Near my home 09

I thought you might like to see what a Japanese gas station looks like. This is one of a chain called ENEOS and it is across the street from the 7/11 site.Next door to the gas station is a store that sells Buddhism related items. One of the main things they sell are large and expensive cabinets that hold a statue of Buddha or a bodhisattva. People have these in a prominent place in their home and put pictures of dead relatives on the shelves and daily burn incense and leave offerings of fruit and sweets. Many people sit in front and tell a departed spouse about what they have been doing. Others will sit and ask for advice about problems in their life.


This is the sushi shop that is next to my bus stop. I previously showed you a picture of this but I noticed that behind the shop there is a typical Japanese house.
I walked down the parking lot to get a better view of the house. It is representative a most new house here. It is two stories because the lot is small. In front is a small garden that requires gardeners to come twice a year to trim the trees. Inside the first floor will have a living room, a dinning room, a kitchen, a bath and a toilet. Upstairs will be tatami mat rooms for sleeping.
One interesting thing about houses is that the government has changed the laws about how much space there has to be between walls. In the past house were built as close together as possible, creating a fire hazard. Now you have to leave space between them. One of the results is that when a house gets old and unlivable, people renovate, keeping enough of the old framework so that they can maintain the size. There is even a weekly tv show where they show a house with problems and then an architect redesigns and rebuilds the house. Often large parts of the frame work have to be replaced because of termites or dry rot. The total cost is fixed in advance so the architect must balance things, adapting as work progresses. The total cost of rebuilding an old house is about the same as building a new one.