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

Out for another walk

 I went out for another walk. This time I planned to walk west along the northern bank of the Nanakitagawa River and then at the west end of the park turn south and cross the bridge. As I walked along the level, I saw a large number of cars parked on the south bank.

 As I continued walking, I was able to get a better look. It was a gateball tournament. Gateball is  called croquette in the US. It is extremely popular among the older people in Japan. They even have nationwide competitions. I am old enough to join but have no particular interest in doing it.

 After I had turned south and crossed the bridge, I cam to some rice paddies to the southwest.  They had already been flooded and the new crop had been planted.

 If you look carefully, you can see the seedlings in this picture. In a couple of months the plants will be knee high and ladened with grains of rice.

 Just passed the paddies is a construction site. It seems like it has been at least six months since I have been here, but it looks exactly the same. Maybe they stopped work for a while, like they do on the river near my place. I think that they give contracts for different parts of the work to different companies, not just the lowest bidder, so that the money gets spread around.

The trucks that are moving the dirt they remove use this entrance to the area. The two men that are standing there each have a hose with water pumped from the river. As the trucks go out onto the road, they wash down both sides of the truck, paying particular attention to the wheels. The result is that there is no dirt on the road. I should also point out that, in addition to these two men, there is a man from a security company who is directing traffic as the trucks leave. In contrast to what I remember from the US, the civilian cars are given precedence and the company trucks wait for them.

Coming home from my doctor's

 In Parktown everything is getting green. A few weeks ago these trees have large white flowers but they are all gone now and the leaves are growing.

 In Japan we separate the trash and the different types are collected on different days. This days was for plastics, PET bottles, glass, and metals. They are separated into different baskets which are put out by the city and then collected later by trucks.

 Nearing home, I passed the apartment building along the Nanakitagawa River. One of the apartments had koinobori flying from their balcony. These are the same things as were across the pond in pictures that I posted a few days ago.

 Here is a better look at t he 3D fish shaped flags. The various features, eyes, gills, scales, tails, etc, have been added to the basic cloth shape by silk screening.

 I am not sure exactly what these are but there is one in front of this apartment building and on in Nanakita Park. They give the distance to the next named area in each direction. There is a plaque on each saying that the decorations were added by the students at the local grade school.

Due to the rain at the soccer game, the river is full and very muddy.

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.

Nanakita Park and then toward home

 This is a piece of sculpture that moves in the wind and glistens in the sunlight. It is always a pleasure to see it.

 There are flower beds like this scattered throughout the park.

 There are also quite a few sculptures.

 On my way home I found a paper hemisphere that had held some of the fireworks from the previous night.

 As I came up the hill to the levee top walkway, I could see the smoke from a fire in which the clean up crew was burning the trash left over from the festival.

The writing on the roofs of these two tents, the upright poles have already been removed, show that they belong to two different organizations. The nearest belongs to the local neighborhood committee and the other belongs to a nearby Shinto shrine, of a completely different sect.

Nanakita Park

 On my way for a walk in Nanakita Park, I saw three of the neighborhood women out for a morning walk. They went up to the top of the levee but I stayed down by the riverside.

In one area the riverside walkway was covered with small pieces of trash. I finally realized that this was the remains of last night's fireworks.

 The slope down to the water is becoming overground. I think that by this time of year it is usually cut. Maybe they are holding off to save money this year, freeing up more funds for disaster relief.

 Inside the park there is a small network of artificial streams, but this year they have nothing but rain water in them.

 I was very surprised to find that the rotten boards on this bridge had been replaced. They have been pretty bad for a couple of years so it was very nice to see. I wonder if they were able to include the cost in the disaster repair budget.

A while back I showed this pool when it had hardly any water in it and most of the bottom was visible. Now it has a lot of water, not as much as during a normal year, but enough to cover the bottom completely. It was surprising how much more pleasant the are felt with the water, rather than the concrete bottom.