Earthquake Diary 49

 I continued up the flight stairs and at about three quarters of the way up I noticed that the fence along the edge of the stairs had been damaged.

 Looking back along the tracks I could still see no damage at this point.

 Reaching the top of the stairs, I entered a road and on my right was a wall that had fallen down.

 On my left was a brick wall that had separated and the right part had started to slide down the hill.

 Apparently trash collections had started again. This pile is actually two piles. It is metal cans in one and plastic in the other. Burnable trash would be collected on a different day.

 This is a typical Japanese driveway. It is only a few centimeters wider than the car plus mirrors, and it looked like the driver had backed in.

 I started seeing signs like this on the outside of buildings. This yellow sign indicated that only limited entry is allowed. The sign was posted by a Sendai City inspector.

Here many of the tiles in the blue roof (wall?) have fallen off.

Saturday, April 2
Today I walked to Izumi Chuo to do some shopping. I decided to go by the long way, along the river and through Nanakita Park. Between the first to bridges, a smaller stream joins the main river from the other side. I saw that part of the concrete banking had fallen. I will post the pictures when I reach them. This explained why they were filling bags with dirt and carrying them to the junction of the two waterways. They are building a temporary road up the riverbed so that they can reach the collapsed section of the bank. Again I will post the pictures in a few days.

The reason that the pictures and the dialog are separated is that when I go out I often take many, many pictures. It takes a few days to get caught up and during that time I would forget much of what happened during the walk. So I am posting the dialogs and letting the pictures catch up when they can.

There was some damage along the bank of the river but it was not too bad. I left the park at the west end and looked at a line of dump trucks paused on a temporary road. Then I walked through a built up area to Izumi Chuo. There were a few signs of the earthquake, cracks and things, but no serious outside damage.

At Izumi Chuo I went to both supermarkets, buying mikans (tangerines) and gas cartridges at Ito Yokado and some pumpkin seeds at Selva. I thought about getting coffee at Starbucks but decided not to. I then walk along the main road toward the center of Sendai, intending to take a closer look at the collapsed bank. When I got to the point where the stream passes under the road, I discovered that it is possible to walk down the south side of the bank. This allowed me to see the damage from directly across the stream. It also gives me a new place to walk when I go out.

The gas people were outside all day. They dug up the pipe and had what looked like some kind of pressure gauge attached to the pipe. I assume that they were letting gas back into sections of the system, and if the pressure was low, finding and fixing the leak. Maybe that means that we will have hot water again soon. By 'soon', I guess I mean a few days.