Sendai
The night traveling from Shinjuku to Sendai was hazy and quick, and after a bumpy 5 or so hours of sleep, we arrived at our destination. It was still dark when we stumbled off the bus, and considerably colder. We poked our head into the Lawson (convenient store) by the bus stop and asked where we could use the internet. Being the winner that I am, I lost my cell phone back in Shinjuku, and so we now had to look up the number and location of our hostel. The Lawson workers told us there was a internet cafe near by, so we headed off to find that. We stopped at what we THOUGHT was the place, but when we got to the floor, we were quickly ushered out (or at least I was, because there girls aren’t allowed in this kind of establishment. <_<), but he did point us in the direction of the REAL internet cafe, which we found at last. We crashed there until it was light out and we were able to check in. After hopping on a bus from Sendai station, we had to walk about 5-10 minutes before arriving at our hostel. I say hostel, but really this was a full-blown ryoukan, a Japanese style inn. For a little extra, we even got a Japanese style breakfast the following morning.
Since it was still early in the morning when we arrived, we had the whole day to explore. Our lonely planet guide book (yes, they are not useless!) suggested we go on Sendai’s “Loople” Bus Tour. The route of these guide buses were located at cultural locations of Sendai. There were too many to thoroughly visit in a day, plus a number of the cool things were closed for the winter, but we still got our moneys worth.
Probably one of the most brilliant, colorful, beautiful temples I’ve ever seen was in Sendai, at the Zuihoden, a mausoleum. Although all the buildings were reconstructions, this was apparently what they looked like in their prime. It was enshrined in a very tall forest, which added to the feel a lot.
Next up was Sendai Castle. Or at least, the grounds of it. There is actually no castle at Sendai Castle. It was destroyed long ago (in WWII?). What we did find was a statue of Masamune, and an awesome view of Sendai.
The last thing we visited was a museum of natural history. Seeing as nothing else interesting was open, we decided it was an okay idea. It had nautilus.
At last we decided to return to the hostel. However it was around dinner time by then, so we decided to go on a hunt for Sendai’s famous gyuutan, or cow tongue. We asked around, but everything seemed to either be too far away, or too expensive. It was getting dark, so at last we settled for ramen, which turned out to be some of the best ramen I’ve had in Japan.
That night we took it easy, watching strange Japanese television and kicking back (ridiculous situation! — comment if you love Ross Noble) with some cold Kirin. The next day we headed back for Sendai station where we would catch our next bus to the tip tip top of the main island, Honshu, to our next destination: Aomori.
Also, an apology to all you people who watch my videos: I have all the footage I need to make a new video, but a good chunk of the files are MTS files, against which iMovie is prejudiced, a refuses to play. So I searched for a converter for Macs, and one that didn’t slap watermarks on my videos, but when that failed, I looked for other means of obtaining such a program. In the end I just went a head and bought the damn thing. So hopefully once all my files are converted I will be able to reverse your current boredom. My apologies!
Anyways, until next time.
