Sendai: Day 1

So... Sendai was FUN!

As I said, I went up north to visit the traveling circus girl and see what Sendai is all about. The last time I was there, it was in 1998 for a student conference. The schedule was very hectic and predominantly spent indoors, hence I don't remember seeing anything particularly memorable.

I got into Sendai at 11 AM, promptly met by MirPir at the station, so we could immediately catch the senseki line to visit one of Japan's top 3 most beautiful spot, Matsushima. We road the train all the way to Hon-Shiogoma, the port city and caught the boat going through the 260 islets of Matsushima archipelago. The day was quite hazey, so misty that we couldn't see that far in the horizon; however the 50 minutes boat ride was very pleasant.
Getting into Matsushima, we were not quite sure of what to expect. I had expected Matsushima to be the main island, since the name bears the meaning of an 'island' (the ~shima part of the name means an island). But after a long search, I couldn't find the isle of Matsu, and when I prompted the inquiry to the nice young man at the tourist counter, he politely answered, "Well, there is no island that is called 'Matsushima' per se in this archipelago of Matsushima, but it is a bay area that contains of 260 islands. But, you might want to check out the three islands with the temples right by this port, the biggest island is called Fukuurashima. Yes, madam, the biggest island in Matsushima is Honshu the mainland, or Fukuurashima, not Matsushima."


Ah, too much information too early in the day. MirPir and I decided to go explore the few islands that were connected to Honshu mainland with red bridges. Our first stop is the tiny islet where Godaido is located.
We came, we walked and we saw. We concluded that Godaido is, in fact, a very tiny island - if we can even call it that. The temple has four walls and is only open once every 30 years (which I think is quite a marketing blurp to kind of sell the island so it can always have constant visitors). Other than that, there is nothing extraordinarily special about that island, I must say. And we were still on the quest of finding what the WOW factor is of Matsushima.

Onto the next quest, we walked the coast towards the largest island at the bay, Fukuurashima. The bridge that took us there was long and red. Quite impressive. We had to pay 200 yen to go in. The minute we stepped foot on the island, we immediately felt the lushness of the surrounding. It was beautiful! Everything was so green. The island, as it turns out, is a small botanical garden, we had a pleasant walk around it and found a nice hidden little secret passage that took us to the beach. It was so peaceful and nice and we spent a good hour just laying there and chatted the afternoon away. I remembered thinking then, "Gosh, it was only 4 hours before I went through the craziness of Shinjuku station in Tokyo, and now I'm here, surrounded by all this nature and peacefulness. It is so... Zen." This thought then brought the biggest smile to my face.


After we left the island, we walked back to the mainland on a food quest. We found some shop selling the local delicacy kamaboko. Kamaboko is like a fish cake, that you put on a stick (like kebab) and then you grill on top of some hot charcoal. Yummm!


We also discovered a very nice Zen temple grounds. It was very mesmerizing to be in there, the Buddhist statues that they have there were quite unique, they even looked somewhat Indian. It was already 5 PM when we got there, so we couldn't gain admission to the temple area, but the surrounding was good enough to explore.




The day then progressed and we were trying to decide what we wanted to do for the evening. We went up to the station area and found an onsen to get ourselves relaxed and cleaned up before we embarked to have dinner back in town.

MirPir wanted to take me to a restaurant that is owned by her friend Mariko's family out in Tagajo. We finally showed up at around 7 PM. When we walked into the doors of "Kuishinbo", we were very warmly greeted by a very lovely lady clad in Japanese kimono. Later we discovered that it was Mariko's mother. Shortly after that, a very kind-faced authoritative gentleman showed up and introduced himself, "I am Papa!" Of course, who else could he be?! The evening went on very pleasantly. The food that we ate were traditional Japanese izakaya food. It's first sashimi, and then radish salad, and then grilled fish, and then yakitori, and then... I can't even remember anymore, there were so many beautiful food coming our way and we overate them. haha!
The highlight of the evening was to have the pleasant opportunity to learn about calligraphy from Mariko's expert calligrapher of a mother, discussing about kimonos and the art of wearing it, as well as learning about the tricks on sake from Mariko's gregarious father.




After 3.5 hours at the restaurant, MirPir, Taiko Tari, and the Dralion technician duo bowed Kuishinbo good night. Gochisousamadeshita!

What a perfectly enjoyable day 1!

p.s: oh, this is ONLY of day 1, I will post again on the brilliant day 2 soon!