Near my home

This is the area immediately in front of my building. On the left is the parking garage where we used to keep our car. The building in the middle is the administration building for our condo complex (about 320 apartments in three buildings). The one story section in front has two large rooms: the one on the right is a playroom for grade school kids and the one on the left is a playroom for younger children. Behind these their is a sitting area and an office. The back section, actually the front because the road is on the other side of the building, has a second floor that contains a large guest room, a party room, and a room with small desks for students whose home is too noisy to study.Across the street there is a large space that is used as a practice area by the special police. It used to be a driving school, but after it went out of business around 15 years ago, the city took it over and the police use it as a training school for the motorcycle police. Here is one of the trainees going through the paces. There is a course laid out where the bikes have to maneuver through a series of pylons. They also practice going up and down hills off road on the built up section around a bridge to nowhere (part of the old driving school course).
On the day I took these pictures I was going to Tohoku Gakuen University to teach two classes, so I was walking out to the main road to catch a bus. The road I took goes along the side of a shopping center. Part of the complex is an ice skating rink that one of the Japanese champions bought and put back into business after it closed once. She had practiced there when she was young, so after retiring she got a group of investors together and reopened it. This is the bus that picks up the people who use the rink.
It always seems strange when you walk along here because even in summer there is a large pile of what looks like snow. It is the ice that the scrap of the rink when they smooth the surface. As you can see, there is another Shinto Shrine next to it. The other nearby shrine is along the river on the way to the nearest subway station.