Fire Hydrants

Fire hydrants in Japan are quite varied in comparison to those I have seen in the US. This picture shows on beside a building near my apartment. The blue sign gives the address of the building and the white sign has a map with other hydrant locations. I am not sure what the function of the red light is but it is definitely related to the hydrant.

Here is a better look at the connection point for attaching the hose.

 Traditionally, Japanese fire departments are a bit slow in arriving but very effective once they reach the site of the fire. The fire departments practice constantly and have competitions on all aspects of firefighting and life saving. If you will look back a few years in this blog, I posted quite a bit about the station that was near my condo in Sendai. They were one of the best in the country, having received a number of awards and won competitions.

Here in Nakagawa-machi, we do not have our own full time station but when needed the fire trucks come from the next city. It is only a few kilometers away so the arrive fairly quickly. Also, there are active volunteer fire departments in each ward of out town.

Sports in the park

Sport forms a very important part of life in Japan. On this day there was a soccer tournament for what looked like junior high school students. At least two or three times a month there are tournaments of some kind in the park. For school age kids, there are baseball and soccer tournaments and for adults there are ground golf, gate ball, and petanque competitions. Petanque is the French version of the game of bocchi ball which was popular in the eastern part of the US when I lived there. I am playing in a tournament next week so I will go into detail then.

The ground in the park can be reserved by groups. I play ground golf on the far half of the field twice a week and other groups use the space for practicing various sports.

In this picture, you can see two soccer games in progress, one in the foreground and one on the far side of the field.

 One feature of these tournaments for kids is that the parents come and set up tents. They eat and drink tea while watching their kids play. There are also kids whose team is not playing at the moment running around.

Going home

Some scenes from my trip home from the river. The area is crisscrossed with little canals like this. Until about 20 years ago this had been a rice growing area for more than a thousand years. Over that long span of time, the farmers joined together in cooperatives and build large and small canals to insure that all the rice paddies had access to sufficient amounts of water. The cooperatives also maintain these canals, periodical cleaning them and doing necessary repairs.

This surprisingly is a little truck farm. It looks like an empty lot a first and then you realize that the plants are growing in straight lines even though there are a lot of weeds.

 One of the the things I like about Japan is that there are numerous pedestrian ways that allow you to walk without all the traffic noise along the street-side sidewalks. The chain-link fence separated the path from the athletic field of a large grade school.

 Here is another canal but this one runs down the middle of a street. Actually, there is two-way traffic on both sides. The building on the left is a club house for the grade school. The fence is a continuation of the one in the last picture.

Along the river on my way home

People fishing is a very rare sight along the river, but this man was trying hard. At this spot there are a lot of small fish, about 10 centimeters (~4 inches). I think they are what is called 'ayu' in Japanese. In English they are sweetfish, Plecoglossus altivelis. This fish's name leads to a very bad pun that the junior high school students who are just beginning to seriously study English enjoy. The pun is "Ayu a fish?" which with Japanese pronunciation sounds like "Are you a fish?"

At the point where the riverside path heads back to the top of the embankment,there is a small park. They are hard to see but there were some kids playing on the blue slide behind the trees. The trees in public areas are usually trimmed once or more usually twice a year. This is said to keep the roots from growing and effecting the surrounding area. These trees have been cut back into the traditional shape that is seen in gardens, both public and private. As with most parks in Japan, this one has a public restroom which is very helpful on long walks.

About 100 meters away, I have to cross a road that comes from a bridge over the river. Once safely across the road and another 100 meters or so toward home, the path turns away from the river and follows a canal. This was the place where they built one of the new moveable dams. The dam is in the middle of the picture. The white line is where the water is flowing over the moveable section that is to the left. On the other side of the concrete structure there is another moveable dam and beyond that there is an overflow outlet that also allows water from a canal to enter the river.

Turning and looking back in the direction from which I came, we can see the pool formed behind the dam. If the dam is raised, the water will come about half way up the bank on the far shore. You can see the bridge on the extreme left.