Join us...

...on a little walk to our nearest supermarket, only about 5 minutes away. Here's the road outside our place, complete with large shadow cast by our house. You can see that it's a reasonably quiet, reasonably old neighbourhood, with lots of ugly electric lines...


The house across the street from ours is quite typical of those all around us (although the built-in garage is rather unusual). Many of the houses around here were built about 25 to 30 years ago, making them quite old by Japanese standards. Lots of houses here have these orangey-brown roof tiles and complex roof shapes. The brightly-reflecting thing on the lower roof is a basic solar water heater.



A bit further down the road and we find the entrance to the shrine, marked by this stone lantern (shame about the TV antenna):

And then the shrine itself, where H's uncle is the priest:

I love the roof shapes of shrines in Japan.

Finally, some pine trees. H's dad tells me that 30 years ago this whole area was covered in pine trees. Now it's mainly residential and there are just a few trees dotted around the place...