Roaming around here may be dangerous if you don't know the roads, but I feel safe when I go out for my walks in the evening with my daughter Emily who's been living here for over a year. She seems to know all the roads--she's bicycled most of them either to shop or to commute to school. We've done so twice. Gone out in the evening and come home when it was pitch black, I mean. A treat when going walking with Emily is that the store on one end of the walk usually is a food store, and we let ourselves sit and rest for a bit plus buy something yummy to share with the family when we get back.
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The high-rise "mansion" in the back houses the
owners of these cycles! |
Japanese seem to walk everywhere, and when it is a bit too far to walk, they go by bicycle. On our first walk, I stopped at a parking lot outside an apartment building with about seven racks outside, for parking bicycles...well, one of them was for motorcycles, and the other six were double-decker ones for bicycles. I have lived in Japan too long; seeing bicycle parking lots doesn't seem unusual anymore.
I told you--my children go to school by bicycle, and Kinya uses the bicycle most of the time he wants to go anywhere. Recently, I was asked if I wanted a bicycle too. Well, there is the possibility of God's leading me into teaching English conversation classes, in which having a bicycle for transportation to and from classes would be nice. But my back is nowhere in the condition to make cycling possible. I still have to be careful not to do too much strenous walking, or I am sorry later. If God wants me teaching and if He sees it best for me to use the bicycle for this, I am sure He can "fix my back" to enable me to ride too. After all, He did make sure I learned how in third grade.
