Nakano Neighbourhood 2

Last time I showed you some of the photos of Nakano at night, this time are some photos of Nakano under an awesome autumn sunny day.

Electrical wires and transformers are common in any Japanese neighbourhood. They don’t look half bad, I rather like the way they are arranged.

Here are some more electrical wires and apartments. Japanese apartments are small but are quite neat. At least these are not like the ones in Hong Kong with 60+ stories tall.

I see quite a few apartments have loads of plants outside the front door making it like a little botanical garden. The choice of plants are often very neat as well.

Aren’t these just beautiful?

A contrast of older and newer apartments.

Some apartments got unique artistic decor like this bunny.

A lot of driveways from apartments have this kind of step right on the curb. This step is for cars to easily get on and off the driveway. Neat idea!

Have not run into a lot of cats in the past couple of days. Maybe most of them are indoor cats?

Walking towards the shopping area again. Here this is a store selling BBQ eel. A skewer of 2 to 3 pieces is ¥1,300. Quite expensive so I haven’t given it a try yet. But am inching towards doing it….

Lots of streets with lots of shops and restaurants.

By the way, this is the ramen shop we stopped by the night before. I would go back again.

Sometimes we like to save money and ended up having パン (bread) from Japanese bakeries like this one. You can stuff yourself with fresh and tasty bread for as little as ¥120. And at the end of the day when they are one sale, you can get them at below ¥100.

Was walking away from the main shopping street and ran into a moe magazine hiding in someone’s secret stash….

The shopping street at Nakano has multiple entrances and some of them have this arch to attract and welcome customers.

It was such a mild autumn day. Sunny weather makes me feel extra happy.

Everything looks extra colourful when the sun is out :D

And there is this very big bike park for commuters right next to the bus loop and train station. What a great idea. I think Vancouver can definitely borrow this idea.

Here is the detailed instructions of how to use the bike rack.

And while we finished crossing the road, a really load bike roamed into the intersection. The biker got off the bike and we realized that he was late meeting his date :)

Japanese people use a lot of bikes. I think they are probably more green than a lot of people living in cities of similar population density.

I also feel that Japanese people walk a lot. I see a lot of people using public transportation than driving. I am sure there are lots of drivers as well but the number of people on trains is just so incredible. I cannot imagine having them drive one car each on the roads like a lot of the North Americans do.

Really love the ticket machines in Japan. Here you have a train map on top that tells you where you can transfer so that you can figure out the train lines to take for your destinations. At the same time, the amount of fare is marked at your destination station so that you know how much it will cost. The further you travel, the more it costs, which is fair. Hopefully, when Vancouver gets the smart card system and fare gates in 2013, they will revamp the fare system to make it fairer :)