This is a typical automated parking lot. You get a ticket from the machine on your way in and on the way out you put the ticket back into a machine that tells you how much to pay into the slot. They even give change. When a large old building comes down in the downtown area, it usually takes a couple of years before they can start putting up a new buildings, if the ownership changes, that is. During that time, most places become parking lots like this. There are also many parking building, so parking is not such a problem as it might be.

 This is a Japanese post box. They are always red and typically stand on a single post, pun intended. Most of these boxes have the new mail picked up at least a couple of times a day. With email, cell phones, Facebook and Twitter the volume of mail has gone down and a while back the Post Office, like the train systems and the public universities, were turned into semi-private institutions. I don't know the details. I probably should spend the time and energy to find out but I am really not interested.

On one of the back streets, I passed a small Shinto shrine. From the parked car, I could tell that someone was inside the lefthand building but I could see no movement. Behind the shrine, is part of Tohoku University, a formally public university, that is now semi-private. The land is an island of space surrounded by buildings and contains the agricultural department.