Various

 This is at Sendai Station. A few days ago I showed this same place but from the ground level. This roundabout and the landscaping and artwork are quite new. They were only finished a couple of years ago. To take this picture, I stood on the second floor outdoor pedestrian walkway. You can see another part of the walkway in the distance.

 This is at Tohoku Gakuin U, Tsuchitoi Campus, where I teach on Thursday nights. I looked out the window and saw all these people standing around. Close inspection made me realize that this was a designated smoking area. The whole campus is no smoking, except for these areas. I am not sure about this university, but at most schools professors can smoke in their own office. Even this is, however, changing as it forces the students to breath secondhand smoke, and there are now complaints, which would never have happened when I first came to Japan.

 This is the view out my living room window during one of the rainy season downpours.

On my way to work, as I pass along the top of the riverside levee, the construction site on the other side of the river changes every day. Recently they put up survey stakes and a crow has frequently used one of them as a resting place. On this day, however, a hawk, a type called tombi, had taken over the stake. If you look closely, you can see the hawk in the middle of the picture and the crow, I assume it is the same one, just to the left. The crow was dancing around, making aggressive moves and cawing loudly. The hawk was regally ignoring the crow.

 While this was happening, a crane came along the edge of the river, fishing. I stayed watching them for at least five minutes. The crane continued up the river, but the crow and the hawk stayed where they were. I had the distinct impression that the hawk was only staying there to bug the crow.

The hawks and crows here are deadly enemies. I guess the reason is that they basically live off of the same food sources. I have seen numerous fights between individual pairs of birds. And one time, when I first came to Sendai, there was a major outbreak of warfare with hundreds of birds involved in a dogfights right above the old house that we were living in at the time. It looks to me like the hawks tend to win when it is one on one, but the crows are more social and can work together, so they tend to win if they can gather a group.

Except during mating season, the hawks seem to be loners, each with a territory that it patiently patrols throughout the day. The crows, on the other hand, go out in groups of twos or threes and aggressively search for food, ranging over a large area each day. At night the crows come together in large groups, sometimes involving thousands of birds. The socialize and sleep together in trees or on power lines. I find them fascinating.