Life in Japan

Snow Festival

2012-02-16T08:23:00.001+09:00

This man was selling corn on the cob that had been boiled and then browned over a charcoal fire. I bought an ear for 300 yen and it was delicious. Notice the hand being warmed over the coals. It was very cold.

This was for the children. They paid 500 yen and were given a small scoop. They could then use it to dip into to tank of water which was filled with small toys. They could keep as many as they were able to get out in a single try.

A bridge carrying a main road passed over the middle of the Festival site. They had strung blue lights on the underside of the bridge, and it was quite pretty and created a nice atmosphere for the SNOW festival.

This booth was sell charcoal grilled steaks. Again a lot of people were standing around trying to keep warm.

This stall was selling chocolate covered bananas with nuts on the outside.

This was one of the stalls that was giving away sake. The kanji reads hakkaisan, meaning the eight sea mountain. I drank some and it was pretty tasty.

At the opposite end of the site from where we entered, there was a large screen about a stage. A steady stream of performers were entertaining the crowd. I walked in that direction but stopped well before because the music was so loud.

Snow Festival

2012-02-15T10:49:00.001+09:00

This is a friend of Chris' who was inside the Kamakura with his family.

The entrance to the Kamaura was very low but you could get through without crawling.

We went outside again and saw a group of people around a large green object.

When we got closer, we realized that it was a person in a costume of a cartoon character. All the kids were having their pictures taken with it.

There were tents along both sides of the festival area. Some of them had Japanese lanterns. In the past these would have had candles inside but now there are light bulbs.

This group of people were waiting for the food in the stall to finish cooking.

We were early so there was not much of a crowd yet, but it was growing rapidly. Also most the the people were at the other end of the area watching someone sing.

This is a typical stall. The employees, probably family members, are cooking on gas stoves. Customers walk up, buy something, and carry it away to eat while they are walking around.

Snow Festival

2012-02-14T08:18:00.001+09:00

As we walked toward the Snow Fesitval site, we passed an empty lot between to stores. It was completely filled with snow.

At the next intersection we could see the meter or so of snow on the roof over the sidewalk.

This is a close up of the traffic light. The snow almost covered up some of the lights.

We assumed that the large number of cars must be related to the Festival, especially considering that it was a Saturday night so there would have been few people returning from work.

This was the entrance to the Festival grounds. It was down a steep snow-covered slope. Some people were falling down but I made it safely.

Inside the grounds there were a number of igloos made from snow. These are called Kamakura in Japanese.

This one had fires in metal baskets in front of it. The temperature was very low so this particular Kamakura was very popular.

This is me standing beside the entrance to a different Kamakura.

On the way to the Snow Festival

2012-02-13T10:58:00.002+09:00

Inside the station, there was a large mural. For some reason, I never went over to check on the artist's name.

The view out the station windows was particularly nice as the sun was just setting behind the hills.

Yesterday I showed you the front side of the station. These pictures show the area around the back side.

As you can see, there is little commerce and less industry.

The hills come right down to the edge of the town. There are mountains behind the hills. I do not know if it is the clouds or if the hills are in the way, but in any case I could not see them.

The train was late because of the snow, exactly 19 minutes late. Even when the trains are late, they keep to the adjusted schedule and the station announces the revised times. The man standing in the aisle is Chris, one of the regular faculty at the university. The people who are sitting are students. Everyone was going to the Snow Festival. The students are beginning to go stir crazy because of all the snow. It is very difficult to go outside, plus next week is mid-term exam week, so the students are stressed because of that.

We got off the train and on of the first things we saw was this tent and the candles in little snow caves. The tent had Japanese sake, rice wine, and tonjiru, pork based soup. It was free but if you wanted you could give a donation. We decided not to stop, but instead to move on to the actual Festival site which was about a 10 minute walk away.

The business area that we had to walk through was a typical small town commercial zone. The stores were all connected and there was a covered sidewalk.

Going to a Snow Festival

2012-02-12T10:40:00.000+09:00

Yesterday Chris, one of the regular teachers at International University of Japan, invited me to go to a Snow Festival with him and his wife. We planned to meet at Urasa Station at 5 p.m. so I decided to take the free school bus that leaves at 4:01, rather pay for a taxi. The bus arrived early so I got on and sat down, but many of the students were outside in the parking lot taking pictures.

Since I was about 40 minutes early when I arrived at the station, I decided to look around. One of the first things I found was this rock garden which was almost completely buried under the snow.

I walked as far as the main road and found that there were few stores. Directly across the street there is a 7/11 and a bit farther down the street you can see the restaurant where Tony and I had lunch just after I first arrived here.

I found a statue with a roof of snow. I do not know who it is because the snow is covering the inscription on the front.

In front of the station there is a tower and it, too, has a cap of snow.

Even the support for the traffic light has a large blob of snow on it.

I turned and looked in the other direction and found that there is not much more here. Urasa is definitely a small country town.

To get to the inside of the station, I had to cross a pedestrian bridge over the tracks. I was surprised to see that the snow was actually higher than the tracks.

Out for a walk

2012-02-11T13:21:00.002+09:00

My apartment is next to the main access road to the university. The sky was still pretty much blue and I had no classes, so I decided to go out for a walk. The main road is the one that goes straight into the middle of the picture.

Turning around I could see my apartment building. I now realize the reason that the sattelite TV keeps going off. The antenna on the roof must get covered with snow, breaking the link to the company that provides access to the pay channels, which I naturally do not get.

The road was perfectly straight for as far as I could see.

The mountains were very impressive, but I have to say they are not really very high.

After about a kilometer, I appeared to be approaching a built up area.

Looking over the mountains, I noticed that the clouds were beginning to look a little heavy, but I kept going.

A little farther on, I came across a stand of pine, at least it looked like pine.

The trees are only on the mountain's ridge lines. Maybe the rest of the mountainside is too steep. In any case they make a very interesting pattern.

A nice day for a change

2012-02-10T08:56:00.001+09:00

The views around the campus are truly spectacular when the skies are blue and the clouds few.

In the evening the colors of sunset were beautiful as they lit up the mountains.

My camera did not quite capture the hint of red in the sunset.

The blobs of snow caught in the trees give them a strange shape.

This was my super at the campus cafeteria. I had fried chicken with two dishes of vegetables. The total price was 420, less than a cup of coffee in many coffee shops.

The next morning I found that the gray skies had returned. The building in the background seems to be the only sign of industrial activity that I have seen since I got here.

The valley contains a river, train tracks and a number of little villages. I can see into the valley from the window at the end of the hall in front of my office.

I am still amazed at the moss and other plants that are growing under the snow. One reason that they can survive is probably because the temperature never gets too low. During the day it is usually within a degree or two of freezing and at night it only drops a few degrees.

2012-02-09T08:33:00.001+09:00

This is half of my class practice how to do an international meeting. During the course the students are taught how to chair a meeting and this was a final practical exercise where they were supposed to apply everything they had learned. Although most of the students sit in meetings every day at work, they have no idea how to organize or run a meeting effectively or efficiently.

This is the other half of the students. Actually in each picture there are only four students. The other two people are what the program calls "facilitators", a more common term might be TAs, teaching assistants. The facilitators are graduate students from the MBA and international relations departments, who are doing this as a part time job and as a chance to meet Japanese business people.

The view out almost every window is breathtaking.

This is the path leading from the building containing my office to the classrooms. You can judge how much snow there is by comparing the height of the person shoveling snow to the snowbanks on either side.

It started to clear up for the first time since I arrived. This snow drift is on the balcony outside the classroom.

As the weather improved the scenery became even more impressive.

Blue sky! I had almost forgotten what it looked like. The students opened the classroom window, so I leaned out and took this picture.

With the better weather, a lot of the snow disappeared from the paths and roads. I was surprised to find that the water spray, the round object is one of the nozzles, a layer of moss to form on the surface of the path. This had been hidden under the snow.

Niigata

2012-02-08T09:28:00.002+09:00

Icicles started forming on the outside of one of the windows in my apartment. They did not last very long because they were hanging from snow which eventually fell.

I was very surprised when I was taken to my apartment not long after I arrived on campus. They had already placed a sign with my name outside the door. My office also had a nameplate in place when I arrived.

This is the entrance to the hallway that runs the length of the married students' housing. I use it everyday as a short cut that keeps me out of the falling snow. There are two interesting things in the picture. On the right side of the building there is a red and white pole. This is a marker so that the snowplows know where not to plow. The other is the ladder up the side of the building. When the snow gets really deep, someone has to go up on the roof and push the snow off, otherwise the building might collapse from the weight of the piled up snow.

This is the parking garage that is outside my apartment. The last stall at the far end is where we leave our trash.

This is the other exit from the hallway in the married students' dorm. On this day the snow was knee deep because I was going to work before the snow removal crew arrived. I got snow on my pants - all the way up above my knees.

After wading through the snow in the last picture, I turned left and found that this walk had had the snow removed already, so it was easy walking.

The snow along the sides of the walkways develops some strange shapes which change everyday because the workers are constantly knocking the snow down into the drainage ditches where the water from the spray system carries it away.

This is a map of the campus. I live in the building on the bottom left and my office is on the third floor of the building on the extreme right. The main buildings where the classrooms are located is sort of in the middle and the cafeteria is to its left. The gym is in the back center and the buildings on the left are student dorms. I have never been in this area so I have no idea what the student rooms are like.

More pictures from around the campus

2012-02-07T09:40:00.001+09:00

This is actually indoors. In the winter they put up partitions so that the snow does not block the hallway, but it does get covered.

I had to wade through this to get from the main building back to the building where I stay. The piles are more than knee high.

This is looking out the front door of the building I live in. The black spaces are there because of the sprinkler system, so if I do not pay attention when I leave the building, I get a good spraying.

Inside my room, I noticed that my coat had a small snow drift over the cell-phone pocket on the sleeve.

This is the hat that I was wearing, before I took it back into the hall and removed the snow. The trip from the main building to my building does not take five minutes. That should give you a good idea of how hard it was snowing.

Snow in Niigata

2012-02-06T07:57:00.002+09:00

Another view of the cafeteria.

The building on the left is the covered hallway that leads from the main building to the cafeteria.

As you can see in this picture, it is covered in snow.

There are big blobs of snow everywhere.

This is the building, the Research Institute, where my office is located. It is on the third floor in the middle of the right side. Notice how someone has shoveled the snow off the fronts of the big blobs of snow over the entrance.

When it is not snow, it is truly beautiful here.

One of the cleaning staff walking from the Research Institute to the main building. As you can see, the snow is well over her head. Also the line of dots in the middle of the path are the sprinkler heads for the system that removes the snow.

I found this bug trapped between the screen and the window. I assume that it has been there all winter.

Niigata in the Snow

2012-02-05T14:55:00.001+09:00

This is one of the roads in the campus. The black areas are cleared of snow because of the sprinkler system that sprays warmish water around. However, the snow builds up in the areas the water can not reach.

This pattern was formed by the water sprays. The white dots are snow flakes.

This is the trees on the back side of the campus.

Another look at the snow covered trees.

