A bird in the hand

At the end of lessons today, I had a chance to ride my old mountain bike round Teganuma Lake. The lake is the third dirtiest in Japan, a fact the locals have up in lights (no really, they have a 20ft sign by the lake). The lake used to be the dirtiest in Japan, so folks round here are happy to chart the lake's drift down the list of shame. Whether our lake's performance is due to clean-up efforts or the rest of Japan's lakes going to ruin, I don't know. Anyroad, it affords lovely views and doesn't smell and has a great cycle path winding all the way round it - about 20km in circumference. Rude of me not to have introduced the other amenities beside the lake, they include:

• A swanky library featuring a grass roof  you can walk around on.
  
• A bird museum featuring lots of stuffed rare birds (no wonder they are rare...)
• A water museum featuring, er, exhibits about water and such
• A couple of nice parks with playgrounds and picnic benches
• A bait shop where you can rent giant fibre glass swans you can pedal around the lake (unless you allow your two-year-old to steer, in which case you barely make it from the jetty before your 30 minutes is up)

I have no pictures of the giant swans or stuffed rare birds, but in keeping with the avian theme of this post, here is a picture of a pigeon sitting on our front garden fence I snapped one morning back in January.