Between Asahigaoka and Yaotome

 The road continues to follow the ridge line but is not on it. The road is a little to the east of the highest points, on the side toward the ocean which is only 10+ kilometers away. The large building on the left is the first of a group of apartment buildings.

 Apartments on the left and wherever there are apartments their are beauty shops. This one is on the right.

 The large hedge on the right blocks the view of the playground of an elementary school.

 Here the main road turns off to the right and eventually returns to the main road from Izumi Chuo to downtown Sendai. I will turn off to the left and go down the hill so that I can pass through the Yaotome Subway Station.

 In front of me at the trees there is a pedestrians only paved path that goes down the hill. The area on the right is full of apartment buildings.

This is the entrance to the pedestrian path. It goes down steeply, bending a bit to the right.

Towards home from Asahigaoka

 I have shown this concrete banking a few times. It has been covered with blue sheets since just after the earthquakes. Now they are fixing it

 A few tens of meters passed the construction I found more work going on. This was apparently fixing a problem with the road.

 This part of the walk is quite pleasant. There are trees on both sides of the four lane road and as you can see there is not too much traffic. On the left just out of the picture is the Sendai Science Museum. I have never been in it, but have seen the inside on TV. It is mainly for kids.

 The road from Asahigaoka interesects a six lane, east/west road that comes up from the valley. I will cross the street and turn down a side street next to the white building.

 This is the road I will now follow. This road has quite a bit of traffic on it, because it is one of the main exits from the housing area that covers the hilltop. I was a bit surprised when I noticed that the first floor of the white building had been emptied.

As you can see, this road is lined with private dwellings. The actually ridge line is a few hundred meters to the left, but the entire hill is covered with homes.

Shinrin Koen and Asahigaoka

 Walking a bit further, I can see the Asahigaoka Subway Station and the Youth Center straight ahead

The archways open onto the platform of the subway station. In good weather many people use this area to wait for a subway. The trains come every seven minutes so you can come out hear for 10 minutes or more and know when to go back inside to catch a train.

 His man was sitting in the sun, reading.

 This is the main hall of the subway station. The wickets are straight ahead and the platform is one floor down.l

 Since I was out for a long walk, proceeded to the stairs that lead to the street.

As with most subway stations, there are long flights of stairs. There are also elevators and in busy stations escalators but many people use the stairs for exercise.

Still walking in Shinrin Koen

 It does not show well but this is a fairly steep hill.

 The walking path is also for jogging and there are markers ever 0.5 kilometers around the 3 km course.

 In some places there are railings along the side of the path because of the steep drop-off, some of which are steep enough and deep enough to be dangerous.

 Here and there you will find roofed areas with seating and usually a small table.

Here they are repairing a place that collapsed in the aftermath of the earthquakes and then the heavy rains we have been having recently. Beside the path there is an almost vertical drop of close to 10 meters. It appears that they are building a restraining wall.

My apologies! It has been almost a week since I posted anything here because the monitor on my computer died. It took me all this time to determine what was wrong, go out a buy a new monitor and then get it installed. Everything seems to be working fine now, so I should be able to publish pictures almost every day again.

The pictures below are in Shinrin Koen, Woods Park, on the walking circuit that I previously described. The park is in the middle of the city so it is really a green oasis with direct access from the Asahigaoka Subway Station. You can see the park from the platform. There does not seem to be much to say about these pictures, so I will just let you enjoy the greenery.

Mostly Scenery at Asahigaoka

 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.

Seeing the swollen river on my way to school

 Mt. Izumigadake looms over the soccer stadium and the river is full after some very heavy rain

 Part of the riverbank has collapsed near the bridge.

 I don't think that I have seen the river this high. I know that that it has been higher because I have seen the aftermath, but this is the worst that I have seen with my own two eyes.

 I noticed that they have repaired, but not repainted, one of the pillars in the bus depot at Asahigaoka. It looks like they spread some sort of adhesive along the length of the cracks, putting extra amounts where material has actually fallen off the wall.

 The street was flooded at the intersection outside the bus depot.

The next day the water in the river had retreated. The horizontal cut shows how high the water reached.

Still walking but headed home

 I was nearing Asahigaoka and had just started up the hill to reach the subway station, when I turned and felt as if I was in the wilds.

 I passed over the top of the hill and started down the other side. I decided not to go to the station area but to just transit the hill and reach the main Sendai to Izumi Chuo road that lies in the valley on the other side of the ridge. On the way down I saw a gas station that had closed after the quakes. It looks like there are no plans to reopen. A few years ago investors started opening gas stations and eventually there were too many. Many of them are no closing. Probably the problem of high competition and the cost of repairs have caused the owner to give up.

 At the intersection with the main road, there is a small side road that parallels the main road for a few hundred meters and goes in my direction. I suspect it is a section of the old road, the one that followed the valley before they build the Sendai to Izumi Chuo four lane road. I decided to take the side road and immediately found this house which had lost most of a wall in the quakes.

 Architecturally I like these building (this building?).  It is a group of five buildings that are connected and have similar designs. You can see the backs of them from the main road so I frequently see them. They are becoming quite rundown, but some of them are obviously still in use. There is some kind of bar in one and a beauty parlor in another. The others appear to have people living in them.

 At the end of the side road, I have to cross a bridge to get back to the main road. As I do, I stop and look down. There is a large school of small fish and some huge carp.

These two carp are each around two feet in length and, although I can not get them all in a single picture I can see at least a half dozen of them swimming around.

At Asahigaoka

 On Thursday mornings I take a 7:35 bus from the Asahigaoka Bus Depot to Miyagi Gakuin U. I get to the depot at about quarter past seven. On this morning the waiting room was completely empty. It did not stay that way long as students for one of the local private k-12 schools have a bus at 7:30. I really do not need to get there this early but I like to take the first bus, because the subway is not yet crowded, nor is the bus. If I go later, the subway cars are completely full and the bus has enough students that I would probably have to stand. Also, getting to school early is not bad since I can sit in the teachers' lounge, drink coffee, and get ready for the day or listen to my iPod or read a book. It is quiet and pleasant.

 This is the Seinen Bunka Center, covered with scaffolding and gray tarps. I wonder if the Center asked for the gray tarps so that it would not be so obvious how much work needed to be done. This is the Center where the Sendai Book Club meets. There are also a couple of concert halls where local groups put on concerts and plays.

 This is one of the outside walls of the Center. One section is completely covered and the remainder is missing many individual tiles, especially at toward the top where the movement during the quakes was the greatest.

 The first time I came here after the quakes, these blue tarps were already in place. Now they have been reinforced with slats of wood to keep the tarps from blowing away. The wall was fairly badly damaged, judging by what I initially saw. The repair work is probably being held up for one of two reasons: [1] the insurance claims have not been settled year, for example, it may not be clear whether the wall is city or private property; [2] the construction companies are all too busy and this project is on a list somewhere to be completed when the resources are available.

This is the part of the Center that faces the bus depot. There is a restaurant inside the first floor windows that I sometimes eat in before the Book Club meetings.