But a short walk from the train station was a Buddhist (I assume?) temple.

"May Peace Prevail On Earth" - a worthy motto

More of the facility, and a monk (I assume?) tending to the grounds.

Much of the surrounding area was graveyard, which we walked through.

I found this tree fascinating.

An incongruous children's play area.

The irregular stones were interesting.

An obelisk. There were very few flowers but many trees around the stones.

A strange pair of gravestones.

There were a fair number of cats in the graveyard.

Once out of the graveyard we walked along the city streets. It reminded me of some urban areas in New Jersey near the border with New York City.

A truck with megaphones was driving around advertising for a political candidate. The sign on the truck says "Upgrade, Taito!" in English (Taito being the name of the district). There were a lot of posters of candidates around.

This building was right next to a school (or some sort of child care facility, notice the tiny bikes). There was a playground next to it but I was discouraged by my companions from taking pictures of the kids.

A burned out building (with fire extinguisher box intact).

I couldn't tell if this was someone's yard (cars were parked there) or a public area (there were wastebins and signs). We didn't walk in very far, just enough to get this picture. Notice the basketball hoop.

This was pretty obviously a residence, of interesting design to a Western eye.

An old-looking wall.

Another shrine? Closed in any case. Notice the mirror, many of the pictured places were on narrow back streets that cars were nevertheless zooming through occasionally.

A cute path to a shed.

This was the best picture I could get of these statues over the gate they were behind. Also pictured is one of the few trees we saw in bloom, though I don't know what it is.

This cat was looking down at us and whining.

A Swiss (?) restaurant, which we considered dining at but passed by.

I think this was interesting because it was not wood? Dunno.

A mosaic in the road.

A Shinto shrine and Buddhist temple (forgive me if I've got this entirely wrong) next to each other. We walked straight ahead into the shrine.

A somewhat roughly painted statue, not sure if I should attribute it to being really old or graffiti.

The whole area we were walking through was on a fairly narrow hill. This is a view from the shrine grounds.

In case it wasn't obvious from the other photo, the train runs along this side of the hill.

There was an interesting dragon statue over the ritual cleansing pool here, unforunately I got a lousy image of it.

The main building of the shrine whose grounds we've seen in the last few shots.

A playground nearby, schoolchildren in uniforms.

Marla on the swings.

The playground was near the narrower end of the hill, and one fenced side offered a view over the other side of the hill (West, I assume, from the sunset). I love this picture.

The valley into which we descended, towards Nishi-Nippori station.
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