Walking again

 As the riverside path nears the ByPass bridge, it becomes overgrown with grass, other plants, and spiders, so I turned away from the river and took the roads through a housing area where I found this rather surprising sight. A small lot of land, actually a house lot was divided in two. One half held a small garden, including the corn that you can see in the picture, and the other half was a storage area for smallish power tools.

 I finally reached the ByPass, Route 4. The ocean is about 13 kilometers away, on the other side of the hills.

I turned right on the ByPass and started walking away from home. The sign over the entrance of this empty lot says that it is a gift center. The building that you can see under the sign is at least 50 meters away and on another piece of property. It looks like a private home. The gift center building has obviously been torn down.

 This is one of the things I like about living in Japan. It is safe enough that this company is storing cases of beer outside in a little roofed over area. You can see them through the break in the hedge.

 I soon turned off the ByPass. It is noisy and smells bad. I walked a couple of kilometers south, still going away from  home. It was a house area with both apartment buildings and private homes. I finally found a large park and, since I had decided to visit a temple that is on the other side of the park, I decided to walk through it rather than around it. I followed some sort of access road that went steeply downhill.

At the bottom of the hill I found a large pond with a bunch of men fishing.

Still on the ByPass

 This is part of the display outside a shop that carves stone statues, etc, for temples, shrines, parks and gardens.

 This is across the street. It is a shop that sells Buddhist altars and other Buddhist paraphernalia. Many families have a large altar somewhere in their home. It will be dedicated to deceased members of the family and food and drink will be left as well as incense burned. There will usually be black and white portraits of the deceased. Some people, particularly wives, will kneel in front of the altar, light incense, ring a small gong, and then tell the deceased about the events that have been taking place.

 I turned off the Bypass and started walking toward Shogen, which is on the hill behind Izumi Chuo. This tree covered area apparently belongs to the temple that is off to the left. On the other side of the hill there is a graveyard.

 I was quite surprised to find that one of the old wooden house was being demolished. Many houses in Sendai do not look damaged from the outside but have so much internal structural damage that the city has condemned them.

 As I moved further up the hill, I found that another house had already been torn down and the one in the back was also being destroyed.

The trees along the road here are severely cut back every year (In the past I posted pictures of the trimmed branches with any leaves). Now they look a bit strange. If they were not trimmed yearly, they would be almost round.

More along the ByPass

 With the economy in the pits, used car lots are doing a big business. They are popping up everywhere.

 This is the gas point for a shipping company

 This is a karaoke shop, pronounce ka-ra-okay in Japanese (the a being pronounced as in haha). I did not understand the sign with the number 10 on it, not because of the language but because I do not do karaoke and do not understand the system. It appeared that, if you met some requirement, you could get some food for 10 yen.

 I took this second picture of the fishing equipment store so that I could point out the row of flags along the sidewalk in front of it.

 In between the stores there are little drainage streams that are actually quite pretty.

Motorcycles are quite popular here, not as popular as scooters, but lots of young people have them. This store has the latest models lined up along the sidewalk. This is a Moto Guzzi, much better than the Moto Guzzi Gran Toursimo that I had as a college student.

Walking along Route 4, the Sendai ByPass

 This store sells fishing equipment according to the sign. The building is about 14 kilometers from the sea but it is on a route that many fishermen would take to reach the ocean.

 Route 4 is the home to many car dealerships, especial foreign. This is a Volkswagon dealer.

 Across the road is an Audi dealer.

 Just down the street is Book-Off, a store that buys and sells used books. Of course, comic books are included and are the largest selling items.

 In these hard economic times, many of the stores have closed. This used to be a ramen shop. It has been closed for at least a couple of years and is slowly falling to pieces.

Across the street is a large empty building, but this one is being kept up by the owner apparently in the hopes that someone will rent it soon.