This is the classroom where I have been teaching. I was really fun and very effective. There were eight students plus four facilitators, graduate students who act as teaching assistants.

At one point the sun came out for a little while and I could see the mountains.

The campus is in a valley, close to the mountains and a few kilometers from the river. The scenery is really beautiful when we get a chance to see it.

This is the cafeteria where I eat. I have a little kitchen in my apartment and I cooked a lot the first week I was here. However, after trying this cafeteria a few times, I have decided to eat most of my meals here. The food is pretty good and it is very cheap.

Niigata Snow

2012-02-04T11:11:00.002+09:00

The round building is the end of the library and the other buildings house the classrooms, faculty offices, and some other things.

This was looking in the opposite directions, away from the school. There is a row of mountains in the background, even if you can not see them.

This is almost the same view as in the first picture, but there has been a short break in the snow so you can see the base of the mountains.

This is more or less the same view as the second picture and now the mountains are much clearer.

The first floor of the Research Institute, where I have my office, contains a faculty lounge. I have been told that this is where we will have the graduation for the course I am teaching.

Although it has been snowing almost continuously since I got here, there have been a few breaks. From what I have been able to see, it is very beautiful around here.

International University of Japan

2012-02-03T07:36:00.000+09:00

This is the view out the window at the end of the hall in front of my office. You can see it but there is a row of mountains behind the line of trees. It frequently snows so hard that the visibility is reduced to almost nothing.

From the window at the other end of the hall, you can see the main campus and at this time some of the mountains were visible. The black line in the middle is the path that I must take to get from my classroom to my office.

At the ground level the path looks like this. The top of the snow on the side is level with my shoulders.

In the first floor waiting room for the bus to town, I found this scale model of the campus. My apartment is in the bottom left corner, the main campus is in the middle and my office is the last building on the leftmost road.

The trees are truly beautiful. Instead of leaves, they are dressed in blobs of snow.

International University of Japan

2012-02-02T08:28:00.000+09:00

This is the view out my apartment window. The building in the background is housing for married faculty and the campus proper is beyond that.

This is looking out a third floor window at the main entrance to the university. The dark area in the foreground is a roof. It is hard to see, but water is spraying out from the pipe on the wall and there is water spraying from just in front of where I was standing. The water keeps the snow from piling up on the roof. According to the TV news a number of houses have collapsed because of the weight of the snow on the roofs.

This the view out of another window. The roof on the left covers a walkway that leads to the cafeteria and the student dorms.

This is my office. It has a computer with an internet connection and I was given all the office supplies that I will need. It has central heating so it is a good place to stay on cold days. So far I have been arriving at about 7 a.m. and staying here until about 5 p.m., leaving, of course, for classes and such.

This is the view out some first floor windows. You can see how high the snow is. In most places it is over my head.

International University of Japan

2012-02-01T07:50:00.001+09:00

After a confusing tour of the campus (lots of round about routes and a huge information overload, I was taken to the place where I will stay. I have a one room apartment that is on campus. The end of the room in the picture contains a bed, open shelves, a table with two chairs, and a TV that gets the regular channels plus the satellite channels.

From behind the bed, the kitchen area is on the other side of the table. There is a dish cabinet with three sets of dishes and silverware. Next to the stove/sink unit there is a microwave oven and a toaster. There is also a small refrigerator. The blue object on the left is my suitcase. Also on the left is an entrance into the other area of the apartment.

The other area contains a washer and drier. The door to the toilet/bath unit is on the right beside the washer and on the left there is a large closet.

There is a small entrance hall, so that you can take off you shoes, which are definitely covered with snow.

I had a telephone call from my wife and she said that my camera has been repaird and that it is in the mail. Hopefully it will arrive today so I can start using it again.

Niigata snow

2012-01-31T07:40:00.001+09:00

This is the main entrance to the International University of Japan. As you can see, the court yard is covered with more than a meter of snow. The classroom in which I will be teaching is straight ahead on the third floor.

My office is on the third floor of this detached building. It is called a Research Institute, but apparently it is mostly used as office space for visiting faculty.

This is on the opposite side of the campus. It is the parking lot on the first floor of the building where I will be staying.

My little apartment is on the second floor on this end of the building.

The classroom areas and all the student dorms are connected by roofed hallways, but the research institute and the faculty housing are completely separate. This road separates the university proper on the right from the faculty housing on the left.

My apartment is in the building on the right. You can just see the top floor. The pile of snow along the side of the road is about the same height as my head.

At Urasa city

2012-01-30T07:28:00.001+09:00

As the train pulled into the station I got this view, if you can call it that, of the city of Urasa, Niigata Prefecture.

My friend Tony, who works at the University, picked me up at the station. This is the view from the waiting area in front of the bus stop.

I found this to be the most surprising thing here. The streets and sidewalks all have these little gadgets that spray of water, preventing the build up of snow.

It was just about 1 p.m. so Tony and I went to this restaurant where I bought him lunch. The initial orientation for the course I am teaching will start in just a few minutes, so this must be short. I will try to post more pictures tomorrow. By the way, my wife called and said that my camera has been repaired. She is going to go get it today and mail it to me, so I should be able to take better pictures in a day or two.

Niigata

2012-01-29T10:07:00.000+09:00

I finished teaching my last class of the year and waited in the snow with the students in order to get the bus to the subway station. Unless something extremely unexpected happens, this is the end of my university teaching career.

The next day, Saturday, my wife came with me to Sendai Station to say goodbye. I am going to teach in a special program at the International University of Japan. I had reserved a seat on the 9:41 Shinkansen to Tokyo, however, I would get over at an earlier stop, Omiya. The waiting room was crowded because at this time of day there are many trains that go to Tokyo with very few intermediate stops.

This is Sendai city soon after we left the station. This is the south side of the city. I do not go there very much since I live beyond the last stop on the north end of the subway line.

At Omiya I waited for about half an hour and then rode the Joetsu Shinkansen (There are now a number of Shinkansen lines going to various places in Japan.)

At first we rode through a flat plain, but we soon entered a tunnel in which we remained for the rest of the trip, except for brief periods and around a couple of stations

The tunnel was so dark that I was able to use the window as a mirror and take my own picture. You may recall that my camera was returned for repairs, so I am using my cell phone camera.

When we came out of the tunnel and entered a station, I was surprised by the snow. Everything was covered and it was snowing hard. At Omiya it had been a beautiful day. I guess the mountains through which we tunneled kept the storm on the west side of Japan.

At the first stop after exiting the tunnel, almost everyone got off the train. I was surprised until I realize that this was a hot spring. My stop was less than 10 minutes further west, down in a valley.

Snow

2012-01-28T04:17:00.000+09:00

We finally had some snow, enough that the world turned white. This is the path that takes me from my front door to the riverside.

This is the view along the top of the levee. Notice that the mountains have entirely disappeared.

When I reached Asahigaoka station, I stepped out the back entrance to see what the park looked like.

As I entered Miyagi Gakuin U, I noticed that the young lady in the statue had snow on her hat.

The sky had cleared, although I was only about six kilometers away from my condo, and the quadrangle at school was quite pretty. Although it was early, the grounds staff had already cleared the campus sidewalks.

On my way home in the late afternoon, the clouds had returned but the moon was bright.

Also I noticed that the red berries were beginning to turn yellow. The winter cold has finally arrived.

Still going home

2012-01-27T09:04:00.000+09:00

The areas that I was walking through gradually became mostly one and two story homes. I even found this well cared for garden.

This part of Sendai is quite hilly and many of the houses can only be accessed by stairs. Notice on the right there is a flat area between the stairs. This is for a bicycle so that it does not have to bump on the individual stairs.

This large area had a couple of houses in it, if my memory serves me correctly. (I find it hard to remember what used to be in an area after it has all been torn down.) It appears that they are building a new apartment house here.

All over Japan, the small streams are mostly lined with some sort barrier to keep the water contained. This is a result of 1500 years or rice cultivation, where the proper circulation of water is of utmost importance.

On the left is the remains of an apartment building and on the right is the parking facility for it. Even before the earthquake there were very few, if any, people living in the building, and it was in very bad shape. Now it is being used as a storage area for appliances that were destroyed by the quake.

Still going home

2012-01-26T06:24:00.000+09:00

I passed a medium sized hospital and found the parking lot to have a number of ambulances. This was not surprising but the ambulance on the left was. Have you ever seen an ambulance with windows like that? I was very tempted to enter the parking lot and look in the windows to see the inside. However, there was no gate and I would have had to walk around the block to get in, so I just took this picture.

Parking is always a problem in the city. This apartment building uses the first two floor for parking, even the spaces between the outside pillars, which require the car to drive on the sidewalk to park.

A few years ago we had gas stations everywhere, but soon there were too many and they ones making less profit soon started disappearing. Now, there are convenience stores everywhere. I think that the number has reached a peak because I have seen one or two that have recently closed.

This is the train line between Sendai and Yamagata. It goes up over the mountains. As you can see, it is a one track line, dividing into two tracks only around stations. The Kita Sendai Station is about 100 meters behind me.

This obviously was a house that was recently torn down, probably because of damage from the earthquakes. I was really surprised by the pinkish house in the middle. It appears to have two rooms, one making up the first floor and the other the second.

This is becoming typical of this area. One store is open and doing business, but the store next to it is closed and out of business.

2012-01-25T05:08:00.000+09:00

This is a typical automated parking lot. You get a ticket from the machine on your way in and on the way out you put the ticket back into a machine that tells you how much to pay into the slot. They even give change. When a large old building comes down in the downtown area, it usually takes a couple of years before they can start putting up a new buildings, if the ownership changes, that is. During that time, most places become parking lots like this. There are also many parking building, so parking is not such a problem as it might be.

This is a Japanese post box. They are always red and typically stand on a single post, pun intended. Most of these boxes have the new mail picked up at least a couple of times a day. With email, cell phones, Facebook and Twitter the volume of mail has gone down and a while back the Post Office, like the train systems and the public universities, were turned into semi-private institutions. I don't know the details. I probably should spend the time and energy to find out but I am really not interested.

On one of the back streets, I passed a small Shinto shrine. From the parked car, I could tell that someone was inside the lefthand building but I could see no movement. Behind the shrine, is part of Tohoku University, a formally public university, that is now semi-private. The land is an island of space surrounded by buildings and contains the agricultural department.

A new way home

2012-01-24T04:54:00.000+09:00

I left the art exhibit and immediately turned north on a narrow side street. As always the street was lined with telephone poles and power lines. I read an article on the internet that claimed that they had started putting all the telephone and power lines underground in Tokyo, but I really doubt this, especially after the experience gained in our earthquakes and the predictions of another strong one in the Tokyo area. The problem is that underground breaks in the lines are hard to find and even harder to repair. After the quakes, all over the city you could see crews climbing every pole and testing the connections, repairing and reconnecting as necessary. If everything had been underground, this would have been an even more difficult project.

A fence had something painted on it, but I could not figure out if it was supposed to be representational or abstract art. In any case, to me, it appeared to be simply a long thing yellow blob.

This building, the one with a sign on the roof, is a funeral home. The design on the front face made it stand out from the rest of the buildings.

