Japanese English

We bought some paper napkins that were decorated with English. It makes me so happy that all the years I and others have put into teaching English here in Japan has gotten such results (sarcasm intended).

In case you can't read them here are some of the choice phrases:

TIME HAPPY
Let's build COFFEE!!
The shortcake of a strawberry, or a chocolate cake ... he likes which?

Takeda Hospital - Last post on this subject

 I posted this before but in case you did not see it I have added it here. This is a typical hospital room with two beds. Privacy is provided by a curtain and at night there is a small light that can be used for reading or whatever.

 This is the dining room and the TV room. All the patients who can move around eat their meals together here.

 This is the main hall. The rooms are all off to the left and on the right are toilets, a room with sinks for brushing teeth and washing hands and faces. In back of this room there is a large Japanese style bath. There is also a utility room with a coin operated washer and drier.

This is the old section where the operating was located through the doors on the right. They are only used once in a while now and no longer are there major operations. Behind the door at the end of the hall is the only private room.

Takeda Hospital

The Takeda Hospital is small, it only has 15 beds. In fact, I was recently told that it is too small to use the Japanese word for hospital byouin but rather must use some other word which I do not know. In any case, it is much more than a simple hospital. It is on one of the main roads and is in the built up part of the town and is quite popular in spite of there being other, larger hospitals nearer to Fukuoka City. The Dr. Takeda, the man who built the hospital in the first place, told me that it was 40 years old and the area had been all rice paddies when he first set it up. The town has grown since then and will become a city next year. The following picture is the view from across the street.

 The hospital offers a number of services. First, Dr Takeda, the son and my usual doctor, takes outpatients during the day. He is a specialist in the digestive track but functions as a general practitioner. This function is carried out in a clinic on the right end of the first floor. This area has an x-ray machine, ultrasound, and other equipment, more than I expected in a facility of this size. Apparently, the Japanese government helps finance such expensive equipment. He is busy enough that he usually has at least three nurses working with him.

On the second floor above the clinic, is an operating room and associated areas. The father was a surgeon and operated here, but he has now retired and only appears when his son is absent for some reason.

On the second floor there are patient rooms at the left end of the building. I will show more of this area in another post.

The first floor at the left end of the building contains a daycare and rehabilitation center for adults. The daycare center takes care of the elderly, feeding them, doing exercises and games, etc. This is important when the others in the family have to work and the elder are reaching the point where they can not be left alone.

 This the hospital from down the street. You can see the daycare and rehabilitation center on the first floor and the hospital on the second. My room was the one in the middle, the one where the top half of the window is black.

This is the back of the building. When I go for my monthly visit, I enter through the door on the left. It is very convenient because my apartment is on this road and only one block to the left.

In the Hospital

After an hour and a half of good sleep, I woke up with a pain in my lower abdomen. I knew immediately what it was because I have had it any number of times before. After having my gall bladder removed in my 50s (my appendix was taken out when I was 16), I started having a lot of gas. Sometimes the gas builds up and my stomach and intestines blow up like a balloon causing a substantial amount of pain. This has gotten worse since I had part of my intestines removed during a successful cancer operation. I had twice previously spent a week in a large hospital, Hamanomachi Hospital where I had had my cancer operation, and where each time they had finally said that they could not determine the cause. On the other occasions when this has happened, I just stayed up burping until the pain disappeared. This usually took about three hours or so, and except for a lack of sleep, I would be fine the next morning.

This time was different, though. The pain was substantially reduced after three hours but then it started to increase again. By five o'clock in the morning it was obvious that I needed to go to the hospital again, where they would insert a tube in my nose and allow the gas to escape.

Since the large hospital is far from my apartment, I had made arrangements to go to the Takeda Hospital the next time it happened. This hospital is one block from my apartment and where I have monthly followup examinations after my cancer operation. My wife called the hospital and the night nurse, after consulting with the doctor, said to come to the hospital.

My previous trips to Hamanomachi Hospital had been by ambulance, but this time we called a taxi for the one block trip. After ringing the doorbell at the back entrance, we waited until the nurse came down from the second floor. She took us up to the second floor and put me in a room.

