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.