Today we tried a much more pleasant route than we have used in the past. For the first five kilometers of the walk, we previously walk along a road that paralleled a river. Last week I realized that there is a path on the other side of the river, so today we walk it. From the picture you can see that the houses are still visible but not very near and there is almost no noise from the cars on the road. Also there are a great many large birds in feeding in the river. The path still had some snow and the river, on the left below the level of the path and the houses.
At one point the path came quite close to the houses and we discovered a strange construction. Someone had driven stakes into the ground so that about have the width of the river bed formed a bank. Access was by a ladder and there were three or four low platforms to sit on. Ian and I stopped and talked about it - finally decided that it must be a fishing spot, but we had no idea what the purpose of the wooden construction just to the left of the ladder might be. On my way back, I discovered that we were correct about the fishing. There was someone actually sitting there, probably freezing since the temperature was about 0 degrees Celsius. I still do not know what the wooden construction is for, but it is help up by metal pipes.
A little further on toward Ian's, there is a torii, a structure with two vertical columns and two horizontal bars. Torii are normally found in front of Shinto shrines but there does not seem to be a shrine anywhere near this torii. It just sits in the middle of a field with farm land all around it. The old road from the north into Sendai passed along here and over the low spot in the hills in the background, so maybe there used to be a shrine here. The torii is made of concrete and appears to be quite old. I guess for the moment I will have to leave this as a mystery.
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