Packing

 We have started packing for our move to Fukuoka. The whole house is full of things. This is the entrance hall. We are waiting for a man to come from a discount store called Book-Off, which sells books, CD, etc, extremely cheaply. They do not pay much for things they buy but they come and take them away, saving us the effort and cost of disposing of them. Trash collection costs money here, not much but it adds up.

This is my room at the start of packing.

Stuff

 A couple of duck surfing in the river. They seem to enjoy riding down the white water in the shallow places in the river. I have watch some do it over and over again, riding the waves and then swimming or flying back up stream so that they can do it again.

 The blue object is the back of a portable toilet at a construction site, but the object I wanted to show is the thing with whitish pipes and a red blob. Do you know what it is? It is a very important winter tool in Japan.

It is a hand pump for moving kerosine from cans to heaters. Most Japanese homes are heated with kerosine room heaters that have a hose that acts as a chimney. All new apartments have closeable holes in the walls for this sort of heater. My wife and I do not use them. We use our air conditioner. No smells and no chance of spilling kerosine all over the room. Also this year, electricity seems to be cheaper.

 I found this repair on a building near my home. The damage from the earthquake was getting worse and they squeezed some kind of plastic into the cracks.

 This my latest drawing.

 When we sold our apartment, we did the paperwork and signing in this block of buildings.

 After taking the above picture, I turned to take on in the other direction and noticed this sign. Sendai has become very cosmopolitan. Police warnings no require six languages.

 This is the view in the other direction. This part of Sendai is mostly banks and business offices.

The white van with the sign on the top is a sound truck for the Communist Party. Here in Japan the Party is very mild, not like the European versions. It is just a leftist party that advocates measures for the common people. If I had a vote, I would vote for some of their candidates, but definitely not all.

Along the main road on the southside of the river

 A traditional style fence in front of a traditional style house

 Decorative birds at the entrance to a small park

 The two concrete blocks in the hole fell of the top of the fence during the earthquake and have been lying there ever since. Also the damage to the edge of the sidewalk is unrepaired.

 One of the branches leading into our river also had damage to the banks

 A winter garden where sheets of plastic keep the plants warm

This seems to be the back of a company and these are probably the summer tires for the company's fleet of cars

 Breakfast time in the river

 A little further on another breakfast

 The nearby park that is now off limits because of the reconstruction work on the banks of the river. The blue areas in front of the buildings are the current work areas.

 Usually the crows fly away when you get close, but this one stood its ground.

 The levee top walkway downriver from my apartment.

 The building is a love hotel but look at the traffic jam. I do not know where they are all going but there is a shopping center in that direction and further on you arrive at the ocean.

This is the traffic jam, looking toward Izumi Chuo

NOTE: We are gradually getting ready to move. Most of the things we want to get rid of are gone and all the closets have been cleaned out once, although some stuff we are taking was put back in them. For the next few days my wife is going to Fukuoka and doing the paperwork for renting our new abode. It is a complicated process here with financial and social checks as well as the usual large amount of paperwork. We still have lots to do both in our old apartment and with various services and the government. The recently changed the law so that I have to do the same processes as a Japanese person when I move. This means going to the Ward Office and telling that I am moving and then going to the new Ward Office and telling them that I have moved in. Also there people coming to give us estimates of the cost of shipping and we also have to negotiate all the utility shut offs. It will be a very busy two weeks.