 Although my room was technically for two people, I was the only one in it during my entire five day stay. The room was clean and quite modern. The bed was old as was some of the furniture but it was very adequate. The small window in the picture looks out on the hall but there was a large window on the opposite wall that provides a view of the tree lined street and the mountains beyond.

Eventually the doctor came. It turned out to the be the father of my regular doctor who was away giving a lecture at a medical conference. The father had started this hospital 40 years ago but now only worked when his son was not available. He checked me out and after I said had previously had the pain relieved by a tube through my nose and into my stomach, he had the nurse get the necessary equipment and inserted a plastic tube. I felt like an aquarium but the pain was soon gone.

Later in the morning I was given a number of tests, including blood tests and x-rays. The son, my regular doctor, stopped by to see me during the late afternoon. They put me on intravenous feeding for two days and then 1400 calorie diet. I lost almost 3 kilograms, which I hope I can keep off now that I am back home. When the test results came back, there was no evidence of what caused the gas but some definite irregularities. The reason for the pain was obvious, the gas, but they could find no particular reason for the gas. My kidneys were not functioning properly according to the blood tests but x-rays and the ultrasonic scanner showed no evidence of any problem. Also one of the markers for cancer came back positive but a second marker was unchanged, so it probably is not another tumor.

By the second day, I felt fine and was ready to go home but the doctor wanted to keep me under observation for a bit longer so he kept me for five days altogether. I used the time to read six novels and a manual on my Kindle, listen to some podcasts on my iPod, and walk in the hall ways for 40 minutes a day.

Since Japan has universal socialized medical insurance, my stay including tests, medicine, doctors, and room and board cost me just a little over US$200. We also have some additional private insurance and may eventual get about half of that as a refund.

I am now home and except for being very tired feeling okay. I expect to have some more tests next week but will be able to have them on an outpatient basis.

In my next blog, I will describe the hospital and its operations in more detail. It seems to be quite typical of small hospitals in Japan.

Go Tournaments

During the last two days I participated in two different go tournaments. This shows the first of the two just before we started. It was held in another town and three of us, the three students in my Friday go class, went together. One of the other students drove. The prefecture sponsored the event so we only had to pay 1,000 yen (about US$10). We were given lunch and there were many prizes and special awards.

I lost my first game to a very strong player who is ranked one step above me. Then I beat another player who was also ranked one step above me. My next opponent was someone I knew. He is in my Wednesday go club. I beat him regularly at the club and was far, far ahead in this game when I made a huge mistake. I knew that I had to make a specific move, but actually forgot to make it, costing me the game. The final score was 31 to 14 and the mistake I made was worth 80 points. I should have won 94 to 31. I was so mentally upset by this lapse that my final game was also a disaster. However, someone came over and asked me not to leave until the awards ceremony was over, however, I was not going to leave because the man who drove us to the tournament came in second in our group.

There 100 or so participants were divide into six groups by skill level (the three of us were in the lowest) and there were first, second, and third places prizes awarded, a certificate, a small plaque, and bags of rice. Once all the competitive prizes were given out. They had a series of special awards. As is usual in competitions for the elderly, there was an award for the oldest competitor. Actually there were two awards, one for the oldest male and one for the oldest female. They got certificates and some rice. Then, they had what they called Madonna Awards. These were for the other three women who competed in the otherwise all male event. Finally, the called me to the front and gave me a special award. They did not say what it was for but it was obviously because I was the only foreigner there. I got two kilograms of rice and a very nice 750 milliliter thermos bottle. In spite of my 1-win and 3-loss record and my terrible play in the third game, it was a very successful day and I actually enjoyed myself.

The next day I played in a neighborhood club tournament. I again had a 1 and 3 record, but I played much better, losing my first game by 4 points and another by only 1.5 points. This time it was free and again lunch was served, a box lunch just like the day before.

The various results showed that the handicapping systems works extremely well. Two of the strongest players were unable to get even a single win and my teacher only one two games.

I love old buildings

This is a typical street view in the neighborhood where I live. The blue building on the left is a commercial site that houses a company. In the middle is their parking lot. There is no parking on the streets so companies and public sides must have their own parking lots. The building in the distance is the most interesting. It is an old Japanese style structure that in the past must have been the home of a wealthy rice farmer. Until less than 30 years ago this whole area was covered by rice paddies. I've seen aerial photos and there was nothing here except extensive paddies and an occasional house.

