Sendai Station and then walking home 09

I have said just about everything that I have to say about the meditation retreat, except that I am following the two hours a day routine that Goenkaji said we should do and I hope to go back from another 10 days sometime during the next year or so. Today I am taking up my walk from Sendai Station to home at the point where I stopped in early August.

This is of the same chain that is next to our apartment. This one has a supermarket on the first floor and a bowling alley and game center on the second floor. This is particularly important for me because it is open 24 hours a day and they have a public toilet. It is just about half way home from downtown so I frequently stop to use the facilities - a need that increases with age.
I apologize for this next picture. It is out of focus, which is strange because the camera was set on automatic and the pictures before and after this one were fine. I wanted to show you this, in spite of the quality, because it shows the manikins that are outside a noodle shop on the first floor of the building in the last picture. The men are dressed like the guards that always appear at constructions sites and wave flags to slow down the traffic. This manikins wave flags and really attract your attention. The interesting thing is that the noodle shop, which is behind the windows, is very old and dirty. The public toilet is on the second floor and the stairs are next to the entrance to this shop. One look inside and I decided that I was never going to eat there. I must say, however, that they have a lot of customers which means one of two things: [1] the food is good or [2] it is cheap. I suspect that the second is correct.
The next building after the one in the first picture is this. It started as a prefab building with a curry shop in it. Then after a year or so the curry shop closed (It moved into town, where it lasted about the same length of time). Now the building contains a company that is very much related to the poor economy. The place buys and sells precious metals and jewelry. They advertise on TV and say that they buy old gold jewelry by the gram.
A little bit further on is this building. Behind the glass doors is a flower shop and the rest of the building is a funeral parlor. The entrance is one the right end of the building unto the little roof with the skylight. The things hanging above the car are decorations for Obon, bright colored balls with long streamers. Obon is a week at the beginning of August when Japanese people try to return to them hometown and take care of the family grave. It is a period of honoring the family ancestors. At the beginning and ending weekends of Obon, the trains run at 130% or more capacity and the traffic on the highways backs up for more than 50 kilometers in some places.