Monday, June 14, 2010

Center of my city -2-

I showed what the center of my city looked like in the night last November, but I haven't showed you pics taken there during the day. There are a shopping mall, department store, library and park in this center. So it is no exaggeration to say that you can do or get everything here.

The building you see on your left is the library. Of course it is fun to look for good books there, but you'd also enjoy strolling this aisle in early summer. It was so hot, but when you stay under the shadows of the trees you'd feel cool again.

And this is one of the biggest intersections in my city. You can see the buses running, and the building beyond those buses is the shopping mall. I drop by the mall to look for good CD's and some clothes. And those blue buses are owned by a company called "Kantetsu", which operates some lines as well in my prefecture.

The terminal station Tsukuba of the railway TX is connected to the first floor of this shopping mall. And this penguin was asking people to take advantage of an electronic money card called Suica. As I told you before, you can store some money on the card and if you flash it over a ticket gate you can pass through it.

I hadn't known that a flea market was being held at this mall.

This mall basically consists of two buildings and there is a narrow street in between. I've seen before live performances taking place here a few times.

You can see those character stuffed toys, but since I'm a guy I couldn't tell which character was which. All I could recognize was the Hello Kitty cushion over there.

I introduced "Kaki Goori" or shaved ice last summer. And this bus-looking stall was already selling it and gelato as well. Whenever I come to this place I never fail to see this bus. 

Some of you might know the main international airport in Japan is called "Narita". And you can go to either Narita or Haneda airport by bus from this center of my city. And besides that you can reach by bus newly opened Ibaraki airport as well. 

And this is the bus that takes you to those airports. It takes 1 hour and 45 minutes to reach Narita airport. When I came back from the US years ago, this station didn't look like this, but I took this bus on my way back home from Narita airport. 

I was so tired after taking so many pics that I had an iced coffee at a coffee shop called Veloce. I tend to discard about a half of the pics I take, 'cause I'm not good at taking pics at all =/