This building was very thin. It could not have been more than one small room wide and there was no room for more than one very small apartment on each floor. As I looked at it, I shuddered to think what it must have been like to be on the top floor during the earthquake.

This building, with the key-shaped sign on the left side, is the place where we have to go if we need a new key for our apartment. Our condo administrative office, keeps track of how many keys there are for each apartment and, if we want an additional one (both of my kids have one), we have to go to that office, which is on our compound, and get some paperwork, which we bring to this store. It takes a few days to get a new key because they are of the most advanced design and are basically impossible to pick.

Mostly art

2012-01-23T13:42:00.000+09:00

Here is a closeup of the driving school building that is being torn down.

This ad is on a large panel inside the Yaotome subway station. The V in V SMILE! stands for Vegalta and it is an ad for the local pro soccer team.

However, it you get up close to it, this is what you see - the faces of fans.

Here is another shot showing a little of the end of V SMILE! so you can judge the size of the pictures. They are smaller than one square inch. This is a very creative use of art. If I had become a commercial artist like I wanted in high school maybe I would have been doing things like this.

This is near where I have my art classes. In the center you can see a large building covered with blue tarps. It contains a large hall, restaurants and some classrooms for rent. It was badly damaged and they are expecting that it will take the rest of the year to repair it enough to open it for the public again. I was here because some of the students from the art class were joining me in a visit to an art exhibit. I had seen the picture on TV and wanted to see it in person.

The artist, whose name I have forgotten, sorry, makes one huge picture every year. This one shows the aftermath of the tsunami.

This is some of the detail.

The previous year's picture was also on display. It was a view of our galaxy from outer space. Very pretty.

I sneaked behind the galaxy picture to see how it was constructed. It was made from sheets of plywood with a frame around the outside. These frames were bolted together so that it became on large picture. From the front it looked flat but from the back you can see that it has buckled a little.

2012-01-22T04:57:00.000+09:00

A beautiful winter day.

Walking across the bridge on my way to Yaotome, I noticed that the snow had clearly marked the places where the surface of the sidewalk had cracked during the earthquakes. Most of the sidewalks in the city are like this, cracks every four or five meters.

When I got to the other end of the bridge, I saw that the driving school building that had been badly damaged in the quakes was almost completely gone. I also realized that behind that building the driving school had another much newer building. I wonder if they will just use the new building or if they will build a new structure. Driving schools need space for administration and for classrooms. Japanese driving school give a lot of classroom instruction before the students can get anywhere near a car. In addition to the rules of the road, the students must learn about how a car works, engines, transmissions and that sort of stuff.

A while back I showed the Christmas tree and other decorations that were in the hall of the building where I take my art classes, now that it was just after New Year's, the Christmas stuff was gone and were replaced by Shinto New Year's decorations.

2012-01-21T08:28:00.000+09:00

This couple are receiving their cups of sake from the shrine maiden who is hidden behind them.

We moved over to the other side (left) of the main shrine and purchased our fortunes for the year. A tall octagonal wooden box has a small hole in the top and you shake it until a bamboo stick comes out. The stick has a number written on it and that number refers to a shelf in a large box behind the counter. The shrine maiden takes a packet of paper out of the place that corresponds to the number that you got. The above picture shows what the paper looks like when it is unfolded. It gives your fortune in various areas, such as love, business, education, etc. My overall fortune was the lowest level of good. After you read it, you fold it lengthwise a number of times and then tie it to a tree in front of the main shrine building. This is so the gods will remember, if it is good, and maybe change their minds, if it is bad.

The tree, here actually some bamboo branches tied to a stake in the ground, looks like it is a tree in bloom, maybe a spring cherry tree.

This is what it looks like up close.

As we were leaving the temple grounds, we had to pass a long line of people waiting to pay their respects.

We walked to Izumi Chuo to have lunch and do some shopping. I noticed that a space that had been a paved parking lot for a couple of years was now a construction site.

This is the display outside an Italian restaurant that I eat at quite often. My wife and I decided not to eat there and moved down the hall a ways to a noodle shop instead.

Futakashira Shrine

2012-01-20T04:58:00.000+09:00

Most years we go to the shrine on New Year's Day, often just after midnight. This year, however, we waited until January 2nd. We needed to go shopping the Futakashira Jinja, or shrine, is more or less on the way. When you enter the grounds of a shrine or temple, you are supposed to purify yourself with water. This is a line of people waiting at the fountain for their turn so they can enter the grounds. There were elaborate instructions written on the piece of paper that you can see behind the head of the woman on the right. You were supposed to pour water over both hands and rinse out your mouth.

We then moved toward the main shrine building and joined another line. This time we went up a short flight of stairs to the floor level and performed a short ritual. You first make a small offer of cash which you place in a large collection box. Many people give one yen or ten yen, the two smallest coins but this year I gave 100 yen, about 80 cents in the US. Then you bow and pull on a rope that rings a bell, which sounds more like a metal rattle. Next you put your hands together and ... hmm, pray is not the right word, but I can not think of one that is correct. I always let my mind go blank and just focus on the experience of standing there. After ten seconds or so, you bow again and move of to the right in the picture. You go down another short flight of stairs and reach the ground level. At this point there is a little tent set up. The shrine maidens off you a shallow ceramic cup. You unwrap the paper around it and hold it out with both hands. The shrine maiden fills it with sake, Japanese rice wine. There is not very much and most people drink it in three ritualistic sips.

Since New Year's Eve there has been a fire on the grounds. This is part of the celebration apparently because every shrine that I have visited on New Year's has had a bonfire. The fire at Futakashira Jinja has gotten quite small but the heat from it is still welcome. Before laying the fire, they put down two large sheets of iron, sheets that are usually used to make temporary roads on construction sites.

These people are standing at the shrine shop, waiting to buy good luck charms and objects to place in their home shrine. Many Japanese people have a small shrine in their homes. It is usually place on a small shelf up in a corner near the ceiling. It will be a small bare wood representation of a shrine building and will often have small offerings of various kinds. These same people will also have a Buddhist altar which will contain pictures of their ancestors and various offerings for them.

Odds and ends again

2012-01-19T03:21:00.000+09:00

This is a brand new building that is just off, but on the other side of, the main street to Izumi Chuo. I think it replaced an older building that was damaged in the quakes. The top floor seems to be one big empty room. This means that it is very likely to be an office of some kind.

A lonely bird sitting on a rock in Nanakitagawa, the river by my condo.

This is Sendai Station at night. The Christmas decorations were still up. The cars in the foreground are taxi, waiting for the chance to move into the taxi stand in the lighted area under the balcony.

I am having trouble with my new camera. It stopped working. On Saturday I will take it back to the store where I bought it. It has a 5 year guarantee so it will be fixed but in the meantime I will have to use the camera in my cell phone. I still have a backlog of photos from the new camera, enough for two more days, then I will have to start using the cell phone. You will probably see a difference in the the pictures because the cell phone camera is much less flexible.

Dou'unji

2012-01-18T06:05:00.000+09:00

As offerings, people often place clothing on the Buddhist statues. Also you will find coins and drinks (as with the yogurt drink yesterday) and sweets.

When I was here the last time, many of these old carved stones had fallen over, they have now all beer stood up again. On the right side of the group there are a few that are broken but they have been propped up as straight as possible.

I left the temple grounds and started for home. I decided to walk down Route 4, the Sendai ByPass, and then turn right on the main road to Izumi Chuo. One of the first things I noticed was this large game center which was still closed because of earthquake damage. It will be interesting to see if it opens again.

A little farther down the road, another game and restaurant area was doing a booming business. The flags in the foreground are advertising soft cream, which is like ice cream except it is soft and does not contain any cream.

The little stream coming out of the temple grounds has become much bigger at this point. The drainage from the surrounding hills enters at many points. This stream weaves through the area and eventually enters the Nanakitagawa River within a few hundred meters of my condo.

I was not sure what this building contains, but the building itself is interesting. The end with the green roof and the red pillars makes it look like some kind of traditional building, but it is ferro-concrete, not wood.

Dou'unji

2012-01-17T08:32:00.001+09:00

This is the the corridor that leads from the priest's quarters which are off to the left to the meditation hall which you can see in the rear.

This is looking back on the same structure. The priest's quarters are on the left and the meditation hall is on the hill to the right. I assume that the building between the corridor going up the hill and the priest's home contains a reception hall of some sort. At least that is the way most temples seem to be constructed.

I was surprised that the statues survived all the shaking.I am not sure who is represented in this statue but because of the children a good guess would be Kannon, who is a protector of pregnant women and children.

Another statue that survived the tremors. Again I do not know who it represents and in this case can not even offer a guess. I am sure that there are sufficient clues that some who was better educated than me would know exactly who is represented.

Most temples have little secondary buildings like that are dedicated to someone or something that is not the primary focus of the temple.

As I followed the road back to the main road, I had to pass through a place where the road cut through a small hill. The tree roots had been exposed and now created a view that reminded me of some modern sculpture.

Someone had left flowers, a yogurt drink and some water as an offering at this little statue.

When I was here just after the earthquakes many of these statues had fallen over. They have now been righted but the tall one in the middle is still leaning at a strange angle.

Dou'unji

2012-01-16T14:07:00.000+09:00

I decided to walk over to Dou'unji and see what was happening there. The last time I visited the temple, a work crew was just finishing the removal of the main hall of the temple. I also decided to take the back roads on my way north. I was very surprised to find this store hidden away in a housing area. It sells fishing equipment. The pictures in the window are prints made from fish. The fish is painted with black ink and then a piece of paper is pressed against it to make an image.

There are still blue tarps everywhere but a blue fence to hide the damaged house was something quite new.

I reached the entrance to Dou'unji and found the stump of a big tree. It was very symbolic with the dead tree being covered with a new growth of vines. Perfect for the entrance to a Zen temple.

Even though it is winter, the garden was still very pretty. Some of the plants retained colorful leaves.

Still walking- more

2012-01-15T14:49:00.000+09:00

The damage to the levee on this, the southside, of the river is unrepaired and the blue tarps are starting to wear out. The cracks in the levee are much wider here than they are on my side of the river.

The last time I walked by here, this was a row of two story houses. At least three have gone already and they were stripping the one on the left, obviously getting ready to tear it down.

Crossing a bridge and getting on the other side of a small stream, I could look back at the place where I had just walked. The empty lots are at the left side of the middle. The house that is being stripped is just to the left of the tall house in the middle.

This is the house that is being stripped. It was quite large. I wonder what will happen to the empty spaces they are creating. I would expect that they will become a large apartment house or parking lots.

I have finally reach a point where I can get a clear view of my condo. My place is on the second floor of the right side of the right-hand building.

Using a telephoto lens, I can get a shot of my balcony. Again it is on the second floor on the right. The strange looking things in the front are things for the kids to play on in a park

This is a drain that they constructed that allows water to flow across the large flat area that has been constructed here. I have shown many pictures of it but always from the other side of the river. The white bags that look like sandbags are about waist high.

