More pictures taken during my ramblings

 This is the open space between buildings at Tohoku Gakuin U in Tsuchitoi where I teach on Thursday nights. If this were an American university, I would probably call this area the quad.  The scaffolding is allowing the workers to repair the places where tiles fell off the building during the various quakes.

 This is the wall of my classroom. The crack goes from one side of the room to the other and goes across the reinforced concrete columns in each corner. Most buildings now have cracks of this sort and they are not generally covered by insurance since they are consider to be safe, unless there is another M9.0 quake right under the building.

 As I have said, public buildings have been reducing the lighting in an effort to decrease overall electrical consumption, to say nothing of electric bills. This stairwell now has no lighting in it, except for what enters from the dimly lit halls on each floor. I must complement the Sony Company, the maker of my digital camera, because the camera handles the low light conditions very well.

 On my way to school, I noticed this man fishing in our river. There are some very large fish here (you can see them from the bridge) but I seldom see anyone catch anything.

 This is construction to replace a section of the sidewalk that cracked and is now dangerous. At this point the concrete sidewalk runs over a little bridge. The sidewalk is badly cracked and the bridge looks like it is not very strong. I think that they will fill this in so that it is solid under the walkway.

After my art class I wandered around downtown and looked at the things that were happening as part of a festival, Tanabata. It is a yearly event but this year they are trying to use the festival as a means of cheering people up. I heard that there were more than three times the number of people they expected.