New building
This is a new building going up in the neighbourhood. Sitting at a corner on Nakano Dori makes it a great location, with bus stops, post office, convenience stores, subway station, drug stores, supermarkets, a 100-yen shop and elementary, junior and senior high schools all nearby. There used to be a nearby hospital, too, but no more since Kosei Hospital closed its building at the corner of Nakano dori and Hongo dori and moved a couple kilometers down the road to be nearer the Kosei Buddhist Temple with which it is affiliated. But there remain the usual urban clinics in the neighbourhood for dentistry, family medicine, etc.
When I first started living in this neighbourhood this plot of land was the house of a little old lady. As a retired elderly person she ran a small tobacco shop out of her front window plus she kept a couple vending machines there for tobacco and alcohol. (Since then the law has changed to allow convenience stores to sell liquor, and the once-famous alcohol vending machines in Tokyo disappeared.) Other than that I knew nothing about her. She passed away and her house was demolished. The land has been a parking lot for several years until this construction started recently this spring.
I wonder how tall it will be? An apartment or a condominium? Over the years so many tall buildings have been erected along the length of Nakano dori (a major north-south thoroughfare) that it sometimes feels like the street is being turned into a tunnel.