Still walking

2012-01-14T12:49:00.000+09:00

In the middle of a housing area, I found this parking lot for a construction company.

This is the bridge that I had just walked across. It is about two kilometers to the east of the bridge that is nearest my condo. This bridge carries Route 4, the Sendai Bypass, over the river.

Another replacement house going up. There is so much construction going on that it must be having a large positive effect on the economy.

The building in the middle is my condo. The mountain on the right just over the building is Izumigadake and it is the home of the nearest ski slope, about a 20 minute drive.

The reflection of the sun in the water was very pretty. This apartment building was badly damaged in the quakes but the people were able to remain in their apartments.

Scenic Japan. Enough said.

One of the first pictures that I drew when I started doing art again was of this house and the vegetation in front of it. It appears that they are having to do a lot of work on it.

Out for a walk

2012-01-13T10:11:00.000+09:00

This is a used car lot. My building is on the left. The building on the right is actually a tower on the shopping center, which is mostly still closed, but we are hoping for something to happen soon.

This area is quite built up. The empty space on the other side of the road is a stream which is four or five meters below the level of the road. In spite of having so many building, both housing and commercial, you can see, if you look carefully, two greenhouses in the middle of the picture.

I have shown pictures of this building before. It used to be a restaurant but it was so badly damaged in the quakes that it can not be used any more. Speaking of quakes, we had three yesterday. No damage, but they were strong enough to bother people. I was a bit surprised that I did not have a physical reaction to them as I have had with some of the aftershocks.

Looking back at the building, I realized that they were removing the building that used to be beside it. However, as in all Japanese construction they have put up temporary barriers so that the work itself is not visible from the road.

The last time I came by here there was an empty badly damaged house here. Now they have turned it into a parking lot.

This is the same river that passes by my condo, but I am at least a kilometer to the east, crossing the next bridge.

Before the quakes this building used to be black and it contained a game center. They are repairing it but it does not look like the game center will return. However, I could not determine what was going to replace it. I will have to walk over that way again soon to find out.

This is the wall of the building. The local graffiti artists have been at the tempting white space already.

Birds along the river

2012-01-12T04:46:00.000+09:00

I went out for a walk along the river, just to get some exercise, but I saw a lot of birds. Here some ducks were looking for lunch.

There was a large white crane fishing on one of the islands in the river.

The trash carried by the river when it flooded last month was still wrapped around the bottom of this berried bush

Another white crane. For some reason there was a lot of them on this day.

The crane was moving through the shallows, looking for something to eat.

The cranes move really slowly when they are fishing. It is very relaxing to stand, or sit, and watch them.

There again I found stuff carried by the river but this time it was up in the trees, about chest high.

I walked around the inside of Nanakita Park and there was just enough breeze that this sculpture was moving. It is much more impressive when it is constantly moving in unexpected ways than when it is just sitting there.

Tomone shopping plus odds and ends

2012-01-11T08:53:00.000+09:00

This was one of our Christmas decorations. The statues were made by my daughter when she was in grade school.

My wife, daughter, and granddaughter decided to walk to Izumi Chuo and do some shopping. As we left our building, we found some people working. It was one of the members of the committee that is studying the problem of what repairs to make. He is the knees you can see on the left. For about one tenth of the cost as proposed by a construction company, he made some simple repairs that allow us to more safely use the entrance hall. Here he is leveling off the two sections by filling the space with cut up roof tiles and then covering the with some more red carpeting.

Here the space has been filled with tiles and the carpet is being laid.

At this point the height difference was too great to use tiles, so he had a sheet of metal bent and bolted it to the floors, then covered it with red carpeting.

As we walked along the levee, the red flowers and white snow caught my attention.

At the Ito Yokado department store, Tomone wanted to ride in the special cart for children. He got in and fastened the safety belt herself and then pretended to steer as we walked around the store.

Sometimes she would undo the belt and stand up so that she could ask a question. Here she is suggestion that we go to a shorter checkout line. However, in my experience, if you move to a new, shorter line, something will happen and that line will take even longer.

On the way to Miyagi Gakuin University

2012-01-10T06:12:00.000+09:00

This is the driving school at the other end of the bridge. Just after the quakes I showed workers replacing part of the front of the driving school building, a part that had fallen to the grown. Now it appears that they are starting to tear down the whole thing. I mentioned this to my wife and she said that one of the neighbors, who attends the school, had said that the building had been badly damage and had not been being used, condemned by the city.

As I was entering the campus, I notice some police around a car. There had been an accident and four police officers were looking at the damage. The other car was parked off to the left, where another officer was with the other driver.

Once in side the school, I stopped here, at this desk in the hall. Scattered around the school there are desks with plastic bottles of alcohol. As you go by, you can squirt a little on your hands and rub it around as protection against the flu and colds. Most schools and many public buildings have provided this service for the past few years.

On my return home, the river was quite pretty, although it as very misty.

Another bonenkai

2012-01-09T04:21:00.000+09:00

As I left home the sky was beautiful.

I took the subway to Sendai Station and then went through and out the east exit, the side that I do not go to as often as the west side where there are more stores. I was going to the building that is straight ahead in the picture. When they first built it, the building contained a large electronics store plus some small shops. The electronics store could not compete with the one that was behind me when I took the picture and closed. Now the building is full of small shops and restaurants.

The bonenkai was for the members of the Sendai Book Club and more than half of the regular members show up for a meal at this restaurant, which claims it specializes in pork, but in reality the menu was much the same as at any decent izakaya.

Out side the restaurant there was a large sign showing pictures of the various dishes that they serve.

And by the door, they had this sign to whet your appetite.

After nearly three hours of eating, drinking (I had iced tea), and socializing we left. There was no nijikai because it was a work night and all of us are a bit on the old side. We made a mistake in the elevator. We went to the basement floor but discovered that there was no way to get into the subway system. We did, however, get a chance to see this pachinko shop. Pachinko is a pin ball machine game in which you pay for the balls and when you are finished they buy back any that you have. It is actually a game of skill and there are people who make a living at this.

JALT Bonenkai

2012-01-08T03:56:00.000+09:00

As you probably realize, I am not posting things on the day they happen, but a while later. On December 16, the local chapter of JALT (Japan Association for Language Teaching, a professional organization that I help found back in 1978) had its bonenkai. I think I posted about bonenkais before but, in case you missed it or more likely did not understand my ramblings, I will explain again. The bo means forget in Japanese, nen means year, and kai means meeting. So, a bonenkai is a meeting to forget the year. It is a time to go out with the other members of a group that you belong to and eat and drink, a time to have fun and to forget that bad things that might have happened to or within the group and reestablish positive relationships for the coming year. Each group that you belong to will have a bonenkai during December, so it is a busy month for most people.

The JALT bonenkai was held after a regular monthly meeting during which there were academic presentations about language teaching. Nearly 40 of us, teachers and many spouses, went to an izakaiya, a Japanese eating and drinking establishment, where reservations had been made long before. The meal was nabe, dish or pan in Japanese. This is a pan of soup and vegetables that sits in the middle of the table and each person takes what they want and eats from their own small dish. The meat was beef, although sometimes it might be something else, thin sliced so that it cooks almost immediately. The meat comes on a large platter and, to eat, you take a slice with your chopsticks and put it in the soup, just long enough to start to change color. You take it out of the soup and place it in your dish, which contains a beaten raw egg. The hot meat partially cooks the egg that coats its. The combination sounds terrible to most foreigners but, once they try it, they find that it is delicious.

This is our nabe and a dish of raw eggs.

We sat at two long tables. While we were eating, we stayed in our seats but later people started moving around so that we could talk to all our friends.

Here is another view of the group.

These are the two people who were sitting across the table from me. I only see them at JALT meetings so it was good to have a chance to chat.

Toward the end of the bonenkai, Japanese functions have clear beginnings and ends, they had a free raffle with teaching related materials as prizes. My wife won a dictionary. Also two of us, the oldest two members, received life time memberships to the Sendai Chapter of JALT. One interesting point, I was drinking tea, not beer like most of the others. Look carefully at the certificate that I am displaying.

After the bonenkai, there was a nijikai. Ni means two or second, ji means time and kai is the same as in bonenkai, so a nijikai is a second party. After the first party, in this case the bonenkai, the group splits up into smaller groups of closer friends, some people may go home, but others will move to a new location and continue partying. One of the reasons for this is that many places have a time limit. You pay a flat fee and can drink as much as you want. Once this period is over, you move on to a new place. Back in the days when I went out drinking with my friends, we often went to three or even four different places before giving up and going home.

Before and after art class

2012-01-07T06:52:00.000+09:00

It was a beautiful day, crisp and clear, and everything had a golden tinge in the morning sun.

The view out my window was much the same only the light was not really there yet.

The levee was snow covered.

When I arrived in the lobby of the building where I go to my art classes, I found that they had set up a Christmas tree.

After class we went out to eat and this flower arrange was next to my place.

This is the silhouettes of some of the other members of the class. We are now all retired people. In the past there were some younger people but as the economy worsened they gradual dropped out and then after the earthquake we got down to a final group of nine old men and women.

Another trip to Miyagi Gakuin University

2012-01-06T05:22:00.000+09:00

On this crisp, windless morning the reflections of the buildings in the river were very attractive. In the distance, however, the weather was different. The mountains that should appear in the background are covered by low clouds.

Those clouds soon arrived and the day turned rather blue. However, the sunlight did reach the Kannon on the hill.

The next morning I looked out my living room window and found that world was now white, not blue.

The view along the river was completely different, too.

The red flowers were quite appealing with their little white caps.

Near the bridge I found a spider web that had captured the snow. I am surprised that a spider is able to survive outside in these temperatures. I wonder what it finds to eat.

When I entered Miyagi Gakuin U, I found a film crew hard at work. I suspect that they were filming for some sort of new advertising for the university. Because of the drop in the number of high school graduates (the cause of the aging society), there are now more university seats than needed. This means that, although just about anyone who knows how to breathe can get into a school, the competition for the best students has sharpened tremendously.

Odds and ends of unrelated stuff

2012-01-05T07:08:00.000+09:00

A while back I should a building that I passed on my way home from Tohoku Gakuin U. A work crew appeared to be taking it down. Today I walked passed again and the building was completely gone. All that remained was an empty lot.

The little bridge from my building to the entrance hall has been repaired, at least temporarily, but I suspect that it will stay this way for at least a few years. One of the men on the committee that is evaluating the damage did the work for about a tenth of the estimate that we got from a construction company. The bridge is a thick sheet of bent metal that is screwed to the concrete on either side. It was then covered with the same no-slip outdoor rug as the entrance hall. There is still a bump but it is no where near as big as before.

This is at Asahigaoka. The roads come together is a t-shaped intersection, but in front of the stem is a two story drop into the park. I am amazed that, in the 10 plus years that I have been going here, not a single car has gone through the fence and dropped into the park. The bus depot was behind me when I took this.

Inside the depot, I found that the board showing the bus departure schedule was broken. I have no idea whether or not the problem was associated with the shaking it received during the quakes. A lot of things seem to have developed problems, but a while after the shaking stopped.

This sign shows locations where the buses depart. As with most public signs in Japan the sign has English, sometimes a bit strange, but readable. Recently newer signs frequently have Korean as well as English.

This is at Miyagi Gakuin U. The men are getting the snow plow ready for use.

The view from the teachers' lounge was interesting. The mountains were quite pretty.

On the way home I again saw the moon, but through the clouds.

Christmas decorations at Sendai Station

2012-01-04T09:59:00.001+09:00

As I walked along the levee on my way downtown, I saw this bird resting on a rock in the middle of the river.

At Sendai Station, I saw this large walk-through Christmas tree in front of S-Pal, one of the stores on the area.

As I got close enough to read the sign and to see inside, I found that it was a computer setup that predicted the future relationship of couples. I did not stop to see what kind of predictions it was making, since I was with a male friend.

In front of the station entrance was this large display, placed there by a commercial company but with minimal advertising.

These two Christmas trees were also commercial ads, but decorations at the same time.

Returning home along the river, I saw a pair of birds of a different species relaxing on the same rock. I wonder where the white bird went.

Futakashira Shrine

2012-01-03T06:01:00.000+09:00

Yesterday, January 2nd, we had to go shopping so my wife and I decided that this would be a good time to stop at the local shrine. We had a few things from last year, Shinto objects that we had acquired in visits to various shrines, and these are supposed to be burned at special ceremonies at a shrine. The idea is that the objects soak up all the badness and this is then burned along with the object. When you enter the shrine precincts, the first thing you do is wash your hands and rinse out your mouth. As you can see, in spite of the fact that it was still a little before noon, there was a line.

We stood in another line in front of the main shrine building. The procedure here is to first mount the steps. You can see a man in a grayish coat on the right already there. Once on the top, you put a donation in the large box that is provided for this. These gifts to the gods are usually small, 10, 50, and 100 yen are most common, although once in a while someone will put in a large amount. After giving the gift, you grasp a long rope that is hanging down and use it to ring a bell. This alerts the gods that you are there. Then you bow twice, clap your hands twice, stand quietly for a moment during which some people make a wish, than bow again and move off to the right.

On the right there is a small tent with a counter where you are given a small dish into which a shrine maiden pours a little Japanese sake, rice wine which you drink, keeping the dish as a good luck charm.

The next place on the right is a store where they sell good luck charms and objects to place in home shrines. We do not have one so we did not buy anything.

We crossed over to the left of the main shrine where there was a fire that had been burning since New Year's Eve. It is a good place to stand and get warm. The objects that were to be burned were placed in a big pile behind this small building.

We then moved toward what looked like a tree in full bloom and a large open-sided tent.

Inside the tent we bought our fortune for the coming year. After you pay 200 yen, you shake a box with a small hole in the top. A stick with a number on it comes out and the shrine maiden gives you a printed sheet (above) with your fortune on it. Mine was okay not great and not bad.

After reading your fortune, you fold it up and tie it to bamboo branches that are standing there. This is what looked like the blooming tree. You leave it there so that it will come true, if good, or be modified, if bad.

As we left the shrine precincts, I looked back along the long line that was developing and though about what it must have been like on New Year's itself, and was glad we waited.

Pageant of Lights

2012-01-02T04:44:00.000+09:00

The organizing groups calls this the Pageant of Lights. Josenji Dori, one of the main streets, has a wide tree-lined divider in the middle as well as a row of trees on each sidewalk. During December each year these trees are covered with small lights. This year there were fewer bulbs than usual because we are still not producing as much electricity as before the quakes. There is enough and we have not had to have the rolling blackouts that they were predicting, but everyone is being careful.

The view from the divider between lanes.

One of the trees at the end has blue lights and is particularly pretty.

At the end of the arcade a tree is decorated with red and green lights and looks very Christmasy in contrast to the yellow bulbs on the trees.

The police are out in force, directing cars and pedestrians.This policewoman was preventing pedestrians from standing in the road while waiting for the street lights to change. She was the shortest police officer I have ever seen.

One of the entrances to the subway goes through the basement of a large department store. As we passed through the first floor on our way to the escalators, we saw this chandelier, made of crystal glass from some place in Eastern Eurpoe. I thought I might buy it to use as a reading lamp behind our sofa, but I realized that it is taller than our ceiling.

Happy New Year

2012-01-01T14:04:00.000+09:00

I felt a little strange using that title for this entry, because I have no pictures. We had a big Christmas celebration this year, so my wife and I decided to have a quiet New Year's. On the 31st, we stayed home and watched the Kohaku, a singing contest on NHK Television. It has been broadcast on the evening of the 31st for the last 62 years. It is a contest of the 'best' of the female singers against the 'best' of the males. There is no prize, just the glory of winning. Today I will watch the Emperor's Cup Soccer Tournament final game and then relax for the rest of the day, probably watching the special TV programs.

In the last post, I showed some pictures of the moon. Here is another.

The wild grass along the riverside is quite artistic and, if you focus your attention so you do not notice the buildings and power lines, it gives a feeling of the wild.

I had to spent the day at the art exhibit so I was downtown again. This is the Disney store, which has just been redone in order to appeal to your adult women, rather than kids like in the past.

Looking in through one of the windows. You can see my picture of Hiroshige's wave in the background. The picture frames in the front contain some pictures that would not fit on the walls.

In the evening, my wife and I went out to eat and walked along the arcade which was decorated for Christmas.

Another pair of interesting signs.

The streets are quite bright at night at this time of year.

At the north end of the arcade, the trees are covered with lights and draw a lot of people to the area.

Again Happy New Year!

A round trip to Miyagi Gakuin U

2011-12-31T04:57:00.000+09:00

For a little variety I went up a different flight of stairs at the Asahigaoka subway station and came out on the sidewalk. From there I had a very good view of the bus depot. The upper three stories have rooms that can be rented for club meetings and that sort of thing.

Someone has placed a row of planters, and some water, in the underpass between the bus stop and the university.

From the main entrance road, I could see the building (straight ahead) containing the teachers' lounge and the building where I have all of my classes (on the left).

The student lounge on the first floor of the building in which I teach has flower arrangements but at this time in the morning the lights are not on, so they were very dark.

As I left the Yaotome subway station's second floor exit, I notice that the moon was very bright and low in the sky.

The big apartment building on the corner nearest the station was covered with scaffolding as work finally started on fixing the damage, mostly cracks on the outside.

On the bridge I stopped and took another picture of the full mone.

When I reach the shrine on the levee, The moon was positioned just above the roof.

On my way to class

2011-12-30T10:22:00.000+09:00

This part of town is a bit rundown. There are many new concrete buildings but there are also lots o fbuildings like this fish market.

The road I was on seemed to be going to far to the east so I went down a narrow side street. I found a large parking lot with this structure in a corner. I have no idea what it is but I suspect that it houses a Buddhist statue of some sort.

There were many small companies that seemed to be engaged in manufacturing of some sort. Most had small parking lots, but many of them were, like this one, used to hold piles of junk.

I stopped at a supermarket and bought my supper. The large container is Chinese style fried chicken and vegetables. The small pack is renkon, lotus root, which is one of my favorite foods. In the very front, in front of my chopsticks is a small dumpling that contains an, sweet bean paste.

Since I was early I was the only one in the teacher's room. I ate and then listened to my iPod until class time.

When I got back to my condo, I found that the lights had finally been put on the tree, so it looked very Christmasy.

After setting up the art show

2011-12-29T09:29:00.002+09:00

After we finished setting up, we went to a nearby coffee shop where Wakamatsu Sensei bought us all coffee. This little guy was right in front of my seat.

We broke up the group and I started walking south. I still had an evening class and it was a 15 minute walk to the campus. Along the way I passed a shop that makes hanko, name stamps that are used on documents in place of signatures or even initials. The window display showed the materials that they are made from. Because of worldwide prohibitions on elephant tusks, plastic is now used as well as various stones.

These elephants were also in the window. I think this may have been made from an actual tusk, but quite a while ago.

I also passed a tattoo parlor. In the past only the yakuza, the gangsters, wore tattoos, but because of their popularity in the US, they are becoming more widespread.

In this area the buildings are mostly commercial, two-story concrete structures, but scatter around there are old wooden building. You can see one on the right.

This chimney is visible from many spots but I have been unable to find out why it is there. This area has some small factories. Sometime when I have time, I will have to find a backstreet that will allow me enough access to the area to determine what the company makes.

The second floor of this building, above a Lawson's convenience store, contains a hula dance school, according to the signs.

Scenic Sendai! One of the signs says "Five Bridge". I used to get up set at signs like this but my wife pointed out that, if this is the best that six years of school English can do, English teachers like me will always have jobs. It is interesting that there are many missing plurals as here, but they almost always use a plural form when a number proceeds a noun, for example, "a six miles road". One that is very common on signs is "Shoes Store".

The Izumi Art Club exhibition

2011-12-28T06:05:00.000+09:00

There are seven students who stayed with our teacher, Wakamatsu Sensei, after the earthquakes. For a few months we had classes in his remaining studio and then things were arranged so that we had classes in the NHK Bunka Center again, but this time in a downtown school, rather than the one in Izumi Chuo. Yesterday I was having coffee at Starbucks in Izumi Chuo and noticed that the lights were on in the old classroom so maybe the repairs have finally started.

In this picture we are arranging the pictures before hanging them. Two of the faculty from the university help us put up the show in a professional manner. Using tape measures and string, the pictures are arranged at the same height and with equal spacing between them.

This shows the result of an hour or so of work. Altogether we had 40 pictures and some other stuff.

My pictures this year were all about disasters. They were very therapeutic to do, but now I have gone back to trees, my favorite subject. This building was shown in the newspaper and it had been damaged by wind.

This was a takeoff on a woodblock print by Hiroshige, but I replaced Mount Fuji with a Japanese style house to represent the tsuname.

This is the famous ruins at Hiroshima and represents man's inhumanity to man.

Three of my fellow students (we are all old and the men are retired) checking out the pictures.

Kato San took pictures of all the pictures.

After all the pictures were hung, Wakamatsu Sendei gave a critic of each picture as a learning experience of us.

I had one additional picture in the show. I did it before the earthquake and the subject is a canal scene from Europe. I used a photo that Wakamatsu Sensei had taken on one of his trips as the basis for my drawing. Most of the time I start with a photo but change things to make a more interesting drawing. Sometimes my work comes entirely from my head.

Getting ready for my art club's exhibit

2011-12-27T08:34:00.000+09:00

I was nearing the southern end of the arcade and found that there were a large number of tents where people were selling lots of different things, mostly food.

The empty space in the background is where Maruzen, a bookstore chain that has a large selection of English language books, used to be. Now it has moved to a building next to Sendai Station.

Looking back at the southernmost entrance to the arcade, called Sun Mall here.

Our art exhibit is going to be in this building, on the first floor to the left of the 7/11 convenience store.

This is Meijiya, a chain store that sells imported foods. We used to go to the one in Nagoya a lot when we first moved to Japan, but now we almost never go. We have become used to what is sold in the regular stores.

This is inside Meijiya.

This is the room where we will hang our pictures.

