The back road from the bridge to my home

 I usually take the walkway along the riverside to get from the river to my condo, but on this day I decided to take the back road. It is slightly longer and nowhere near as pleasant but it is interesting all the same. The two buildings on the left are part of a three building complex that is a ryokan, a Japanese style hotel. It received quite a bit of damage to the exterior. The last time I came by here both buildings were covered with scaffolding but the far building seems to have been finished. Except for the month or so immediately after the first quake, this ryokan stayed in open.

 The wooden frame work here is supporting a new concrete slab, which I assume will eventually support another vending machine. Before the quake that was a higher wall which functioned as a giant planter with a fairly large tree.

 This is in front of the entrance into the police compound which is off to the right. The road has sunk enough here that cars can not drive over depression. This is a low-traffic back road and the police compound is used only for practice, so this damage must have a very low priority. I will be very interested to see how long it will be before they dig it up and repair the damage.

 This is one of the buildings in the police compound. Before the quake, it was not used very much but now it seems to be off limits completely. If you look carefully, maybe you need to double click on the picture to blow it up to full size, you can see all the damage, cracks in the walls and supporting columns, broken windows, etc.

 A little bit closer to home (my condo complex dominates the background), there is a large, by Japanese standards garden. The man who owns the property, the one I refer to as the rich guy,brought in a construction company when he built his house. The old soil was dug out to a depth of about 2 meters (6 ft) and then resulting hole was filled with loam. He now rents out plots to the local people who use it to grow their own vegetables. The vegetables are not cheap but many people seem to enjoy doing it. In addition to rent the land, the rich guy will plow and prepare the land using his power equipment. He also gives advice on how to take care of the plants and on planting schedules.

This is a field of corn. It consists of two rows of plants that go in a straight line for the street to the apartment building in the background. There are probably between 80 and 100 plants.