On the way to my Saturday Go Cllub

 I've shown this stele before, but someone has replaced the straw rope, so I thought I would show it again. Also you can see some little reddish things on the shelf at the bottom of the stone. These are little monkey masks and they have been there since I moved to this area. They seem to be made from ceramic or something hard, the one on the right is broken, but is still there.

This is the Nakabaru Kominkan. You can see the name written in kanji over the door. Nakabaru is the name of this part of the town (where I live) and komin means public, kan means public building. In English this might be called the Nakabaru Public Building. We play Go in a small room on the second floor and have parties in a large hall with a small stage and an attached kitchen . Recently I was there for a Shinnenkai, or New Year Party. We had box lunches for a local supermarket (very good, by the way) with beer, Japanese sake, or something called shochu, a distilled drink made from many different things, potatoes, rice, wheat, and some other stuff. Depending on which thing it is made from each taste completely different from the others. Some are very good and some are terrible.