I really liked this plant and am thinking of using it as the subject of a picture. Notice the windows. One side of our exhibition hall is all windows, so everything is visible from the sidewalk. Last year a lot of people walking by stopped and, after looking in, actually came in for a closer look. This hall and a lot of the upper floors of this building belong to the Tohoku Institute of Technology, which allows us to use the site for free. They use it for student shows and for other groups. Last year we our first show here drew more visitors than any other exhibition.

In downtown Sendai

2011-12-26T09:23:00.001+09:00

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and that the next year will be all that you hope it will be.

I have found a four week teaching job in Niigata Prefecture, over on the west coast, so I will be there for the month of February. Later this week, I will check my netbook computer and verify that I can continue blogging from the campus there. If not, I am sure that I can work out something. It should be interesting as I will be teaching only three hours a day and will have weekends free. The area has large amounts of snow but I should be able to do some exploring, and picture taking too.

As I was leaving Miyagi Gakuin U at about 5 p.m., the Christmas lights on the steeple were on for the first time.

The fire station was lit up as I passed and one of the trucks was out in the yard.

The next morning on my way back to Miyagi Gakuin U, I noticed this bus at the Asahigaoka station. Strawberry Cones is an ice cream and pizza shop that specializes in home delivery. I believe they started out as an ice cream shop, which explains the name. They are famous for the strange pizzas that they sell, the toppings can be truly exotic.

After my class I took a bus downtown and then walked along the arcade. There were a few people about but the stores had barely opened when I arrived. Also it was a Thursday, not the busiest day of the week.

I stopped at this Starbucks for a coffee. It was not busy and the waitresses were very friendly, chatting me up once they discovered that I understood Japanese.

A lot of the stores in the arcade have open fronts like this, where they sell stuff right out in the open (under the arcade roof, of course). Notice the sign that says We love Sendai in a mixture of English and Japanese.

There are lots of bicycles but even more cars and trucks.

This is one of the construction sites for the new subway line. It is going to run under the road and this part will go out to the west, eventually ending at the hill top campus of Tohoku U, the national university.

This bus, that looks like a trolly, is called the Loople and it travels in a big loop around the city. It is cheaper than the regular buses and is getting used more and more.

A Merry Christmas with Tomone and Tsubasa

2011-12-25T08:32:00.000+09:00

Let me warn you, if you are not part of my family. These are mostly pictures of my two grandchildren, Tomone, a three year old girl, and Tsubasa, a two year old boy. They were taken yesterday, when we celebrated Christmas because Tsubasa will leave this afternoon, Christmas Day, so that his mother and father can be back in Tokyo in time for work tomorrow.

The first picture is our Christmas tree. We have a tradition in our family of making each Christmas tree. This started when we first moved to Japan and could not buy a tree. Each year we made something different. This tree is made from pieces of cloth hung in the window at the end of our dining room table. By the time that we started to open presents on the morning of Dec 24, the pile of pictures had grow substantially.

These are gingerbread cookies that Tomone and Tsubasa decorated.

For breakfast we had coffee, juice and pie, apple and pumpkin. The kids understood that something special was happening but, since it was their first Christmas morning, they were not as excited as they will be next year when they have memories of this year.

Tsubasa opening a present.

Tsubasa with his new hat opening another present

Tomone looking at a book she got

Tomone with a new game

Tsubasa showing off his new Shinkansen shoes

Here is a better look at the shoes. They are designed to look like the Shinkansen, the Bullet Train. Tsubasa is crazy about trains, so most of his presents are somehow related to trains.

Tomone showing off a tiara that she got

Tsubasa and his grandmother looking at a present

For Christmas Dinner, we all went to our local Chinese restaurant. Not exactly traditional, but it was excellent as always. This is Tsubasa looking at his chopsticks.

We order six different meals and there was quite a bit of sharing

On the way home we stopped in the park across from the 7/11 to let the kids play. Tsubasa liked the swings.

So did Tomone

She also liked running around

My wife and I stayed home, but the rest of them went downtown to see the Christmas lights. (I will eventually show the pictures that I took of them.) While they were out, they bought a Christmas Cake. This is a cake with lots of whipped cream and strawberries. Also there is something that will say Christmas, made from plastic or maybe candy.

My first Christmas in Japan was many years ago, but I remember walking down the street in the little town that we lived in. We walked passed a shop and the man inside came running out insisting that I buy a Christmas Cake. He thought that all foreigners ate Christmas Cake. I, of course, had never seen one. They are nothing at all like the traditional Christmas log and in any case pie or plum pudding was traditional in my part of the country.

Here is Tomone eating her piece of the the cake

Here is Tsubasa being fed his piece

Tsubasa playing with his new train

Tomone using her new huge set of crayons.

I hope that you, the reader, have as wonderful a Christmas as I had this year!

Odds and ends again

2011-12-24T09:20:00.000+09:00

This is a large log that floated down the river and got stuck near my condo.

This is the entrance hall to my apartment. Notice the way the red carpet is shifted to the right in the foreground. This was perfectly straight before the quakes. Also the tilt is accurate everything is leaning to the right. We have approve doing some temporary repairs and I will show them when they are done.

This is the shrine in back of the local supermarket mall, just 50 meters or so from our property. This looks like we have had a heavy snowfall, enough to cover most of the torii, but actually this is ice chips they scraped off the skating rink that is in the mall.

Here you can see that the torii is not covered.

Changing religions, as almost everyone in Japan does, I noticed the moon nearing the Buddhist statue on the top of a store that sells religious equipment.

About half way home along a back road, I passed a badly damaged building. The work crew looked like they were getting ready to tear it down. I will check the next time I pass this way.

This is the administrative building in my condo complex. It looks pretty good at night.

Nearing home

2011-12-23T04:47:00.001+09:00

I passed a garden in a space between the multistory buildings. I noticed that the pumpkins had messages written on them. This one says that living things, people and animals, are important and should be treat well. As I was taking the picture, a woman came out and yell a 'thanks' at me and bowed.

This is a delivery truck pulled by a bicycle. It is the first one I have seen around in a long time.

I crossed the main road and was nearing the river, when I found rice paddies. In the middle of the picture, on the horizon between the two tall buildings you can see the tower on top of the Ito Yokado department store at Izumi Chuo. This paddy is less than a kilometer away from the subway station. Some day soon the owner will get old enough that he will want to stop farming and will sell this land for a huge amount of money, and we will have more high rise buildings.

This building is a depot for a company that supplies drinks to vending machines. Trucks come here, load up, and go out refilling the machines in this part of the city.

This is our local shrine, Futakashira Jinja. We will go here on New Years to greet the god. This is also the shrine where my granddaughter Tomone was introduced to the gods in a Shinto ceremony.

This appears to be the remains of a shack used for on site storage when this area was a farm. There is still a small garden next to it. Twenty years ago there were almost no buildings in this area, everything was farm land and it was just a little backwater along the river. Then they built the subway and everything started changing. Now it is at least 90% metropolitan with small gardens scattered in between the tall buildings.

This is the house where the priest from the shrine lives. The shrine has been becoming more and more popular so he seems to be doing quite well economically.

I have finally reached the levee-top walkway that leads directly to my condo. The riverside is very pretty at this time of year.

Still going home

2011-12-22T05:00:00.000+09:00

I was still walking along the ridge line and planned to follow it until a right turn would put me on the road that crosses the bridge nearest my condo. As I walked, I came on this strange looking building. The end was only wide enough for a door. The building was shaped like a large piece of pie.

Here is the building from the other side. The last picture shows the end that is on the left. There are many weirdly shaped buildings like this in Japan. The building is designed to fit the shape of the land and almost all lots are small so this becomes important as buildings become larger. This building used all but a few inches of the property.

These stairs lead up to an even higher level than the one I was on.

I decided, for no particular reason, to walk on a road a bit further down the slope. So I went down a flight of stairs. You can see them on the left, with a similar flight on the right. The tunnel allows traffic to pass under the Shogen heights and the road is the main route north from Izumi Chuo.

Most large buildings, especially apartment houses, have their own water tanks, usually on the roof to provide constant water pressure. I was surprised to find two large tanks associated with this building and both of them at ground level.

The cliff is quite steep along the road. The road, on the left is at the level of the second floor of the houses that line the road. This view shows part of the roof over the first floor and the backyard, which must be at least a meter wide.

This view of the same roof shows how the tiles are covered where the sides of the roof come together.

The wall beyond the stairs holds the house's backyard in place. It looks like the garden would be quite pretty in the summer time. I will have to remember to come back here when it is warm.

Walking along the Shogen heights

2011-12-21T04:43:00.000+09:00

The sidewalk along the northern, cliff-edge park in Shogen is lined with cherry trees. In the spring, when they are in blossom it is beautiful here, but at this time of year with the leaves all gone there is also a kind of austere beauty.

This strange looking tree is cut back every year, but for some reason it was not trimmed this fall, so the summer growth of branches is still there.

Most of the leaves are off the trees but this little one was still hanging in there and contrasted nicely with the gray around it.

The buildings on the horizon are in downtown Sendai. The Shogen heights are tall enough that there is a good view of the city.

The first floor of this building used to contain a mom-and-pop store but it has been converted into a long row of vending machines selling drinks and cigarettes.

I must try to find out what the name of these plants are. The red berries and deep green leaves are so Christmasy.

This is someone's collection of bonzai. They are on a shelf beside the road. It is so nice to be in a place where things can be left out with little fear of them disappearing.

Still going home

2011-12-20T06:05:00.000+09:00

The flowers at the official entry to Parktown are replanted often, so that they are always in bloom.

The red of the berries on this plant are not done justice by this picture. They were a very bright, strong color so the plant looked like Christmas.

They were finally repaving a section of the road that had buckled in the earthquakes.

I was a bit surprised that this water tower had not fallen in one of the tremors. However, it appeared to be in perfect shape, except maybe for a few new cracks.

The last time I came by here this was a Family Mart convenience store that was only a year or so old. A few years ago we had too many gas stations and many of them folded. Now there are too many convenience stores, so I expect that more and more of them will fail until only the productive ones are left.

I decided to avoid Izumi Chuo and to walk along the ridge line in Shogen. This is the beginning of the Shogen park.

The leafless trees at the corner were interesting.

This park surrounds a large pond which was mostly dried up. The pond holds the run off from the elevation behind the ridge line and since we have not had much rain lately the level was very low.

On the way home

2011-12-19T09:40:00.000+09:00

After crossing the narrow bridge, I passed through a park. This sort of play apparatus for kids is very common and most parks have one. Some are mostly plastic like this one, but in other places they are primarily wood.

In the summer time the orange area in the middle has water running down it into a wading pool. However, at this time of year it is empty and rather sad looking.

Parktown, where I was, has many wide pedestrian walkways, usually lined with trees.

One thing about Sendai is a love for stone. There are stone sculptures all over. These are along the side of one of the broad pedestrian ways.l

This is a typical street in Parktown, rows of house with relatively small yards. One nice thing about Parktown is that all the houses are different so it does not have some much of that ugly housing development feel to it.

