Nanakita Park and Beyond

 It has been a while since I posted a new entry. The reason is that my connection to the internet has been down. They are renewing the equipment in our condo complex and they shut off the internet and our home phone. Next week they are going to go to each individual apartment and update the connection. Hopefully, they will increase the speed - it has been a while since they did that.

 

 On the day I took these pictures I walked through Nanakita Part. The leaves were in full color, really beautiful. I have read that only New England in the US and Tohoku in Japan have a wide range of colors, although New England has more than here. The reds are very rich this year.

 More reds and oranges.

 A little further on I ran into a group of school kids, you can tell by the hats. There were apparently having an art class.

 After continuing passed the end of the park, I came to a place where they have flatten the ground in preparation for some sort of  building project, probably a large condo. However, at the moment the lack of trees gives a good view of the mountains to the west.

 This is where one of the more popular hobbies for this area takes place. You can rent a small patch of garden and grow your own vegetables. We have a friend who does this. It is definitely a hobby because in the end the vegetables are more expensive than buying them in a store, and since they tend to ripen all together, the gardeners give them away to friends. We get lots of our vegetables this way.

This appeared to be stones that had been removed from a traditional style Japanese garden. This area is in the countryside so most of the houses are on large plots of land. However, because the prices are high and the owners are getting old (the kids have all moved to the city), people are selling off the extra land and this means removing any gardens that were there.

In Nanakita Park

 This was taken from the top of the waterfall, an artificial hill that had been closed since the quake.

 There are flower beds scattered around the park and they constantly replace the plants so that they are always in flower.

 This is the duck pond. Just a few days ago I showed a picture of it with no water. This man had a whole loaf of bread that he was feeding to the birds.

Walking along the top of the levee on my way home, I took this picture of the current state of the river bank reconstruction. My apartment complex is on the left, beside the path that I was standing on.

Out for another walk

In the sky on the left side you can see a blimp. That was as close as it got to me because it moved away to the north, the direction it is headed in.

This is one of the walking paths in Nanakita Koen, Nanakita Park. My plan is to walk up to the dark bridge over the Nanakita River and cross it to the other side and then to go on from there.

The park is ablaze with white at the moment. A couple of weeks ago it was red.

This is the construction site beside the southwest end of the bridge. I am going to take a right at the buildings and walk to a shrine that is hidden in the space between the built up area and the trees along the river.

After turning at the buildings, I walked along a road that was at ground level on the left, the building side, but dropped off about 4 meters on the right. This purple tree was at the bottom of the drop off. I hope they do not kill it when they fill in this area which seems to be the plan.

On the building side of the road, I found a bunch of vending machines. They sell drinks and rice.

Not Home Yet

 This is a large hospital that is almost completely surrounded by rice paddies.

 This is a construction site for a new condo. The site was a pay parking lot for as long as I can remember.

 In Nanakita Koen, they still have not repaired the manhole that rose out of the ground during the earthquakes.

 They are fixing other parts of the park, though. Here they are repairing a drainage pipe.

 Here they removed the bricks and flattened the ground and are now replacing the bricks.

A statue in the park

Nanakita Park

 Near my condo the local people have at great cost filled in the area behind the levee and in front of their houses. Also they have gone to the local government to get permission to use this new surface as a garden. The ward office said that they had less than a week to bring photos showing the plants, so they have been planting rows of flowers. They say that next year they will make are really good looking layout but that the current one is mainly for the government.

 The riverside on the way to the park is very picturesque. In the distance you can see someone fishing.

 This is the looking east toward my condo, which may be visible in the distant distance, from the west side of Nanakita Park.

 Here is what the river looks like in the middle of the park.

 This is one of the things that I definitely do not like about Japan. People just leave their trash in public places. They will pick up at home and keep private places spic and span but in parks and along roadsides they just drop things. Here someone has eaten lunch in the park and left the bags and empty food packages on the bench.

It has finally begun to cool off and the trees have started to change color. This tree turns to a deep purple that I find to be particularly pleasing. I have read that New England in the US and Japan are the only two places in the world where in the autumn the leaves turn to a variety of colors. Apparently other places in the world are monochrome in the fall.

Between Nanakita Koen and home

 After passing under the first bridge, I saw a large number of cars on the other bank. They were parked in the flat area that is next to the base of the bridge.

 With a closer look, I realized that it was a large number of elderly people playing gateball, croquette in English. As I have mentioned before it is very popular and there are fierce competitions, eventually leading to national championships.