The room on the second floor must be very small and was probably built to allow the occupants an unrestricted view of their paddies. If I lived there, I would turn it into a study by adding a desk and bookshelves. Even now, it would be a nice place to work. The other interesting feature is on the right end of the building. They have added a modern-looking wall and an entrance. I did not find a location from which I could get a picture of it, but from what little I could see, the building must now be being used by some sort of company. I assume that this is because anyone who did business with the company would know where it is and others would have no reason to go there.

Gardens and Stones

I've mentioned the gardens that people have around their homes, especially the richer people. In order to have a Japanese style garden, you need to have professional gardeners come at least twice a year to trim and care for the trees and bushes. This picture shows the garden that greets you when you enter the driveway of this rich person's home. You can just see the roof of the building behind the trees.

Another feature of Japanese gardens are large stones that are used as part of the landscaping. Here they are used as a base for the concrete block wall that surrounds the property and as a retaining wall to keep the dirt in the garden from encroaching on the driveway.

 Stones are very important in Japan. This one is beside the road and a little bridge has been built over the canal so that people can get to it. There is a low concrete block wall separating this apparently public property from the surrounding private property. Usually large stones like this have some words engraved on one surface, usually something about the local history or something religious, Buddhist or Shinto. I crossed the bridge and looked carefully at the face of this boulder. There were some indentations but I could not determine whether they were Chinese characters that had been weathered so much that they disappeared or just natural markings. I searched around the area but there was no sign to tell visitors like me something about the stone.

An Oversized Bonsai and Onions

I was walking home from my exercise class. On the left side of the road was a large farm area and on the other a solid row of homes. In the farm I noticed this tree. It looked like an oversized bonsai, obviously carefully trained to grow almost horizontally to the ground. I would not be surprised to find such a tree in a garden around a large house, but it is surprising to find one in the middle of a truck farm. When this tree gets a little larger, the farmer will put some wooden braces under the extended branch to keep the tree from falling over.

 Almost directly across the street, I noticed these onions hanging under the roof of a parking spot. In areas with a lot of farming it is not at all unusual to see vegetables hanging outdoors but under roofs or in the sun. Onions and daikons are the most common but you will occasionally see other things, too. Persimmons that have been peeled and allowed to dry are also frequently seen. They become sweeter and chewy, a real treat in the fall. Cardboard boxes full of other vegetables are also common.

If you go near the ocean, rather than vegetables, you will see fish that have been cleaned and hung up to dry. Various types of seaweed are also seen drying in the sun in people's yards.

Another canal

I love the little canals that flow between the houses in many places. There are usually trees and flowers along the sides and they are often very picturesque. Also, you can sometimes see large birds wading or fish swimming in the water which is very clean except for immediately after heavy rains when some of the dirt washes out of the rice paddies.

Farming and Milikaroden

This is one of the largest rice paddies around town. Probably by next week when I return, it will have been harvested and all that will be left is stubble. The buildings on the right make up a complex called "Milikaroden". It is a culture center. The nearest building, the one with orange walls, is a children's center and seems to be quite popular, although I don't know what they offer. The next building has classrooms. It is where I am currently taking my exercise classes. It also contains an exposition area, a large auditorium, and the town library. Out of site behind these buildings is a heated indoor swimming pool that costs a few hundred yen per visit. It also offers various types of swimming classes.

The above rice paddy was large by Japanese standards but the farm below is more typical of what you find in Japan. This is a truck farm and the farmer probably has a number of little plots like this scattered around town. Most such farmers belong to cooperatives so that they can get together with other small farmers to pool their money and buy the various pieces of equipment that are necessary for efficient farming.

Straight Lines

There are many straight lines near my apartment. Here are two of them.

This is the small canal the runs by my apartment building. The wall in the foreground is part of the entrance and that in the background is the actual wall of one of the first floor apartments. Less than 30 years ago this entire area was rice paddies, and the farmer's cooperatives built canals all over the town to supply the water that is necessary for flooding the paddies in the spring. They vary greatly in size and many of them have been covered over so that they are more like sewers than canals but they are still carrying water. You can see that there is a guard rail separating the canal from the road but in many places there is nothing between the road and the water. This makes me glad that I do not drive a car, my license having expired in about 1980.

