Aug 13, 2011

The neighborhood around Tohoku Galuin U

 As I had some business at the admin office, I arrived at Tohoku Gakuin U very early for my last class. My problem was that I could not log on to the university's website, the place where I had to submit student grades. I suspected that it would take a long time to determine the problem so I got there about three hours before my class. I went directly to the admin office, where within minutes we discovered the problem. The password that I had copied down was wrong. I had an i where I should have had a j. So, to kill time, I decided to walk around the area, most of which I had never seen. This shop called Tsubasa, caught my attention because it has the same name as my grandson. After taking the picture, I walked up and looked in the window. The store sells model trains and accessories, mostly HO scale from the looks of things.
 I found the mix of building fascinating. Old wooden buildings were mix in with modern reinforced concrete structure, creating a very strange feeling. This old store sells gas heaters for baths.
 This old building houses a meat store.
 Whereas this new tile-faced building has a small grocery store on the first floor.
Just down the street is a building that used to be a public bath. When I first came to Japan, there were public baths in just about every neighborhood and most apartments did not have a bathroom, toilets, yes, but no bath. Around the back of this building, you can still see the large tank that held water for the baths. I could not be sure, but it looked like someone was living inside. The bath was definitely closed, though, and not that long ago because the paper sign was still legible.
I turned a corner and was back in modern downtown Sendai, tall buildings, lots of cars, and trees planted on the sidewalks and the lane divider.

No comments: