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.