Miscellaneous morning

I guess this is a miscellaneous post today...  I seem to have an odd assortment of pictures.

One rainy morning when I arrived at the pre-school, I found all the children's shoes and boots lined up in the entrance.  Usually the kids come through the playground and leave their shoes at the wide sliding doors, but because this day the ground was all muddy, the teachers had the children come in the front.  Did you know that in Japan children take off their shoes when they enter a school building as well as in their own homes?  The children often change into rubberized indoor shoes when they are in the classrooms.

This was taken on another rainy day.  It hadn't started out that way when Choco and I went for our morning walk but we had to turn around and come home half way through the walk.  I had an umbrella again but I was more concerned about my camera getting wet with the rain coming down so heavily.  It didn't dissuade me from taking a picture of the raindrops on a leaf though.

I found all this red at the river one day.  This must be a water barrier and in case of flooding the river can be re-routed (I think).  There are many of these stations along all of the streams and rivers.

Here is an older one not far from us that hasn't been repainted recently.

And this was given to me by Mrs. N my cat mentor.  She is decorating her freshly painted car and she gave me one of the cat footprint car decorations she had.  I smile every time I see the back of my car!