Street scenes and manju

 On my way to the Sendai Book Club, I saw another building being torn down.  There is so much reconstruction going on that equipment is in short supply and delaying many of the projects. Also raw materials are hard to find, even concrete is hard to get. Also many places are trying to do repairs but are finding that that things that need to be replaced are no longer being made, many of the companies having been destroyed by the tsunami.

 Here is another building with a lot of damage. Repairs seem to be just getting underway.

 The building in  the distance is the center where the Book Club meets. I have shown this wall a few times. For close to a year, it was cover with blue sheets. They are finally repairing the surface.

One of our neighbors brought is some kusa manju. These are balls of sweetened bean paste covered with rice that has been beaten with herbs. I love them. When they arrived there were about ten of them. They are wrapped in dried leaves and tied with something string-like that has been stripped from a plant.

 When I thought to take pictures, the rest of them were already eaten. They go very fast when we can get them.

 This is one that has just been opened. The beaten rice/herb combination is a translucent green and quite pretty.

This picture, in which then end of the manju has been bitten off, shows the bean paste in the inside. Manju go very well with various kinds of green tea. I also like them with coffee.

Wandering around

 Everywhere you look in Sendai, there are new buildings going up and old ones being repaired. This one is unusual because of the green, rather than blue, curtain around it. This is next to Suisen Dori, Daffodil Road, and is on one of the routes I take to Izumi Chuo.

 I stopped at Starbucks for coffee and sat outside. They were having some sort of special sale and these tents were set up along the walkway.

 On a side street that I have not walked on before, I found this red house with a little red house mailbox. Cute!

 After visiting my doctor, I started home and saw this truck, which is one of the results of the strict separation of trash here. His truck goes around and collects anything that can be sold. Mostly old metal objects and cardboard.

On the way home, I stopped at a bread store that gives free coffee, if you buy and eat their bread. This little sparrow came begging for crumbs. It was about as tame as pigeon.

More at the temple and shrine and then walking more

 This is the altar inside Toyokawa Inari Jinja.

 This is the house on the right of the shrine. It probably belongs to the caretaker, who is probably a Buddhist priest who also functions as a Shinto priest. I have seen this arrangement many times. It happens because Japan is getting less religious and fewer people are becoming priests, especially Shinto priests.

 As I was returning to the road, I noticed that, in the back of the building holding that first statue, there was a Buddhist altar in a very small room. The building was very small and at the street had that room with the statue, behind it was the stairs to the second floor, and at the very inside end of the building this altar.

 A little further down the street, I found this old style house.

 Just beyond it, I found this modern home but with a traditional Japanese garden.

I was crossing the last wide street before reaching the station, when I noticed this group of women. They were weeding and picking up the trash that had accumulated in the bed of plants.

Toyokawa Inari Jinja and Kozenji Temple

 I was walking into Sendai along the main road from Izumi Chuo to the downtown area. The road follows a shallow valley much of the way and the side streets are often narrow, going up steep slopes to reach the tops of the surrounding hills. Well before the road reaches downtown, the land flattens and there are more possible routes, all on back roads. I took one that I had never before walked on. It went through an area of one family houses and newer apartment buildings, plus a few small stores.

 All of a sudden I noticed this roof. It looked like it might be a temple or a shrine so I decided to investigate.

 I rounded the next corner and found a temple, occupying the first floor of a two story residential structure. The sign on the right says that it is Kozenji and the sign on the left indicates that it is Toyokawa Inari Jinja.

 The statue is definitely Buddhist as is the small stele besided it. I could not read the writing on the left.

 I walked around behind the building and discovered a Buddhist statue on the left.

Straight ahead there is a Shinto shrine. This was Toyokawa Inari Jinja. Toyokawa is a place name as well as the family name of a large clan from the old days. Inari is a fox god. Jinja, of course, just means shrine. There was no one around so I was unable to ask any questions.