Sunny in the mid 60s

   Sometimes I hear a whapping sound coming from the balconies of my neighbors. This is a sign that they are beating their futons! Apparently when you put your futon outside to air out, you need to beat it to get rid of accumulated dust.

   I haven't done this yet, but I have been doing laundry and putting it out to dry. My shirts came out a little stiffer than usual, but also less wrinkled. So far I'm a fan of line-drying, but if it ever rains for an entire week I'll be out of luck.

  

   In addition to a lot of farm land, there are also several factories in the area.Today I walked along the outskirts of one of them. You can see it on the left, hidden by a screen of bushes. I'm not sure what it is a factory for, but I think it's related to cars. I also saw stacks of lumber lying around. At around 5:30 every evening, a chime goes off, and streams of workers come out of the factory and find their way back to their cars or apartments.

   This picture didn't come out very well... But on the ground there, you can see stone grates. Each of those little notches in the stone is actually a hole that allows water to drain into a little stream below. I usually walk along these when there are no sidewalks. 

   This is the river again. There are lots of little canals and streams that run through the town, and although some of them may be natural, I suspect that many of them were built as irrigation for the farms. 

   After suffering for the past few nights on an incredibly thin futon (I've know winter coats to be thicker), I finally bought something that is billed as a mattress today. It's 5cm thick and it was the hardest one I could find, which means that, unlike softer versions, my fingers do not touch when I pinch it. Combined with the futon, it should let me sleep well tonight. Later, I might buy a real mattress, or maybe a better futon.

   I noticed when I first started driving here that people almost universally back into parking spots, whether it's at the mall or at their apartment building. At first, this seemed like too much to ask, but after I tried it, I realized that in a tiny car, it's not difficult at all. There is even a term for it: mae muki (前向き), which literally means "facing forwards." The term is also used to mean "a positive attitude," and maybe that is part of the reason Japanese people insist on parking that way. 

   One thing that hasn't changed is that motorcyclists still zoom between lanes to get to the front.