Well, this is part of my bike route.  I go along this way to get to work.  It's pretty cool.  In this pic you can see the rice paddies where the frogs are LOUD!  And, ducks hang out there a lot.  Sometimes, I hang out with them too.  Naw, I'm joking, I already have enough trouble with Japanese.  In the background you can see some houses, which are different from Canadian ones (duh).  They're small, but I think it's OK.  It makes walking down the street interesting.  
 
 
 
 

This guy is about a block away from my house.  Yes, I *live near buddha*.  Not many people can claim that, ya know, well, except for the people in my neighbourhood.  Anyways, my buddy Buddha shows up a lot in my pictures, as you'll see.  I took this one on one of my first exploration days.  
 
   
 
 

OK, well, it's a grave.  But I think it's pretty neat.  First of all, notice the big long blocks of wood behind it... they have kanjis written on them.  I have no clue what they say, but many of them say the same thing (I can tell that much).  I don't know what the tradition is behind them... do you bring one along when you visit the grave, like we bring flowers?  I dunno.   

Also notice that at the base of the grave are some offerings... one of which is a beer can.  Ha ha.  I thought that was funny.  
 
 
 
 

This is part of my running route along the Asakawa.  It's really nice. Most of it ressembles this picture... wide river bed, bike path, etc. There's at least 15 kms along the river, which is cool.  There's also another river which crosses the Asakawa, and that provides even MORE routes like this.  It's a great place to be when ya run...  
 
 
 
 
 

So this is a temple close to my house.. pretty neat huh?  There's so many things to explore there.  There's a large hill you can climb in the back... it's covered with forest and is very neat to explore.  To be honest, it's a graveyard-type thing, I think, well with some graves (as seen in the pic above) in it, but you'd actually have to go looking for them to really find them.  Plus, it's not spooky like Canadian graveyards. Anyways, a cool place.  And definitely mentioned in my journal a lot.  As a matter of fact... here's some of the times:

my first impressions of the temple