 Here is another straight line. It is composed of trees. Most of the main streets in town are lined with trees. In this picture you can see the gardeners trimming this year's branches and cutting off most of the leaves. They say that this is done to keep the roots short so that they do not damage the sidewalk or the street. The roots are supposed to spread so that they cover the same area as the branches, so short branches, short roots. Removing the leaves helps keep down the overall growth.

Prep Schools

One common sight in Japan is prep schools and signs for prep schools. This picture shows some signs advertising prep schools had have space in this building. Kumon is probably known to many people outside Japan. There are both large nationwide chains like Kumon, small mom-and-pop style schools, and everything in between. Also, a lot high school and college students make extra money by tutoring younger students.

When I first started teaching in Japan, I worked at what is called a senmongakko. It was a post high school program that gave a certificate of graduation rather than a diploma so it was one rank below a junior college. The school, Trident College, was owned by one of the top three prep schools in Japan. In addition to my regularly scheduled classes, I was able to do a lot of part-time, extra pay work in the prep school itself. I taught preparation classes for the high school and college entrance tests as well as making a large amount of materials for use by other teachers. Prep schools are a really huge industry in Japan.

Petanku Tournament

Yesterday, I played in a Petanku Tournament sponsor by the town's Senior Club. Petanku (ペタンク in Japanese and petanque in French) is a game the started in France. It is played with a small wooden ball about an inch in diameter and some larger metal balls that are about the size of a baseball and weigh around 700 grams. Each player has two of the metal balls and they are color-coded by teams, red and blue. There is also a plastic circle that marks out the spot where the shooter must stand. The game begins by one player standing in the circle and throwing the wooden ball at least six meters and then throwing one of the metal balls, attempting to get as close as possible to the wooden ball. Then, a player from the other team throws a metal ball. The players then determine which ball is closer to the wooden ball. A tape measure is a crucial piece of equipment for this game. Next, a player from the team whose ball is farthest away throws a ball. This continues until that team gets one or more balls closer to the wooden ball. This continues until all the balls are thrown. The score is determined by giving one point for each ball that is closer to the wooden ball than an opponent's ball. Thus, the maximum score per round is 6 points. There are ten rounds in a game. We also had a time limit. If you are interested in a more coherent explanation of the game I have placed a link to a Japan Times newspaper article about the game at the bottom of this page.

There were 32 teams of three competing. Each team played three games and were ranked by the number of points the team scored minus the number their opponents scored. My team won both of our first two games and were in third place overall. However, one of our team members got tired (remember this was the Senior Club and everyone was over 70 years old) so she dropped out and was replaced by a complete beginner. We were badly beaten in our third and final game, ending up somewhere in the middle rather than getting a prize. We did get, however, a participation prize that is always given to each competitor at a Senor Club Tournament of any kind - a box of tissues.

Here is a picture of one of the games. If you look closely, you can see the metal ball just in front of the two men on the right. I am sorry I could not get better pictures but my usual camera died and I had to use my two day old smartphone. I have not yet read the instructions on how to use the smartphone's camera, but after some experimentation, I did manage to get this. Hopefully, future pictures will be better. I do have some taken with my regular camera that I have not posted yet, so I have some time to figure out the smartphone.

After all the games were over, the three teams from our neighborhood sat together on a blue sheet and ate box lunches that were purchased by our neighborhood branch of the Senior Club. Some of the group also brought some additional food so we had a real feast.

Finally, I walked home with Mr and Mrs Oniki. He got an award for being the oldest player in the tournament. The Oniki's are also in my ground golf club so I know them quite well even though we are not close friends. In conclusion, I should add that we were the only ones who walked home (more than a mile). All the others either drove or rode a bicycle.