Behind the Green Mart supermarket there is a place where the drainage system empties into a small pond. Instead of keeping it all underground, the designers brought the water out into a small stream and, using blocks of stone, created a sculpture that slides down the hillside.

At the top of the hillside there is a fence to keep people from falling down the steep slope. The gentle curve fits well with the trees and bushes.

This path goes down to the surface of the pond and is used mostly by people who want to fish. Green Mart can be just seen through the trees.

The doctors and then home and ...

2011-12-17T05:43:00.000+09:00

After I finished at the dentist, I walked up the hill to my doctor's office to get a refill of my high blood pressure medicine. I walked by a small park and saw these two workmen moving a large two-wheeled cart.

This is the door into my doctor's office. The office is on the first floor and he lives on the second, a rule in Parktown as I have mentioned before.

After get the medicine I walked toward my dentist's to a small shopping center. The supermarket that is the core of the center has changed a number of times and at the moment there is none but there are a number of shops. The most interesting be a good bread store where they serve coffee and you can actually have a real lunch. I stopped to buy bread and then had coffee and a pastry.

This building is my doctor's office and home seen from the shopping center.

Inside the shopping center they were doing a lot of work. It had been badly damaged during the quake and had been completely closed for a number of months. The space directly in front of the windows used to have a flower shop and a Macdonalds, but both were gone and the area was under construction. The bread shop is on the first floor to the right and the supermarkets have been on the left. There was construction going on in that area, too, so maybe a new company is moving in. Perhaps in January when I go to get more medicine, I will be able to find out.

This is the display shelves in the bread shop.

I started home and found the kids from the local grade school watching the janitorial staff burn the leaves that had been racked up from the athletic ground.

This is the little bridge over the expressway. Notice the car in the distance. This bridge is just wide enough for one car but it carries two-way traffic.

Walking home from Miyagi Gakuin University again

2011-12-16T05:58:00.001+09:00

It was getting darker and more and more of the houses had lights turned on. My new camera has made this look brighter than it did to my eyes, which is quite interesting for such a small camera.

Almost to Yaotome Station, I passed a large pet store, the only one that I know of for miles around.

By the time I crossed the bridge nearest my condo, it was actually quite dark. The lights in the middle are my condo. The stairwells on both the left and right buildings are brightly lit but my building in the middle looks dark. The reason for this is that the other buildings have a front walkway connecting all the apartments on each floor and these are well lit. My building, on the other hand, has three elevators so the front of the building does not need lights.

The next day I went to my art class and found that what had been a parking lot was now the beginning of a new building. I was only a little surprised to find that they were working in the rain.

After resting on Sunday, I got up early and headed out to Parktown for a dental appointment. I walked along the main road to Izumi Chuo and was not at all surprised to find a traffic jam at 8 a.m.

I took a bus to Parktown and walked from the bus stop to the dentists office. On the way there is a convenience store and I saw this bright yellow car in the parking lot. The car belongs to Vegalta, the Sendai soccer team, and the bird on the side of the car is the team mascot.

It was plastics day for the trash collection, so there were yellow plastic boxes along the sidewalk containing used plastic bottles and other plastic to be recycled. We separate trash in Sendai - burnable, non burnable, two kinds of plastic, glass, metal, and large stuff.

The entrance to my dentist's office was decorated with these little paper dolls.

Walking home from Miyagi Gakuin University again

2011-12-15T04:45:00.000+09:00

On my right was the river, but on my left was a garage where a bunch of cars were under repair. The contrast was striking.

This is the river on my right.

This is the only torii I have ever seen that is not associated with a shrine. This on just sits here in the middle of a field. The old highway (read dirt path) used to run across this field and up the hillside beyond so the torii is probably associated with that in some way. Or maybe there used to be a shrine around here.

I do not know the name of this plant but it grows wild around here. If you find them in a Tokyo flower shop that caters to people doing flower arranging, they will be very expense.

My classes were over at 3:30 so it must have been about 4 p.m. when I was walking along here. I was in a valley with hills, not mountains, on each side so it was getting dark and many of the houses had lights on.

Even though it was getting dark, the river was still a pleasant sight.

This Japanese style house is huge and has a high fence (the wall from the middle to the right) around the property.

When I first started walking along this river bank, there were no house here at all. They first flattened the land and built an access road, then they built the concrete retaining walls and finally they put up a group of more than ten buildings.

Walking home from Miyagi Gakuin University again

2011-12-14T04:02:00.000+09:00

After the leaves have fallen, you can see this pond from the road. On this day there were some kind of white bird enjoying the scenery.

I have been walking by this entrance gate for at least seven years, but still have not figured out what the building behind it is. It appears to be something more than a single family dwelling place but there are no signs or other information.

This is a very typical old Japanese house.I believe that most of the time the original building has been expanded, explaining the different roofs.

This appears to be a driveway, but whatever house or houses are at the end of it can not be seen from the road.

I crested the last rise in the road and could see the river valley spread out before me.

On my left was the entrance to a very expensive looking Japanese style home with a large wall around it.

On my right was a contrasting scene that is very typical of Japan. In the foreground there is a construction company that has a yard full of trash, apparently from buildings they have torn down. In the background is a park with picnic facilities and a camp ground.

Just as I can choose between walking along the main road, the Kanjosen, or the back road, once on the back roads I can choose between the road and the riverbank. On this day I decided that I would follow the edge of the river which you can see on the right. In the distance you can see the top of the fence around a golf driving range.

Walking home from Miyagi Gakuin University again

2011-12-13T05:03:00.000+09:00

I left the park and entered the bus depot to take my usual bus to Miyagi Gakuin U. While I was waiting, I saw a good example of one of the features of Japanese life. There is no preventative maintenance here. They just use things until they fall apart and they get a new one. This bus is losing paint but nothing is being done about it. It will not be long before the side is in such bad shape that they will have to scrap the bus. I remember when I first started working here. I tried to get my boss to do some simple maintenance around the building, but he could not understand the need for it. A couple of years later we had to have a major renovation project, which could have been easily prevented by some inexpensive and simple, but timely, repairs.

When I got to school, I discovered that they had hung a Christmas wreath on the gate post at the main entrance.

After my class was over at 10:10 a.m., I decided to walk home again. I planned to turn right at the gate again, but instead of following the Kanjosen all the way to Yaotome, I would turn off and follow the little river, which is a much more pleasant walk during the daytime. As I walked down the hill, I notice this survey marker embedded in the sidewalk. The plate, below the circle with the cross hairs, contains the name and telephone number of the group responsible for the upkeep of the marker.

At the corner at the bottom of the hill, there is a used car dealer. It has many more cars than before and they now go up into the woods behind the building.

This house is relatively new, being built just a few years ago. By Japanese standards it is really huge. I think that the little group of houses all belong to people form the same family, the ones who grow the rice in the paddies on both sides of the road.

After turning off the Kanjosen, the first large building is an old people's home. From the ads that appeared when it was first opened, it seems to be a private nursing home.

Across the street there is a small group of buildings contain medical facilities. This is a nose and throat doctor. There is also a pharmacy and a doctor.

This is the end of the nursing home. The building sticking up over the trees on the left is one of the buildings on the Miyagi Gakuin U campus. I think this is part of the attached high school.

Mostly Scenery at Asahigaoka

2011-12-12T04:40:00.000+09:00

I do not know the name of these berries but you see them all over at this time of year. A great many of the hedges are made from this plant so the sidewalks look bright and Christmasy.

This was taken from in front of the fire station near my condo. The tall building on the right is new. This is the first time that I have seen it with the scaffolding off. It will be a very convenient place to live, only two traffic lights between it and Yaotome station.

This is the park at Asahigaoka station. The reds are finally turning brown and it now looks more and more like winter.

The oranges are still pretty good, but most of the other trees have already lost all their leaves.

This is where the subway tracks leave the station. The concrete pillars support the outside of the tunnel which soon is deep underground as the tracks go under the hills. I like this part of the park because it reminds me of the garden in some of the British mystery stories.

Odds and ends

2011-12-11T04:42:00.001+09:00

Walking home from a meeting of the Sendai Book Club. I passed a very inviting little neighborhood bar, however, it was already passed my bedtime so I continued on my way.

Some strange looking lighting along an otherwise dark road. It almost looked like Christmas decorations, although it was not.

Night traffic on my road home.

Look at the fence. See the big dip near the person on the bicycle? The fence was straight before the earthquakes. A section of land over some underground pipes sunk.

This is at Miyagi Gakuin U. I have shown this pond before but never from this height. You can see why it is named the piano pond.

The forecast was for snow and the sky certainly looked it.

It was getting darker and darker and I thought it would snow at any minute.

The Kannon statue on the hill was visible but the clouds were really grey. In the end, however, just on the other days when they have forecast snow, it did not happen.

My presentation

2011-12-10T04:16:00.000+09:00

I gave a presentation for about 20 teachers who are members of the Sendai Chapter of JALT (Japan Association for Language Teaching). I talked about how to teach less to have the students learn more. The speech was a summation of my research and experience.

The meeting was sponsored by Cengage, a publisher that specializes in books on teaching English. This is their representative David White.

After the meeting most of us went to an izakaya, a Japanese style bar, where we talked, ate, and drank. Cengage kindly sponsored this aspect of the meeting, too. The picture shows the remains on one of our tables about half way through. These tables are only about a foot (30 centimeters) high. There is a whole in the floor under the table for you legs. They are actually quite comfortable if you do not mind not have a back to lean on. If possible, I grab a seat that is next to a wall so that I can lean back when my back gets tired.

I went home by one of the last subway trains and saw this young lady. The pink thing is a large heart-shaped balloon that is on a string. As with all the other people in the picture she is looking at her keitai, her cell phone.

Walking home from Miyagi Gakuin University

2011-12-09T08:29:00.000+09:00

It was now getting quite dark and the glow of the neon lights made the sky look black in comparison. This building had been a series of restaurants, each lasting a year or so. However, after the last on gave up, it was replaced by a funeral parlor. It seems like there must be a lesson of some sort in that but it escapes me.

This building looks like a regular two story home, but actually it is a kindergarten, one that focuses on English.

This is a discount men's clothing store. They have a constant sale. Prices are cheap anyway but you can get a second suit for 1,000 yen. Many business men, especially the young who have low salaries, buy their suits in this chain.

This is a shopping center. The main stores in it are a large sporting goods store and DYI supply store, what the Japanese call a 'home center'.

This is a shot from a bit closer. The home center is on the left and the sporting goods store on the right. There is a small group of other stores in the middle, a fast food restaurant, a beauty parlor, and some other stuff.

Big House is a supermaket and it is opposite the shopping center. This complex contains a large used and new bookstore specializing in comics and a ramen shop (noodle shop).

This is a clock store

I am now entering the area around the Yaotome Subway Station. This is Gusto, a chain fast food store, that actually has pretty good food.

Walking home from Miyagi Gakuin University

2011-12-07T19:50:00.000+09:00

I was on my way home, following the kanjosen, the western Sendai bypass road. The building on the right is a Nichiren Buddhist temple. Nichiren Buddhism has made efforts to expand to other countries so some of you may have had some experience with them.

