Still walking but in the housing area south of Nanakita River

 The banners are advertising a new item on the menu at the chain restaurant in the building. The food is cheap and much better than you might expect to find in a large chain.

 Typical Japanese fashion on a sunny day - an umbrella to keep off the sun with a miniskirt, but completely covered legs.

 This, believe it or not, is a kindergarten. There seem to be two types of kindergarten: one focuses on teaching things to the kids and the hours are relatively short, often only a couple of days a week, while the other keeps the kids occupied for longer periods everyday, being more of a babysitting service.

 Typically side streets have a sidewalk on only one side and often this just ends suddenly. It seems to be much more difficult for the government to take private property than it is in places like the US. A good example of this is the new runway at the Narita airport in Tokyo. Construction has been held up for decades because the people who own the land will not give it up.

 This obvious was a rice paddy in the not too distant past, but today it is just an overgrown field. In the middle are some large plots that we used for flowers last year, but this year they too are overgrown. I expect that in not too many more years there will be a large building here.

From the road, I saw this strange pattern on the wall of an apartment building. I walked over close to see what it was, because while certainly artistic in a way, it did not seem to be art. When I got up close, I realized what it was. The long white lines are are some sort of adhesive that is covering cracks from the earthquakes. The short vertical lines are small bottles whose contents are leaking into the wall. I have heard that the contents are chemicals that react with the concrete and the adhesive and make the wall even stronger than it was before, but I do not know any further details.