A new fib

In the past I wrote fibs while in the classroom or while walking. However, recently I have to pay attention in all my classes and I have either been walking with Ian or when alone listening to lectures about Buddhism on my iPod. Today Masayo and I went to an art supply store and then had lunch together. I walked home - about 9 kilometers. As I walked I composed the following.

cold

but
sunny
winter's day
walking home alone
solitude and tranquility

Labor Thanksgiving Day

Sunday was officially a holiday, Labor Thanksgiving Day, but when holidays come on Sunday, Monday becomes a national holiday, too. Ian and I decided that for training purposes we should walk both days.

The above picture shows what I consider to be one of the good features of the housing projects that surround Sendai proper. Between the rows of houses, usually similar but each a little different because the land developer and the house builders are often different, they leave open space which is landscaped and becomes pedestrian paths. The roads are frequently laid out in the form of a maze, which prevents through traffic on most of the streets. This particular path is very close to Ian's house.
When we walk between Ian's house and my condo, we pass this property as we go up a small hill near a public park. The house has alwasy intrigued me. You can not see it in the picture but beside this gate there is a small hand written sign that advertises massages in a variety of styles. The property is huge by Japanese standards and seems to run up the hill and off to the left.
This is the Japanese style gate, called a mon, which you can see at the right end of the wall in the previous picture. It is very traditional and you seldom see a gate like this on new houses. It must have cost a small fortune to build, but I would bet that it is almost never opened. I know I have passed it at least a hundred times and I have never seen it open. In fact I have never seen anyone inside the grounds, although it is obviously lived in.
This is the part of the house. It is very large and the grounds are well cared for, so the owners must be wealthy but I know nothing about them. I should add that the view from those windows is down a river valley and must be very beautiful, especially at this time of year when the leaves are in color.

Another busy Sunday

This morning Ian and I walked up the hill from my house to his; of course, he had to walk to my house before we could hike together. Once we got to his house I stopped for coffee and toast while Ian had his breakfast. When we finished, I packed the pears that Ian's wife had left for me to take to my wife and headed off, away from my house, to an all day, joint meeting of the JALT Sendai, a local teachers' organization, and three other teachers' organizations. Along the way I took the above picture, looking north over the area where I live. I could not locate my condo, but it is out there somewhere

I took this picture while I was with Ian, just before reaching his house. It had rained but the sky was clearing out over the ocean.
This is a stairway down to the Shrine in the next picture. This is typical of much of Japanese landscaping - you have to carefully watch your step. The idea is connected to Buddhism, I believe. The walker must be in a state of awareness, one of the goals of Buddhism, or he or she will trip over a stone.
This is the Shrine, Benzaitendo, which is named for one of the Seven Gods of Fortune, Benzaiten. She came from India where she was a river god, the goddess of everything that flows: water, words (and knowledge, by extension), speech, eloquence, and music. In Japan she became a protector god, first of the nation and then of the people. Finally the kanji for her name changed to reflect her new role in bestowing monetary fortune. I did not realize all this until I got home and did a little research. I guess I should have stopped and let her know that I had visited rather than just passing by as I did. Things like that are the reason that I never got rich.

First snow

We had our first snow, not very much but enough to see. Someone told me that they had seen on TV that the snow was 20 days early this year. A while back there was an article in the newspaper that said that, although or because the world is getting warmer, the area around Sendai is getting colder. The path of the jet stream has changed just enough to move the boundary between the cold north and the warmer south to the north of Sendai, instead of to the south.This was the view out our kitchen door, just as the sun was coming up. It was snowing although you can not see the flakes in this picture. The green building on the left is part of Seiyu, a department store in which the food section stays open 24/7.This is looking down off the balcony outside the kitchen. There is landscaping around three sides of our building: a paved path and various kinds of flowers, shrubs, and trees.

This was taken out a window Miyagi Gakuin University at about 9 a.m. It really was not much snow but definitely enough to say that it snowed. There was more snow up in the mountains, as much as a few inches in some places.

The long-range weather forecasts are predicting a cold, hard winter this year, which may make our Henro Pilgrimage more interesting.