Aug 3, 2011

Continuing my walk along Nanakita River

 This is the bank that collapsed during the quakes. Very soon after the city found out about it, the crew who are doing the construction along the river came here and dug out the river bed, built a road, and then patched up the bank with the usual covering of blue tarpaulin. Nothing has been done since as far as I can tell.
 Our local Jodo Shinsu Buddhist temple from the riverside. This is the temple that we stop at on New Year's Eve, the one the surprisingly gives each person a glass of sake, rice wine, in spite of the general Buddhist prohibition against alcohol. This temple also has a bell, which I rang one year, and which rings at 6:30 every morning.
 This is the path along the river where it bends away from the river to go under the new bridge. You can not really see it here but someone has brought three or four loads of crushed stone and filled in the areas that flooded during the rainy season. This benefactor must be someone who lives along this stretch, because the government would not do something like this.
 I showed this crack in the ground before. I broke open during the first quake and then widened during the second large quake. I could not tell whether the continuing aftershocks have caused any further damage. The empty space is beginning to fill in but I still could not see the bottom of the holes.
 This is our local Shinto shrine. The flowers are very pretty at this time of year and the local people come often to weed and trim.
The apartments on the first floor of my mansion, condo, have gardens. However, as you can see here, in spite of this being the rainy season the plants do not have enough water. I think that all the rain turns into humidity within seconds of landing on the ground. That is if it does not cause a flood and immediately run off into the drainage system.

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