 I like walking along here. It is quiet and peaceful with a lot of small birds. For the last couple of years, the sparrows have disappeared, but this year there are a large number of young ones fluttering around. I do not know what the problem was but they seemed to have survived it, at least as a group, just like us humans with the earthquakes and tsunami.

 This is the Jodo Shin Shu temple as seen from the riverside. They have a large bell in the yard and every morning at 6:30 they ring it once. I do not know the purpose but when I am outside where I can hear it (can't hear from indoors), it is a very pleasant sound.

 This is the spot where the surface on the side of the levee collapsed. They covered it and then quickly build a temporary road and work area, but since then they have apparently done nothing more. I suspect that after looking at it, they lowered the priority and are working on other places that could potentially cause more damage. If the situation here changes, they could quickly get to work on it since all the preliminaries are finished.

 These workmen are piling up the concrete blocks that are being removed from the levee surface opposite my condo complex. They have probably removed enough to surface 3,000 square meters. It is going to be interesting to see if they replace them or use them for something else.

 This is where the blocks came from. You can still see some of them on the right, but on the left they have all been removed.

This is under the bridge nearest my home. The reason I took this picture was to show the crushed stone in the middle of the picture (the lighter area). This spot used to be a little lower than the surrounding area and filled up with standing water or mud, making it difficult to walk along the path. Some one has brought a load of crushed stone and filled in the low spot. I am pretty sure that it was not anyone official, but probably someone who lives in the area. That is one of the things I like about Japan. People do things that need to be done without waiting for the government to do it.

Inside Nanakita Koen

 The flowers were in full bloom (when they aren't, they plant something that is) and were beautiful.

 This is a shallow man-made pond that is often full of ducks but on this day there were none. I guess they were all off minding their eggs.  The squarish structure in the middle of the pond is a fountain that varies the shape and height of the spray. I do not expect to see it this year. The government will be doing everything it can to reduce the consumption of electricity and this uses electric pumps. Because of the lose of the nuclear reactors in Fukushima and of other regular power plants during the disaster, they do not expect to be able to generate enough electricity to keep up with demand this summer.

 This is a wooden bridge over the little stream that feeds into the pond.

This path goes along the edge of the river, along the top of the levee. The soccer stadium is in the background.

Note: Today is going to be very busy. I have an art lesson in the morning and then in the afternoon I am going to the above stadium to watch Vegalta play. Kyoko and Tsubasa left after supper last night and arrived saftely at home in Tokyo sometime after midnight. It seems strange not to have a baby running around the house and wanting to play.

Avoiding Izumi Chuo by going through Nanakita Koen

 Instead of going through the center of Izumi Chuo, I decided to bypass it by going south and passing through part of Nanakita Koen (Nanakita Park). While still on the road to the park I passed this store - a scuba dive shop. It seems rather strange since this is really a side street and it is a long way from the water.

 This is the last building before the entrance to the park. It is quite new, only a year or so old, but still it was badly enough damaged that it is having extensive work done on it, as is obvious from the scaffolding.

 Inside the park there was damage to the walkways. This is where the sidewalk passes the entrance to the parking lot.

 This group had a bunch of children and two foreign men and a couple of Japanese women. When I got up close enough to hear them, I realized that it was a group for one of the local kindergartens, one that specializes in early English education. I should probably point out that the person sitting on the extreme right is actually a bronze statue.

 This building contains a botanical garden, but it has been closed since the earthquake. I have been told that it is quite good but I have never managed to tour the inside. From the outside, I can see that there are many trees and large plants inside. I expect that at some point I will go in with a sketchbook and do some drawings, so that I can use the plants in my pictures.

 At this end (east) of the park there are large areas of flowers that are constantly transplanted so that it is constantly ablaze with color. The structure in the background is the south end of Vegalta's soccer stadium. Actually the stadium is named the Yurtec Stadium this year. They sell the naming rights to help pay for the operation.

 This is one of the stone sculptures that are placed around the park. In the open area there was a large group of women, probably college students. There were a few women trying to organize the group, but I did not stay to see what was going on.

A little further on I found some older men getting ready to fly model airplanes. These were small and powered with rubber bands, the kind of plane that I used to make when I was a kid. This large open area is a great place to fly planes and there are often small groups flying gliders or rubber band powered planes. I have never seen planes with an engine, and I suspect that they are prohibited.