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.