More around the neighborhood

 Every where you look, you see buildings under reconstruction. The economy is extremely bad now. The disaster completely ruined an already bad economy, but the construction industry is booming.

 This is a new house that is being build. The old style Japanese house that had been on this property was damaged in the quake but considering the time line, maybe they had already decided to replace it. Notice the cartoon character on the ad for the construction company.

 In this area, as in many areas of Japan, the house lots are long and thin with only a narrow strip of land on the road. This means that there are these long private walkways that allow access to the houses in the middle of the block.

 This is another of the same type of place. As you can see, they often landscape the area so they can be quite pleasant to look at.

 This is the ryokan, Japanese style hotel, that is very near my condo. They are completely replacing the outside surface and from the looks of things doing some internal reinforcement and improvement as well.

 This is our local shrine from the side. The river is only a few meters to the left, just past the apartment building that is associated with this parking lot.

 As I reached the front of our complex, I realized that a huge crane was doing something at Seiyu, the department store that is currently closed. It appeared that they were removing air conditioning units from the roof. This would make sense, if the rumor that they are going to reopen using only the first of the two floors. They would not need the extra units and it is likely that at least some of them were damaged in the quake.

This is my computer where I prepare this blog. I had stood up for something when I realized that the table was moving from side to side. The top, where the printer is, was moving three or four centimeters in each direction. It really confused me, until I realized that we were having another earthquake and that I was automatically compensating for it and not consciously registering it. That is a common phenomenon these days. There is a quake and, if standing, I don't notice it.