The practice of uchimizu is, these days, not quite as aesthetically important as Wikipedia makes it out to be, but is still a surprisingly prominent part of Japanese culture. Originally done with wooden buckets and ladles to keep down the dust on ancient Yamato streets, you can now find workers of the social welfare system hosing down street corners left and right, in some kind of perverted version of the tradition, alongside stern-faced old shopkeepers tossing out buckets of both clean and dirty water onto the pavement in the morning.