Gamagori is a seaside town which has a few onsen (natural hot spring) resorts. One of its more famous features is Takeshima (bamboo island). The island is about half a kilometer off from mainland and is connected by a foot bridge. Kind of neat how there is a torii over the end of the bridge (photo above). It is not a large island, and the entire island is the jinja (shinto shrine).
The picture above is from the onsen, which was part of a hotel. Great view from there - you can see Takeshima and the bridge. I was probably not supposed to have the camera there, but I snuck it in to take a quick picture. This picture was of one of the outdoor pools (on a deck above the beach). There was a wood hot tub behind me. In this wooden one they put some branches of something in (looked like a bunch of large chives) - I guess it was supposed to be good for you (either that, or they were making soup for dinner...). Along with the two small outdoor pools, there was also a large pool indoors with one wall of the room a huge glass window overlooking the beach. Also a cool water tub and a sauna inside. And the standard area where you clean yourself before entering the pools.
This picture above is of the clam diggers. Seems to be a big thing to come to the beach and catch some sort of small shellfish as the tide went out. The people would go out on and dig in the sand to find them. Lots of them were caught, so seems to be a pretty abundant animal.
In the back of the clam digger photo on the left, you can see the hotel which houses the onsen we went to. The glass window on the second floor is where the indoor onsen was at, and the outdoor one would be just to the left of that (out of the picture). The women's side was similar in size to the men's and further to the left (but out of view of the picture).
Oh, on the far right of the photo, the person peering down is Gordon, my classmate.
Bikes are common forms of transportation in Japan. The father in my host family rides his every day to the train station as part of his commute. The photo above shows the bike parking area at the Okazaki train station. This photo only shows about half of this bike parking lot, and there is a similar one on the other side of the train tracks. Also, this was taken on a holiday, so there aren't nearly as may bikes as there would be on a work day.
I took my bike for a ride on Sunday. I had been down by the river a few times, but decided to follow it downstream for a while and see if I could make it all the way to the ocean. Long day - covered over 50 kilometers in 5 hours. That is a lot for the heavy, old commuter bike I use.
Above is a photo from the ride. I followed the dykes for most of the ride. Most areas were paved bike paths or roads, but there was some dirt (including a great stretch of singletrack through a bamboo forest). Between the dykes and the river are areas used for various forms of recreation, including picnicing, motocross, sports fields, radio controlled planes, paint ball wars, and much more. This area probably floods in most years during the typhoon season (July-August).
The long white line in the background is a Shinkansen (bullet train) crossing a bridge. Always amazes me how many people get moved by these trains. Long trains, and they run every 10 minutes or so in each direction.