Here is the link to the Japan Times that I mentioned above.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2006/08/20/to-be-sorted/seniors-go-french-with-a-little-pig/#.Wd6_aGiCyHs

Expectation of honesty

This is a picture of the parking lot of what for a long time was a noodle shop. That closed and a fried chicken boxed lunch restaurant opened in the small building. It was quite good, and cheap, so we bought them occasionally to have as lunch. However, one day as I walked passed, I discovered a rope across the entrance to the parking lot and a sign that said that the shop was temporarily closed. There was no explanation as to why it was no longer open.

Then one day during the summer, I walked by and found what you can see in the picture. There are a large number of stainless steel kitchen sinks and other kitchen furniture. From watching TV programs about fixing up homes, I know that the cost of this sort of thing, even used, is at least US$200. The one in the bottom right corner probably would sell for at least US$300. This means that there is more than US$1,000 worth of things just sitting here in the open. Anyone with a truck could just come and haul it away. No one would notice until the owner came back. However, this has been there for a few months and I expect that it will remain there until reclaimed by the owner.

If you lose something in Japan, it will probably be returned if the finder can identify you as the owner. The major exceptions to this are bicycles and umbrellas. If you find money and take it to a police station, they will try very hard to find the owner and then 'ask' that person to give you a reward of 10 to 20%. If they can not locate the owner, the entire amount becomes yours after six months. This apparently applies to objects as well as money.

When things like towels, pencil cases, etc, things that are not particularly valuable, are dropped on the street or left somewhere, the custom here is to put them on something so that they can be seen, hopefully, by the person who lost it.

Not home yet

This is one of my favorite corners in the whole city. Across the street, you can see a Baskins-Robbins 33 ice cream shop. On the near corner is a Mister Donut. This is an experimental shop, possibly still the only one like this in Japan. In addition to the usual donuts and coffee, in the mornings they sell a breakfast consisting of coffee, toast, and a salad. At all times during the day, they sell around a dozen different kinds of spaghetti and Chinese style noodles. They also have chunks of bread with various toppings. My particular favorite is what they call a "hot dog". It is a long sausage in a bun with catsup and mustard and a bottomless cup of coffee. It costs 450 yen, around four dollars US. Since I have to pass this Mister Donut on my way to my Sunday go club, I usually have my lunch here. After eating a hot dog, I sit and study go problems while drinking coffee.

 This is the Kashiwaragawa, the Kashiwara River. It is a branch of the Naka River that is nearer to my home than the main river. Like most of the rivers in this area, it is well below the level of the surrounding land and the banks are covered so that they will not be damaged by flooding. In this picture there is an egret flying over the left bank of the water. While narrow, Kashiwara River has a lot of birds, egrets, kingfishers, ducks, and other waterbirds plus sparrows and pigeons. Many of them nest beside the water so at certain times a year, we can watch they learning about the world.

The Kashiwara River runs along the west side of a fairly large park that contains the athletic field where I play ground golf on Monday and Thursday mornings.

Fire Hydrants

Fire hydrants in Japan are quite varied in comparison to those I have seen in the US. This picture shows on beside a building near my apartment. The blue sign gives the address of the building and the white sign has a map with other hydrant locations. I am not sure what the function of the red light is but it is definitely related to the hydrant.

Here is a better look at the connection point for attaching the hose.

 Traditionally, Japanese fire departments are a bit slow in arriving but very effective once they reach the site of the fire. The fire departments practice constantly and have competitions on all aspects of firefighting and life saving. If you will look back a few years in this blog, I posted quite a bit about the station that was near my condo in Sendai. They were one of the best in the country, having received a number of awards and won competitions.

Here in Nakagawa-machi, we do not have our own full time station but when needed the fire trucks come from the next city. It is only a few kilometers away so the arrive fairly quickly. Also, there are active volunteer fire departments in each ward of out town.

Sports in the park

Sport forms a very important part of life in Japan. On this day there was a soccer tournament for what looked like junior high school students. At least two or three times a month there are tournaments of some kind in the park. For school age kids, there are baseball and soccer tournaments and for adults there are ground golf, gate ball, and petanque competitions. Petanque is the French version of the game of bocchi ball which was popular in the eastern part of the US when I lived there. I am playing in a tournament next week so I will go into detail then.

The ground in the park can be reserved by groups. I play ground golf on the far half of the field twice a week and other groups use the space for practicing various sports.

