It was a lovely sunny day and Ritsuko and I decided we'd walk all the way to Seiyu (owned by Walmart but not so big at least in Nagaokakyo). It's about a 25min walk from our house. On the way back there was beautiful afternoon sunlight so I made these two shots.
The first shot is of a Pachinko parlour that is actually closing down. If you're not familiar with Pachinko, it's a kind of vertical pinball type game, which players insert balls into the machine and attempt to win more balls by getting the ball to fall into certain targets. Once a small bucket load of balls have been won, this bucket can be exchanged for a prize, which then can be taken to a hock shop down the back alley and exchanged for cash (gambling is illegal, but this is how they get around it). So why is it closing? Changing demographics, young people don't play it so much, older people are retiring and have less spare cash to play it.
The second shot is of the new buildings at the local high school that have just recently opened. It is very good to see. Often I lament about how run down most government schools look in Japan. A country which is the worlds second biggest economy for some reason seems to leave most of it's schools depleted. Most schools I've seen, the exteriors and interiors look like they haven't changed since the 1960s! Well finally it's good to see a school get an upgrade to modern facilities. It's also good to note they are starting a lot more vocational style courses with the new facilities. It's about time...