Wall and Fence

Most garden walls in our neighborhood are made of concrete. There are exceptions like these.

These fences let air pass through. Click to here to see some vents in concrete garden walls.

Neighbor's Gate

This is just one of the many styles of gates in our neighborhood. To go to the front door you would open the right side. First, though, you would ring the bell. The owner would answer through an intercom.

Dog Sign on Gate

The sign on this gate above the mail slot says "dog" in kanji. All dogs must be registered. The dog owner is given a sign to put on the gate to tell visitors or delivery people that there is a dog in the house or in the garden. Dogs are supposed to be on a leash even in their own garden.

More Gates

See the small side gate on the right?

Under the Neighbor's Gate

Our Garden Gate

This is the garden gate we have now. It has a combination lock. This is not a typical gate. In the past, delivery people used to come into our gate, open up the front door, stand in the entry hall, and shout for us to come to the door. We have lot of deliveries, but other salespeople whom we don't know come, too. I miss the old way, but this gate provides more privacy.

When we want to enter the gate, we have to push on this little door at the top right hand corner of the gate.

The door opens to reveal buttons. We have a combination of numbers that we have to push. Then we have to push the bottom button that says "endo" or "end".

When a visitor or a delivery person comes, he has to ring the doorbell to talk to us. There are two doorbells (on the right). The top one has a 2F sticker on it. The other has 1F sticker. We live on the second floor. Baba and Aunt live on the first floor.

There is an intercom and camera on the doorbells, too. We can see and talk to a visitor or delivery person from the first floor and from the second floor. We can open the gate from both floors. We can also talk to the first floor from the second floor using the intercom.

The long slot under the name plate is the mailbox.

This is the mailbox on the inside of the gate. We lift the door to get the mail. The button next to the mailbox opens the gate from the inside. There is also a latch on the inside of the gate.

A Gate in the Neighborhood

Here is a wooden gate in our neighborhood. On the left is a gate for their driveway. Click on the picture to see the detail of the wall. It looks like a temple wall.

Our Old Wooden Gate

Now you can see why we got a new gate. It was rotting and it was hard to slide open. Sometimes it wouldn't slide. That was confusing for delivery people. There was no doorbell on it so they had to shout at us to come open it. Sometimes it wouldn't open so packages had to be delivered over the top. Once, it even fell off its runner when the postman tried to open it. The gate door fell off the frame into the garden. That was more than confusing!

Our old gate was nothing fancy, but it had a nice sound when you could slide it open. The door itself sounded nice and then Jiji bought a bell to put on it so we knew when someone entered. It took a while to get used to the bell, but then we missed it when it was gone. We miss the old gate. We miss Jiji, too.

More New Year's Decorations

Pine branches are put on both sides of the gate or entrance. Aunt put these at our front gate.

This is a close-up of one of the branches.

This is one of our neighbors' gates.

This is their front door decoration.