Japanese Landscapes

     Several days ago I was jogging around the area where we live in my usual pattern.  My usual pattern involves striking out in a randomly chosen direction and finding a way to get lost.  I do this so that I can learn the roads and landscapes of Nagareyama.  I am finding that I can go farther and farther as I become more and more fit and my success rate at finding my way back is still 100%.  This day I was listening to my Ipod and as I turned a corner, saw some striking flowers up on an embankment that seemed to capture the Japanese approach to landscaping.

     As you can see the hill is quite steep, and there is a retaining wall completely down the left side of the road.  There are drainage pipes from behind the wall in order to mitigate the chance of a landslide, and the gutter is of a common type here in japan, though they are usually covered and not open like this one.  The walls around the houses are common around here as well, you can see them on the right.
     It seems to me that the owner of the parcel on top of the hill purposefully planted those flowers there so that people would enjoy them from the road below.  Very nice. . .