This is the temple from the other, up hill, side. Actually it does not look like a temple, except for the sign and the large parking lot. I think that they converted a regular home into a temple.

At the far end of the parking lot, I found that a car had smashed into the fence. The traffic on the kanjosen sometimes goes quite fast. It looked like a car had lost control and turned into the parking lot but missed the gate and hit the fence.

At the top of the hill, there is a little bread store. I have been tempted to stop in and see what they have, but from the outside it looks like they only sell sweet stuff and I like real bread.

At the very highest point, on the left, there is a group of apartment buildings. From this point on the road goes down hill.

It was getting dark. The time was about 6 p.m. Lotteria is a Japanese chain that sells hamburgers and that sort of fast food. The sign on the left phonetically says 'drive thru' in Japanese.

This restaurant mostly sells bowls of rice with meat toppings, called domburi.

A few years ago this chain store, Yamaya, was one of my favorites. It is a discount liquor store. I seldom came to this one because there was one near my home, behind the bookstore. However, I stopped drinking and the nearest Yamaya closed. I wonder if there was a connection.

Walking home from Miyagi Gakuin University

2011-12-07T08:12:00.000+09:00

I was still walking down the hill away from Miyagi Gakuin U and toward the west. Yesterday I showed the park on the other side of the road. This is the rice paddies on this side.

At the bottom of the hill there is a major intersection. On the on the southeast side there is a large used book (mostly comic books) and CD store.

Next to the bookstore and right on the corner is a Big Boy restaurant, very cheap with large servings but not very tasty.

I turned north at the corner, headed for Yaotome. There are rice paddies on that side of the road, too. This is a wall-less shed where they store some of the things needed in the fields.

This is another shed.

And yet another shed. This is in the old style with a thatched roof. I drew a picture of this a few years ago.

The rice paddies on the east side of the road with the tops of some of the Miyagi Gakuin U buildings in the center at the top of the hill. The splash of color in front of these buildings is a gas station.

The woods that are next to the rice paddies are very thick. There is an ill defined path through the woods but I have never tried to take it. A couple of years ago, however, I was an old lady going up the path, so it must go somewhere.

My neighborhood and walking home from Miyaigi Gakuin U

2011-12-06T08:32:00.000+09:00

The morning sun on the buildings across the river.

The remaining colors at Asahigaoka. Most of the reds have already gone but the yellows are lasting well this year.

Some of the trees are more brown than red this year, but this goes well with all the yellow.

I have no idea what plant this is, but it certainly makes it feel like Christmas.

It's snowing in the mountains as seen from the teachers' lounge at Miyagi Gakuin U.

Inside the Miyagi Gakuin U campus, looking toward the main gate.

The main gate. The traffic guard is standing in the middle of the road in front of the guard building.

Leaving the campus and turning right, I walked down the hill and passed a park on the other side of the road.

A French restaurant and saving a life for a little while

2011-12-05T05:00:00.000+09:00

On my wife's birthday, Ian (he's the one who shared the Ohenro Pilgrimage with me) and his family took us to a very nice French restaurant for supper. The building is about half way up the hill that has that huge statue of Kannon at the top. This was the view from the parking lot, looking out toward Izumi Chuo.

Looking in through the windows you can just make out some of the tables. The food was delicious, by the way, and the company even better.

This is the view toward the east. I think my condo may be the blob near the left edge almost on the horizon.

My wife and I went to the doctor's to get the results of our physicals. We are both in good shape. We decided to walk to Green Mart to buy coffee. As we passed through a little park, Masayo noticed a red dragonfly struggling on the ground. It was obviously close to dying because of the cold. She picked it up and covered it with her hands. Then blew through her fingers to warm it. After about five minutes it had revived enough to start flapping its wings to generate some heat by itself. When we reached Green Mart, she brought it inside with us and left it on a surface where it could enjoy the heat from the building's air conditioning. We knew that it would not really save the poor thing, but it made us happy to give it a little more life in a comfortable environment.

Scenes from one of my days

2011-12-04T06:08:00.000+09:00

Still looking into the part at Asahigaoka, I found grade school kids and there teachers cleaning up the park. The teachers teach the kids about various things that can be seen in the park, but the kids also bring plastic bags with them and pick up the trash that the adults have thrown around. This is a great idea. Maybewhen the kids are adults, they will not just toss stuff on the ground when they are finished with it.

Here some of the kids (left and front) are picking up stuff and another (center back) is writing some kind of report.

I reached Miyagi Gakuin U a half hour later and stopped in the men's room. One nice thing about working at a women's university is the things are clean and the janitorial staff put decorations in the toilets.

The view out the window of the teachers' lounge. The white squarish area on the mountain side is a ski slope that is covered with snow, not much yet but enough so that we can see it.

It was dark by the time I finished classes. This is the bus stop in front of the school, where the students wait in line for buses. There are three routes that stop here. The one I take goes to Asahigaoka and the other two both go to Sendai Station, but by different routes. There are also stops on the other side of the street and about a five minute walk away.

The structure in the foreground is the soccer stadium and the mountain in the background is called Izumigadake.

There may be some snow in the nearby mountains but along our levee the flowers are still blooming.

Back at Miyagi Gakuin U the next day, I looked out of the teachers' lounge window and discovered workmen putting up the Christmas lights on the chapel.

On my way to work

2011-12-03T07:54:00.001+09:00

I was very surprised to see the black and white sign on the bus. It is an add for Amazon.com Japan, the place where I now buy most of my books. Actually most of the book I get are for my Kindle so I must buy them from the US site, but this was an ad for the Japanese site, which has lots of books in Japanese as well as English.

Another crane looking for breakfast. This time of year we see many of them along the river.

This was taken from the balcony next to our living room. It was very foggy as you can see.

On the hill nearest the Tohoku Gakuin U Izumi campus, this hill collapsed during the quakes. The road is one of the access routes to the high school run by the university and it is again open to traffic.

On this morning gardeners were cutting back the trees and bushes around our condo. I had to walk through the cuttings on the ground to get out to the path along the top of the levee.

I stopped in the middle of the bridge to take this picture. The structure on the right is the soccer stadium. Although it was cloudy, the mountains to the west were quite clear.

At the intersection nearest the Yaotome subway station, I found a large work crew putting scaffolding around an apartment building. They will repair damage from the quakes.

Since I was a little early, when I reached the Asahigaoka subway station, instead of going straight up and waiting in the bus depot, I went out to look at the park. I found a group of elderly (actually many of them looked younger than me) people warming up for a walk using ski poles. This is the latest fad here. The poles allow you to walk faster, because you can push with your arms. Also it gives your whole body a better workout than just walk. There is a potential problem, however. Many people who try this with out instruction manage to severely hurt themselves.

Birds and other stuff

2011-12-02T08:14:00.002+09:00

This is my Thursday night class at Tohoku Gakuin U. There are actually five students but one was absent. This semester I am spending the first thirty minutes talking about the evening's subject and then the students talk among themselves about the same subject. They are not limited to that subject and often wander off into areas that are of interest to them. The idea is that a language student learns to talk by talking, speaking about their own ideas using the language that is already in their head.

This ad was in the subway. It shows why there will be jobs for native speaking English teachers for a long, long time in Japan. Look at the left end of the ad. The text says, "Let's!". Most Japanese, in spite of six or more years of studying English, think that "let's" is a verb, so you hear and see things like "Let's sports". This ad by the way is trying to get new students for the Tohoku Seikatsu Bunka University's high school.

The view as I walk along the level on my way home at night.

Here you can see the reflections in the river. My new camera is amazing. I have never been able to get a decent night scene before. Now I can get this quality picture, hand-held.

Early on Thursday morning, I was on my way to school and this crane was fishing for its breakfast.

A little further down the river, this crane was resting. Presumably it had finished breakfast. I was happy for the cranes but a bit sad for the fish that became the meals.

This is the same crane as above, but with this wider view you can see the crow that is sitting on the rocks at the left.

Mostly more Tsubasa

2011-11-30T20:39:00.000+09:00

Tsubasa is having lunch at a table outside a bread store. It is at the entrance to Parktown so it is a bit far, but we usually stop if we have the chance. If you buy bread, they will give you a cup and you can get free coffee from a coffee maker. They have tables and chairs inside and outside on a landing next to the entrance. In addition to the free coffee, the bread is pretty good.

This stone statue is next to the entrance. Tsubasa was fascinated by it, especially the fruit that was in the rabbit's basket.

This is our favorite Chinese restaurant, Kabo. My wife and I were going to take Tsubasa and his mother for a good meal, but when we got there they were closed, some sort of special day off.

This is Tsubasa looking at the sign that says the restaurant was closed for the day.

Tsubasa has his own iPad and can navigate around very well. His favorite things are the video of the Shinkansen, the Japanese Bullet Train.

Here he is watching a cartoon he found on the internet.

Changing the subject, this is the bridge that I cross on my way to Yaotome Station. The day before I took this someone had come and smoothed out the height difference that was caused by the earthquakes. The step was turned into a ramp by filling in the space with asphalt.

Various practice shots plus Tsubasa

2011-11-30T05:31:00.000+09:00

This is an apartment building that is lit up by the lights from the soccer stadium. I had tried to take a picture like this with my old camera, but it was always blurred. My new camera took it with just my normal way of holding the camera.

A flower that I found along the levee.

This crane is on the other side of the river. Again I could not have taken it with my old camera.

I have got to find out the name of this plant. I really like the contrasting green leaves and red berries, very Christmasy.

The bus depot at Asahigaoka.

Tsubasa, all ready for a walk to the store on a very cold and wet day.

Tsubasa, having breakfast.

Learning to use my new camera

2011-11-29T09:22:00.000+09:00

I took this picture of the sidewalk on the main east/west road from Izumi Chuo. The bus that I take to go to Tohoku Gakuen U stops on this road. The bus stop is about a five minute walk from my condo.

I am still learning to use my new camera so there may be some strangeness for a while. For example, these pictures are all 16.2 megapixels, I think. At some point after using the camera for a while I discovered this and reduced the picture size. Please bear with me for a bit.

These flowers were still struggling against the weather. At the bus stop, I stand behind this fence to stay out of the wind.

After my classes were over and I started walking home, I noticed that the setting sun was very pretty.

Both sides of the paved path on the top of the levee near my condo contain gardens that expend every year. I think that it is a hobby for a couple of the people who live along here. On this sunny day the reds were quite nice.

The power company was working on the electric lines. The building on the left is the fire station.

I was walking to Izumi Chuo and ran into a local festival. This is only a kilometer (about a half mile) but I had never seen it before. I do not know if it is new or if I just missed it other years.

The members carry the portable shrine around the neighborhood. The idea is to take the god from a local Shinto shrine and carry it around the area so that it will know the area that it is protecting, or at least bringing good luck to.

I arrived in Izumi Chuo and met Keith for lunch and then a soccer game. My new camera has a panorama function that takes and then stitches together a series of pictures. If you click on this picture, I believe that it will be shown, enlarged to the full width of your monitor screen. At least that is what happens on my computer.