In this picture, you can see two soccer games in progress, one in the foreground and one on the far side of the field.

 One feature of these tournaments for kids is that the parents come and set up tents. They eat and drink tea while watching their kids play. There are also kids whose team is not playing at the moment running around.

Going home

Some scenes from my trip home from the river. The area is crisscrossed with little canals like this. Until about 20 years ago this had been a rice growing area for more than a thousand years. Over that long span of time, the farmers joined together in cooperatives and build large and small canals to insure that all the rice paddies had access to sufficient amounts of water. The cooperatives also maintain these canals, periodical cleaning them and doing necessary repairs.

This surprisingly is a little truck farm. It looks like an empty lot a first and then you realize that the plants are growing in straight lines even though there are a lot of weeds.

 One of the the things I like about Japan is that there are numerous pedestrian ways that allow you to walk without all the traffic noise along the street-side sidewalks. The chain-link fence separated the path from the athletic field of a large grade school.

 Here is another canal but this one runs down the middle of a street. Actually, there is two-way traffic on both sides. The building on the left is a club house for the grade school. The fence is a continuation of the one in the last picture.

Along the river on my way home

People fishing is a very rare sight along the river, but this man was trying hard. At this spot there are a lot of small fish, about 10 centimeters (~4 inches). I think they are what is called 'ayu' in Japanese. In English they are sweetfish, Plecoglossus altivelis. This fish's name leads to a very bad pun that the junior high school students who are just beginning to seriously study English enjoy. The pun is "Ayu a fish?" which with Japanese pronunciation sounds like "Are you a fish?"

At the point where the riverside path heads back to the top of the embankment,there is a small park. They are hard to see but there were some kids playing on the blue slide behind the trees. The trees in public areas are usually trimmed once or more usually twice a year. This is said to keep the roots from growing and effecting the surrounding area. These trees have been cut back into the traditional shape that is seen in gardens, both public and private. As with most parks in Japan, this one has a public restroom which is very helpful on long walks.

About 100 meters away, I have to cross a road that comes from a bridge over the river. Once safely across the road and another 100 meters or so toward home, the path turns away from the river and follows a canal. This was the place where they built one of the new moveable dams. The dam is in the middle of the picture. The white line is where the water is flowing over the moveable section that is to the left. On the other side of the concrete structure there is another moveable dam and beyond that there is an overflow outlet that also allows water from a canal to enter the river.

Turning and looking back in the direction from which I came, we can see the pool formed behind the dam. If the dam is raised, the water will come about half way up the bank on the far shore. You can see the bridge on the extreme left.

Suburban housing

This is surprisingly common in suburban Japan. My town, Nakagawa-machi [Nakagawa Town], which will become a city [Nakagawa-shi] next year, is a bed-town for Fukuoka city, at least the northern half is. There is a train station from which you can get to one of the main centers in Fukuoka in only nine minutes, although the trains run only every 30 minutes or so. On the other side of my town there is a large bus center from which there are frequent buses to the other main center in Fukuoka.

The northern half of Nakagawa was built up about 20 or so years ago and consists of mainly restaurants and small business along the main streets and individual homes on the back roads. However, now that the population is expanding, new houses and buildings are going up, particularly along the border between the two halves of town. The building codes are different in the two areas.

This is quite typical of new housing both here and in Japan in general. It is a large private home squeezed in between to small factories. The house is large by Japanese standards but it has almost no yard. The only good thing is a view of the river but there is no convenient access to the riverside. The location is probably fairly noisy during the daytime but quiet at night. I have not gone over to check but I think that the house may be located one road back from the main road that parallels the river.

The riverbank is covered with concrete blocks to prevent damage in case of a flood. A few years ago there was a bad flood, so over the last three years, the town has lined both banks of a long stretch of the river as well as installing a number of dams. The dam in my recent posts being one of the new additions.

Flowers

I do not know the name of these flowers but they are all over the place and certainly brighten up the countryside.

In most places the red flowers predominant but along the river we also can see the white ones. The blossoms are quite large, each being about the same size as my fist. The colors are intense. When I took these pictures, it was very cloudy, so dark and dreary that I was carrying an umbrella.

