Mostly along the stream from Mizunomori Park

Before getting to the stream walk, here is a photo I took the day before on my way back from the dentist. This is a bread store, Cybelle, that serves free coffee if you want to eat your bread on the premises. Some of the bread is excellent. They sell one kind that is based on French baguettes but it includes cranberries and walnuts. It is really good for breakfast.

 This is an old house that was badly damaged in the earthquake. It does not appear that anyone lives there anymore, however, they have installed a brand new gate, which you can see the top of in the foreground.

Part of a field in Mizunomori Koen, the Water (mizu) forest (mori) Park, is visible in the background. In the foreground is the grounds of a construction company. They are currently replacing all the temporary buildings with new temporary buildings. Not sure if it is because of earthquake damage or just general improvements.

 Some of the houses alone this road are big with large lots. At first I thought that it might be nice to live in one, but then I realized that there are no stores in the area so it would be very inconvenient without a car.

 The combination of the earthquakes and lots of rain has caused landslides in some places.

 I walked along the stream side path which is now badly overgrown in places. In past years this flat area between the stream and the wall was kept clear and people used it to picnic and to fish. This year the ladders that had allowed access are gone and it has just gone completely wild. It does not show in the picture but the edge separating the water and the land was man-made and kept in good repair. Now, there are many spots which are broken, apparently because of the earthquakes, and remain unrepaired. I have no idea why this place is no longer being used.

I was intrigued by the shadows of the reeds.

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.

Finally leaving the park

 These flowers were interesting because the stems were covered with something that looked like white moss.

 These flowers were on a small tree, or maybe it is a large bush.

 This is the overall picture of the tree/bush. The top was a little taller than my head.

 I really have to learn to keep my finger away from the lens. The problem is that the best way to hold the camera to keep it steady is to have your finger very near the lens. If I concentrate on framing the picture, I sometimes forget about my finger. When I first worked at Miyagi University I lived on the second floor on the far end of this apartment complex. After two years we bought our 'mansion' and moved out.

 This is between the park and my dentist, a distance that is less than half a kilometer. The round part of the sign states that it is a Miyagi Kotsu bus stop and gives the name, takamori gochome kita. The rectangular section at the bottom gives the arrival times for the buses. There are about three an hour.  The strange looking part in the middle is a light with a battery and solar panels. The panels collect enough light during the day to power the light until after the buses stop at night.

On my way home I walk through a housing area that has very large, by Japanese standards, western looking homes. I particular like this one, although now that I am retired our 'mansion', condo apartment, is more convenient.

More from the park

 Telephone booths are very unusual these day. Everyone has a cell phone so the public phones have rapidly disappeared.

 The slot at the right top allows you to deposit coins. The large horizontal slot in the middle is for a pre-paid card. And the red button at bottom connects directly to emergency services without requiring any money.

 I found some exercise equipment. This is for moving your hips back and forth while holding the rails. The blue sign on the post shows how to use this.

 Here are some of the other pieces of equipment. Then nearer one is for stair climbing and the far one is used by putting your legs on this side and then hanging over backwards on the other.

 This is an example of how to use that last ladder-like thing.

This one was interesting. You are supposed to walk through it. The floor has various built-in patterns that stimulate the bottoms of your feet. I could feel them even through the thick soles of my walking shoes.

More from Takamori Higashi Koen

 Tucked away in one corner of the park there is a children's play area.

 This is something that is almost never seen in Japan, a public basketball court. Kids do not hang around outdoors here. They have school and then school clubs or prep school until nearly dark. Then they have lots of homework. Just looking at the court makes it obvious that people here do not play much basketball. The court is round.

 This is an outside wall of the public restroom. I was surprised by the triple projects and the way the plane of the wall has been broken up.

 Some of the flowers were in full bloom.

 At one corner of the park there are electric meters but the cable goes underground so I could not determine what was using the electricity. I guess that it must be lights in the restroom but I could not see any.

Still in the park

 The new path through the woods is a pleasure to walk on.

 Instead of using concrete to protect the uphill side of the path, they constructed it with old fashion methods, bundles of small branches held in place with sticks driven into the ground. This type of construction gradually becomes part of the landscape and will last many years.

 This is looking toward the point where I entered the park. The building is a school for the handicapped.

 When I saw these trees, all I could think of was Christmas. When I lived in this area, they were not much taller than I am.

 I finally found the name of the park. The bushes are trimmed to become kana and read takamori higashi koen, takamori is the place name meaning tall forest, higashi means east and koen is park.

This sign shows pictures of all the wild birds that make their homes or pass through the park. It also has a nice picture of my finger.

More from the park

 The sign on the tripod says that this is a stage for musicians or actors. I wonder if anyone has ever used it.

 The sign says that the wooden platform is for viewing water lilies. Of course, at this time of year there aren't any and I decided that I would not wait to see them, so I moved on.

 A little further on I found this nice little garden, but again it was too early for most of the flowers.

 This old wooden bridge crosses an inlet where the drainage water from the surrounding area enters the pond.

 By the time I got to the rest area, the people who had previously been there had moved on, but a young man was fishing.

About 15 years ago, I lived near by for a couple of years. At that time this park was very rough. The path on the right was the only way to walk through this area. However, over the past few years, they have done a lot of work on the park. The path on the left is one the results of this construction.

Off to the dentist's

 To get to my dentist's office in Parktown, I usually walk to Izumi Chuo and then take a bus. Sometimes I walk. It takes just under an hour. On this day I decided on the bus and as I walked to the depot, I saw the gateball players again. Everyone things of gateball as a game for old people and that is the image that I have. However, every once in a while I remember that I am already older than many of the players.

 At Izumi Chuo, I stopped for coffee at Starbucks and took this picture of the pyramid over the stairs leading down to the bus depot.

 I went over to the station building to use the public toilets before getting on the bus and found a large group of women, what my wife and I call "young mothers", women who are in the late 20s or 30s and usually have young children. I never did figure out what was going on. The tables held small packets of various kinds of food and what looked like jewelry and trinkets. While I was standing there, a long line formed behind the woman in the white sweater(?). Most of the women seemed to know each other. It was all very strange.

 My dental appointment was for 2:30 in the afternoon, so I had lunch at the little shopping center nearby. The place is actually a bread shop but they have an all you can eat lunch for 850 yen. There were five or six varieties of bread, two soups, salad fixings, five or six vegetables, spaghetti, rice, and three deserts. It was very good. I particularly liked it because I was able to fill up on vegetables. I am not a vegetarian but I do not eat much meat, no  beef at all. After I ate I walked across the street to a little public park. This was the flight of stairs leading down into the park.

 The park is centered on a small pond. I sat at the picnic bench and drew a couple of pictures of the little structure in the distance.

There were a couple of people sitting on the bench under the roof of the structure.