A Walk Through the Neighborhood Seeing Garages and Carports

This morning looked like minimal ash and good weather.  I took a 6:00am walk through our neighborhood.  Our area is a mixture of many older homes (a few sitting totally empty and deteriorating), a sprinkling of newer freshly built homes, a couple of gated mansions, and a few apartments.  It is interesting to see how they park their cars.  Somewhat similar to America, there are carports, actual garages, or nothing.  Japanese have a tradition of usually backing into their parking spots.  It is pretty amazing at times, how they get their cars into tiny spots.

 I have to mention the wonderful neighbors.  We are so lucky, and feel so thankful to be in this particular neighborhood.  The neighbors say hello and talk with us (Glenn), they rake leaves along the roadside edge of our yard (not being critical, just kind), give us fruits and vegetables (we also give them things), and all seem nice and family oriented.  One of them even came to our Christmas activity.  We are over 65, with many of our neighbors being our age or much older.  There are a growing number of young families with children.  It is fun to interact with them at times.  Most families have a dog, so they are out walking the dogs often.  The couple next door has two dogs. When she found out we had none, she said “So sad to not have any dogs”.

So here is a view of our neighborhood.  

 

 

 

 

You can't tell, but this is one of the huge gated mansions.

 

This one built a garage way in back, and has a nice long driveway.

 

Just a block and a half away from the mansion is this tiny ancient house, that's really kind of cute.

 

 

This is a nice snug car port, just off the road.

 

Right next to the ancient little house, this new one was built, with no car port.

 

A few houses up the road is a big Taxi station, making our neighborhood busy with taxis coming and going.  Guess it's nice if we ever need one.

 

Past the taxi station is a little green stretch (very tight for two cars and pedestrians).

 

 

A little side road off to the right shows a car port, and a mini port off to the left.

 

Beautiful, but narrow street. Notice the concrete garage on the right, just past the mossy wall.

 

This is also a new home with no garage or car port.

 

This is a nice garage, with a door that is never closed.

 

This is our neighbor's car cubby, underneath their home.

 

Another car cubby, and the narrow driveway goes up and makes a zigzag.  notice the mirror in the orange pole.  They have mirrors all over our neighborhood, and various places around town.

 

Left to right, small car port, no garage, and cubby.

 

Steep driveway on the right.

 

Cute orange mailbox on the left.  The road curves where that car is, and becomes one of the steepest roads.  You can't tell from photos how steep and narrow these roads are.

 

Some interesting covered and uncovered front porches to their houses. Notice the potted plants lining the one on the right.

 

This is one of the deserted deteriorating homes.  Weeds and flowers are grown over the walkway to the front door.  In its day it was probably beautiful.

 

Last but not least, is an interesting large home.  Even though we feel very safe here, for one reason or another, this owner must not feel safe, and put barbed wire completely surrounding the home. We will have to make friends with them someday, so they will know that they don't have to be afraid of us.

 

We feel very thankful and lucky to feel so safe.  Again, the other evening I had to walk home alone from church at 9:00pm. so Glenn to take a carload of people to town.  I'm not wild to have to walk alone, but at least I feel safe.  Japan, and Kagoshima City are a great place to live.