Nanakita Riverside to Yaotome

 This is looking down the river side bank of the path along the river. At the bottom is a flat on which someone has used a weed wacker. At the left end of the area, there is a small piece of rubber matting and at the right end there is a smaller one with a whole in it. One of the men who live in the houses along here has made himself a golf practice area. He pitches the balls about 10 meters. After he has used a bucket of balls, he picks them all up and starts again. I do not know if he ever plays on a course, but it is common in Japan to see men practicing their swing - often on the platform while waiting for a train.

 This shows the reeds that have grown up in the area in front of the apartment building. They are about the same height as me now and are fully grown. In the fall they will start shrinking, just as I have in recent years.

 There was a man fishing under the bridge. Walking along the top of the level, you can see many fish in the river, but in the 11 years that I have lived here, I can only remember a few times in which someone actually had landed one of them.

 This house is close to the station and I have shown it before. The roof tiles were damaged. This building is next to a new apartment building that is in mid-construction. The thing about this picture is that you can see all the white lines where the cracks in the wall have been repaired.  The earthquakes have caused cracks in almost everything - walls, roofs, sidewalks, roads, ...

On the opposite side of the road, along the fence that separates an apartment building from the bus storage facility, there is a small, ceramic, Shinto shrine. It represents a little house for the god that resides here. Someone has put a little dish of food for the god in front of it. Often there will be drinks, alcoholic and non alcoholic, and candy or cakes. When I first came to Japan, such offerings were always sealed in the pack that they came in, but people started stealing them, especially the alcohol, so now most people open the can or package before leaving it.

 I could not see inside very well, but there are two statues that look like either cats for foxes. If they are cats, the pose with the raised right paw represents the acquisition of wealth. Obviously, a wish of the person who installed the shrine. If they are foxes, I am not sure what they would represent, although foxes are generally considered to be sly little tricksters.