This is the little store front of the soba noodle place. The big brown ball by the door is made of pine needles - the ball is originally made of fresh pine needles, and apparently when they turn brown, the sake of that year is good to drink. The name of the place is Sobazen, which is on the big wooden sign above the door: So-ba-ze-n.
This is the house next door, which is pretty nice, but I don't know if anyone lives there. I never see a car in the driveway, and I went up a few times to introduce myself, but no one's ever there. It's a cool house - it even has a little bamboo grove on premesis. How many people in America can say they have one of those? Swimming pools are okay, but can you film your own ninja-style fight scene in it? I didn't think so.
A little side-of-the-road Shinto shrine, which you see interspersed in the city. Pretty cool.
Inside the aforementioned shrine. The box is for donations, and there's a little bridge leading up to it, over a little moat.
Plaques by the shrine. I used to think they were prayers or something, but under closer examination, they are just to indicate who donated a lot of money to the shrine.
Shibukawa has a fair quantity of stray cats. They don't seem to be in very bad shape, so they're kind of cute.
Clothes dryers are not common in Japan at all - people dry their laundry where they can.
Poster for a Kabuki show
This is a 2-story building that I was unable to determine the purpose of - it's not really important anyway, what I found noteworthy was the slide. The only thing I can think is it's a fire escape route, as in: "OH MY GOD, THE BUILDING'S ON FIRE WE HAVE TO GET OUT EVERYBODY COME ON OR WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE wheeeeeeeeeee SOMEBODY CALL 119 GET EVERYBODY OUT" etc.
This is a nice single-family house in Shibukawa - there are a fair amount of these. Each property is surrounded by a stone wall with a gate. Some properties have been in the same family for over 200 years.
This photo illustrates two points: one, that major street signs are bilingual, which is a lifesaver, and also that there are so many soaring views of the mountains around Shibukawa that you just stop noticing after a while. I've never lived around mountains before, it's really nice.
Some of the vending machines that are really, REALLY common in Japan. Like, three on every corner common. I really don't know how they can all pull a profit - I certainly don't buy forty dollars' worth of soda, coffee, beer, and cigarettes from 15 different vending machines over the course of a month, and that's about what would be necessary for profitablilty. It's a mystery.
I thought this was cool - people shape the trees in front of their houses over time to look more picturesque. They do it with bamboo poles. In a decade or so, this tree will be handsome and stately, with a topiary look typical of pine trees in Japan.
Some examples of finished product. Apparently, they use some of the same techniques in Bonsai.
Well, that's about all I have. See you next week!
2 comments:
I love the pics. All of the pics are typical of smaller cities all over Japan. One thing you notice is how much power lines block your views. The amount of power lines is worse in Japan than in America.
Thanks for the comments, guys. Tornados, I really do appreciate your regular comments, and I've checked out your spot and it's pretty cool. The thousand-samurai parade looked especially nifty, I will have to check that out if I'm in the neighborhood this coming summer. Dad, I have to admit that I don't know. Given that the "stonework" is so prevalent around here, that means it's pretty cheap, and that probably means most of it is cast concrete. But, you know, I don't really have the eye for this kind of thing.
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