Going for Cheesecake

 On TV we saw a news item about a new shop that makes cheesecake using various kinds of cheese. It looked delicious so I decided to go and buy some. My wife was having a group of friends in for coffee so the timing was perfect. The store is on the far side of Sendai, the south side, so it was a long trip. I first walked over to Yaotome Station and took the subway to the opposite end of the line. I takes almost half an hour. Exiting the station, I found a large taxi stand.

 On the south side of the station there is a narrow river. This is the pedestrian bridge over it.

 There are paved paths along both side.

 This is the subway station, although here it is more like and El than a subway.

There are also paths along the immediate sides of the river, so I went down between the levees to experience the water better.

Walking in the snow 03

 This is the front of Green Mart, the upscale supermarket that we frequently shop at. When we had a car, we went there more often. Now, I occasionally walk there to buy bread (the best rye bread around) or coffee beans and we usually stop there on the way home from the doctor's, which was the case on this day.

Japanese sweets that are served with green tea are made and sold in this building. I have never bought any here but I have heard that they are very good. This sort of sweet is usually very colorful and pretty in addition to tasting good.
 I finally reached the river by my apartment. It was snowing but a very wet snow. You can see that they have finished cutting all the trees and vegetation along the opposite side of the river. I am not sure but I think that they are going to rebuild the riverside surface of the levee.

Walking in the snow 02

 This is another picture of the - I really don't know what to call it. An outlet for the drainage systems that handles runoff is at the upper left and the water runs down hill and into the pond. This little water way is marked off by rectilinear stone sculptures. In a few days, I will have pictures from another trip that will show this in more detail.

 This is the back entrance to my doctor's office. It is in a housing area that requires the owner of any business to live in the building. The doctor has a fairly large office with lots of equipment on the first floor and his home on the second floor.

 This is in a city park, most of which have installations designed for kids.

This is more of the housing area. Actually is is very large, extending for many kilometers. When the plots were first laid out, there they included parks and walkways like this between groups of houses. One company bought the land and did all the landscaping and set the conditions for building. These rules are part of the contract when you buy a lot.

The part of the area nearest the subway (4 kilometers or so) was finished first. When that was almost full that started work on the next area. This has continued for more than 20  years. The newest section was opened about 5 years ago. Most of the people who built houses were upper middle class and middle aged. This means that in the earlier sections the populations is near retirement age.

Walking in the snow

 This is the gate into one of the local high schools, Izumi High School. This is vacation time in Japan so there was no one around. The teachers would all be there but they would be indoors.

 Most of the time I take a short cut through a park when I go to my doctor's. The path is paved but does not seem to be used very much, except for people walking their dogs. As you can see, there was only one set of footprints and they were mine. I turned around and took this picture behind me.

 The park has a couple of small ponds, essentially places to keep the running off surface water so that the drainage system does not get flooded.

This is looking down on the second pond. There is a wooden walkway around part of it. Also in the distance you can just see a sculptured waterway where some of the run off enters the pond. Green Mart, the up-scale supermarket, where we get our coffee and much of our bread is just off to the left.