Still near my apartment

 This is the entrance to the house next door. It is always a pleasure to walk by it.

 This is the alleyway between the house next door and the next house beyond it. If you keep your eye out, there are many small spaces that have been landscaped. In fact it may be more likely that a small enclosed space will be carefully landscaped and taken care of than larger more open areas.

 This is just a few meters from the station. There are trees and flowers along most of  the roads in town. The building on the left is Sunny, an inexpensive supermarket that has some fairly distant connection to Walmart. We decide on which of the three local supermarkets to use in terms of individual items, evaluating price and quality.

This is my dentist's building. They have both the room on the first floor and the one on the second. The first floor has five dental chairs, the x-ray machine and the admin office. The second floor has four dental chairs. You have to go outdoors to get from the first to the second floor. There are a number of other facilities in the building. My barber is on the second floor and there is an excellent curry restaurant on the first floor.

Ryuhoji

 Up under the eaves of the pagoda I notice a colorful but unidentifiable animal of some sort.

 Another Buddhist statue with fresh flowers but again I do not know who it represents.

 This is the little Shinto shrine that is next to the main hall.  The statues of two foxes in front of the torii, two in this case, plus the fact that the torii are red implies that this is one of the Inari Shrines. Inari is the Shinto god (kami) of fertility, rice, agriculture, foxes, industry, and worldly success. Apparently about one third of the shrines in Japan are dedicated to Inari.

 Some one has place a container of rice wine, sake, between the legs of this fox.

 This is the beginning of a small construction project. I know this because of the bamboo poles at the four corners of the space and right in the middle (very hard to see) a shorter pole with folded white paper hanging from it. This shows that the Shinto ceremony to bless the site has been completed. This was done even though this is a Buddhist temple.

This is a strong storage house where the temple keeps it valuables, mostly art work, I would imagine. This storage buildings have thick walls, strong windows and doors, and would be very hard to break into without making a huge amount of noise for a long time.

Yamadera

 This is a lion protecting the temple or maybe the gate I showed yesterday. In any case it is over your head as you start through the gate.

 This gate is a bit unusual as behind the warrior king there is another small room contain what appear to be judges who determine your qualifications to enter.

 Inside the gate there was a small building containing a Buddha and some stelae.

 Because the path is going up the side of a steep mountain, in many place there is a good view back down the slope.

 We were now on the a flat place one level below the highest point. Off to our left we could see three buildings. But before going over to explore them, we decided to look around the flat area we were in.

In front of a little office building, where you could get things stamped to prove you had been here or you could buy trinkets and souvenirs, a little statue stood holding smaller statues. This was only about a foot tall. It represents someone from olden Japan, before the year 1000 probably. The double loops of hair and the clothes tells the age.

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.