Just some pictures I took while out

 This was near Kita Sendai on my way back from Shinrin Park. It is a little stand that later in the day will open and sell takoyaki, little balls of batter that are cooked in a specially shaped iron grill that reminds me a little of a waffle iron. The batter balls contain pieces of octopus, tako in Japanese and yaki means grilled. The billboard on the right is advertising new houses.

 This is the Shonen Bunka Center (Young peoples' culture center), which is next to the bus depot. This is where the Sendai Book Club usually meets but it has been closed since the earthquake.You can see the gray tarps, not blue for some reason. They are reopening in a couple of weeks and we will have the first regular club meeting on August 1st.

 This is the new pedestrian crosswalk that goes from the bus depot to the sidewalk. They are almost finished with this project.

 This apartment building near my condo and beside the river has had no air conditioning since the tremors and the damage had not been repaired even though some of the apartments have been occupies. On this day there were two workmen repairing the air conditioning units.

 This is where the riverside path separated along a fault line and the part at the top of the picture moved toward the river. I put my foot near it so that you can see how much it moved. Also the ground that has been bared is now starting to support grass and weeds.

This is the house where the wall collapsed. The work here is almost finished. It now incredibly strong for a private house and should survive anything that might hit us. My wife and I stopped to talk with him the other day and he told us that he was spending ten million yen on the repairs, a year's salary for someone in the upper middle class.