Nearing home

 I passed a garden in a space between the multistory buildings. I noticed that the pumpkins had messages written on them. This one says that living things, people and animals, are important and should be treat well. As I was taking the picture, a woman came out and yell a 'thanks' at me and bowed.

This is a delivery truck pulled by a bicycle. It is the first one I have seen around in a long time.

I crossed the main road and was nearing the river, when I found rice paddies. In the middle of the picture, on the horizon between the two tall buildings you can see the tower on top of the Ito Yokado department store at Izumi Chuo. This paddy is less than a kilometer away from the subway station. Some day soon the owner will get old enough that he will want to stop farming and will sell this land for a huge amount of money, and we will have more high rise buildings.

This building is a depot for a company that supplies drinks to vending machines. Trucks come here, load up, and go out refilling the machines in this part of the city.

This is our local shrine, Futakashira Jinja. We will go here on New Years to greet the god. This is also the shrine where my granddaughter Tomone was introduced to the gods in a Shinto ceremony.

This appears to be the remains of a shack used for on site storage when this area was a farm. There is still a small garden next to it. Twenty years ago there were almost no buildings in this area, everything was farm land and it was just a little backwater along the river. Then they built the subway and everything started changing. Now it is at least 90% metropolitan with small gardens scattered in between the tall buildings.

This is the house where the priest from the shrine lives. The shrine has been becoming more and more popular so he seems to be doing quite well economically.

I have finally reached the levee-top walkway that leads directly to my condo. The riverside is very pretty at this time of year.