I visited Gyoda City in Saitama Prefecture for the first time in four years. What’s new with my favorite city?
Let's take a quick look at Gyoda City to start. It’s located about 60 kilometers northwest of Tokyo, and known as a unique city. The rice paddy art is the recent popular spot. Real rice paddies are utilized as a canvas. Pictures are "painted" with varieties of rice that produce different colors. Artists are farmers and local people. They plant rice in the paddies in June. This year's theme is "Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba - The Movie: Infinity Castle". You can see giant Kamado Tanjiro in the rice paddies (see the photo below).
I can't just end it here, as this is a railway blog. On my way home, I got on the train at Gyoda station on the JR East Takasaki line, and enjoyed shooting trains at Omiya station. Please look at the top photo. This is the EMU E231 series, which I posted many times. If I were to add something, I would explain the width between the train front and the driver’s door. That’s quite wide. It works as a crush zone, and protects a driver when a collision occurs. This crush zone is wider on the suburban train type of the E231 series (top photo) than that of the commuter train type. The reason why is because the suburban-type train is operated at a faster speed. Trainspotters have no end of topics to talk about when they discuss trains. You too, right?