Along the Naka River

The path along the Naka River (Nakagawa) is one of my favorite walks. The round trip is about five kilometers which is just right for an afternoon stroll. However, as you can see in this picture the riverside is being changed by new constructions. This appears to be an apartment building but I can not really be sure until the scaffolding comes down.

I live in Nakagawa-machi, Naka River Town in English. However, next year we are scheduled to become a city. There are various criteria for upgrading a locale's status from town to city and I do not know all of them. However, I do know the last one that was met because there was a lot of talk about it. To become a city a town's population must reach and remain at 50,000 or more. Our population is now about 50,200 and the prefecture has started the coordination that is necessary before the official upgrade takes place. The zoning laws are interesting here. The northern half of the town borders on Fukuoka city and functions as a bedtown. The southern half has more farming and the mountains. Tall buildings and large stores are allowed in the north but in the south they are limited to two stories, or maybe it is three, I am not sure.

You might wonder what the advantage of being a city is over being a town. It is in the control of the budget. The prefecture has a lot of control over how towns spend their budgets but much less control over the budgets of cities.

In the last couple of posts I have mentioned a man who was piling up stones and pulling up vines. When I came back the next day, this is what I found. Someone had apparently used a weed-wacker to cut back the vegetation along the paved path. In this picture the river is just to the left between the levee and the plants.

The day after my last post

The day after my last post, I decided to take my camera and go back along the Nakagawa River. This first picture is the large pile of rocks that I had seen the day before. The high rock is about the same height as my head would be if I were standing on the water. I can not imagine how much work it took to drag these out of the riverbed and pile them up.

 The next picture shows the bridge. The man was no longer there but you can see the large pile of stones around the base of the support column. The larger rocks are larger than a person's head.

The view I had as a sat and ate my lunch was quite pleasant. There were small birds butterflies, and other insects. I even saw a Kingfisher, kawasemi, in Japanese. They are used as a symbol for the town.

 In the top right corner of the last picture you can see a dam. This dam is only a couple of years old and was built in response to severe flooding five years ago, the year before we moved here. There is a large pond behind it and it seems to be a key point in the system to control the water levels in the river. It looks like it may be a moveable dam, but I can not find a location where I can see the details well enough to be sure.

Interesting sights around town

Yesterday, I walked south along the Nakagawa River (by the way -gawa means river in Japanese, so what I wrote actually means 'the Naka river river). I brought water, a hard-boiled egg, cheese and some crackers to have a one-man picnic at the end of the riverside path.

As I walked along, I notice something new. In the middle of the river, there was a huge pile of stones. It was four or five meters long, at least three wide, and about two tall. It was obviously manmade. I've seen small piles of stones along the river and assumed that they were made by kids playing in the river. This mountain of stones was so big that it must have taken many hours of work to construct. I scratched my head a bit and continued along the path.

As I got nearer the end of the path, it was more and more overgrown by plants, especially vines. It was actually difficult to walk. I waded through the greenery and finally reached the end of the path which is just passed a bridge that crosses overhead. The support for the bridge splits the river into two separate branches, but only when the water level is high. Yesterday, the water was flowing only in the stream farthest away from me.

If you continue on about three meters passed the end of the paved path, there are two places to sit and observed the river. One is concrete and the other is wood. I choose the concrete one and sat down. As I ate my lunch, I looked back toward the bridge and realized that a man and his dog were behind the support where I had not previously been able to see them.

As I watched, the man waded out into the river and started throwing stones, large and small, out of the riverbed and onto a pile behind the bridge support. He worked quite hard for a while and then climbed out of the river, sat down, and ate his lunch. I assumed that he must have been the one who made the pile that I had seen before.

I was fascinated by the river, the birds, flowers, and insects, so I sat there a long time. The man got up and left, walking away from me along the path. I saw him stop and start pull vines off the path. Then he produced a pair of scissors and started cutting back the other plants that were hanging over the path.

As I passed him on my way home, he was still clearing the path. I made a slight bow, which he returned, but he did not respond to my thank you so I just kept walking.

You sometimes see the most surprising things while out walking.

I should add that many people do volunteer work around the town. There is a group that plants flowers along the sidewalks and takes care of them. Neighborhood associations periodically clean up the streets and sidewalks.