accomplice
The lawns throughout the city were impossibly blue, like lithographic prints, rivaling even the California sky. If you shot them on Velvia, they almost turned into secondary colors. Sprinklers spun endlessly without hesitation, scattering water day and night in careless abundance. No one stopped them, and no bill ever came. “See? Water really is free!” Those lush lawns fully supported my illusion. Humans have a habit of calling convenient evidence “reality.”
The One Who Creates the Story Is Usually Yourself
Before long, I even came to believe a plausible urban legend: “Apparently, Sacramento made water free as part of an urban greening policy.” Who told me that, I can no longer remember. The story went further: “Instead, if you don’t plant greenery—or if it dies—you get fined.” The greenery and lawns across the city seemed to affirm this narrative at every turn. People tend to choose a coherent story over the trouble of simply observing reality.
The Merciless Reality, 30 Years Later
Even after returning to Japan, I held on to that belief for years. “Water is free in America!” But recently, I looked it up out of curiosity. Water isn’t free at all. Today, it’s metered, and watering restrictions are enforced due to drought. If anything, it’s a city that takes water quite seriously. The conclusion was simple: the water bill had just been included in the rent. My grand theory about American civilization was defeated by a single line of search results.
What Still Remains
The system had been a misunderstanding. But the lawns captured on film are undeniably blue. Photographs don’t lie—they simply do not assign meaning. I was the one who created that meaning. It wasn’t the absence of a bill that made me believe water was free. It was because the air of that era felt limitless.
People Create the World They Want to Believe In
Looking back, it took very little: no bill, blue lawns, and a vast country. That alone was enough for me to invent an entire “water resource policy.” If social media had existed back then, it could have been dangerous. I probably would have written, “Water is free in America. Japan is behind.” Youth drives action, but it also mass-produces grand misunderstandings.
But One Thing Was True
The system was wrong, but the feeling I had back then wasn’t. Water flowed endlessly when you turned the tap. Sprinklers spun like fountains, even when broken. The lawns were too blue to be real. At the time, I truly believed it—this country has no bottom. Looking back now, it was my own perception that had no bottom.
What Still Remains
When I look at the photos again, the lawns are still blue. Water wasn’t free, but the atmosphere of that time was undeniably rich. It’s embarrassing that I believed in an urban legend. But if I can laugh about it 30 years later, then it’s no longer a mistake. Humans are creatures that spill assumptions more easily than water.
Photographs and Memory
Photographs fix facts in place, but memory paints over them with stories afterward. For 30 years, I carried around an assumption lighter than water. And yet, because of that misunderstanding, I can now look at a single photograph from a completely different angle. Humans are creatures that let assumptions flow more easily than water. Water was never free.