Stuff

 A couple of duck surfing in the river. They seem to enjoy riding down the white water in the shallow places in the river. I have watch some do it over and over again, riding the waves and then swimming or flying back up stream so that they can do it again.

 The blue object is the back of a portable toilet at a construction site, but the object I wanted to show is the thing with whitish pipes and a red blob. Do you know what it is? It is a very important winter tool in Japan.

It is a hand pump for moving kerosine from cans to heaters. Most Japanese homes are heated with kerosine room heaters that have a hose that acts as a chimney. All new apartments have closeable holes in the walls for this sort of heater. My wife and I do not use them. We use our air conditioner. No smells and no chance of spilling kerosine all over the room. Also this year, electricity seems to be cheaper.

 I found this repair on a building near my home. The damage from the earthquake was getting worse and they squeezed some kind of plastic into the cracks.

 This my latest drawing.

 When we sold our apartment, we did the paperwork and signing in this block of buildings.

 After taking the above picture, I turned to take on in the other direction and noticed this sign. Sendai has become very cosmopolitan. Police warnings no require six languages.

 This is the view in the other direction. This part of Sendai is mostly banks and business offices.

The white van with the sign on the top is a sound truck for the Communist Party. Here in Japan the Party is very mild, not like the European versions. It is just a leftist party that advocates measures for the common people. If I had a vote, I would vote for some of their candidates, but definitely not all.