If You Find the Time, Please Come and Stay a While/ In My Beautiful Neighbourhood

As promised, here are some pictures of the outside of my apartment block, and the area surrounding it. Here’s the building itself:

Like I said: it’s essentially a giant shoebox which has been partitioned for human habitation. My apartment’s on the top floor, third door from the left. The area with the blue net in the bottom left is where your rubbish waits to be collected.

There’s a handily-placed vending machine at the bottom of the stairs:

And this is the view from upstairs. The complete lack of town planning in Japan makes all suburbs look like shanty towns, even though they’re not (I don’t live in a Japanese favela – promise). I’m assured that the mountains look beautiful when they aren’t shrouded in fog:

Rice paddy out the back:

The river is about two minutes’ walk away. It’s rather low at the moment, as you can see:

Wider angle:

It’s rather overgrown:

There’s a park next to the river. It’s popular with afternoon strollers, even though the paths in it lead absolutely nowhere:

The women above are using umbrellas to shield themselves from the sun (a very common practice here in Japan).

Five minutes beyond the park, there’s a beach. It’s (predominantly) a rock beach, so has that earnest, seaweedy smell that you don’t get at sandy tourist beaches:

It’s quite relaxing, in spite of the massive expressway that runs alongside it:

Is popular with fisherman:

Kids:

And storm debris:

There’s more to the area, but I haven’t got ’round to photographing it yet. I’ll post a more detailed update when I’m less tired.