My first real walk

Today my wife wanted to rearrange things that I have no say in - kitchen and the closets, so I decided to get out of her way by going out for my first long walk.

 

 I left our building and walked to the west. At the first corner I turned around and took this picture of our building. The area in the foreground is part of a takubin transshipment point. Takubin is a system for shipping small packages around Japan, quickly and cheaply. When the system first started, it was based on the small shops that sold rice, because they were the only companies that delivered to many homes. Takubin was popular and quickly became much bigger but even today there are still rice stores that are also places where you can take packages for shipment.

 On the same corner there is a curry rice shop. The menu is very short, basically curry rice or curry rice with a hamburger on top. You can also get miso soup and a salad to go with it. Masayo and I ate there once. It was good but the servings were much too big for us. Neither of us was able to finish our meal, even though we had asked for small servings of rice.

 Next to the curry shop is a cake shop. This is part of a chain and my niece says that it is her favorite. We went in and bought a couple of cakes. Everything had a lot of fancy decorations and were very sweet. We probably will not buy too much from there.

 Across the street there is a coin laundry. We will probably wash our rugs there at some point in the future.

 I walked down the side road next to the laundry. Within 50 meters of the main road, I felt like I was in the country. There was a large truck garden. I expect that with ten more years there will be an apartment building here.

The road came to an end at a canal. This picture shows one of the things I really like about Japan. Most waterways have a walkway along them. As you will see, much of today's walk was along side are canal or a river.

Continued tomorrow.