Sendai: Day 2

Day 2 started with Traveling Circus Girl aka MirPir (from this point forward will be refered to as TCG) having to get ready for her Japanese class. I chose to continue sleeping while TCG got ready and departed from the hotel.

I finally walked the 15 minutes walk towards the Japanese class as indicated in the map TCG left me, while stopping around at several book stores and started the day with a hot bread, fresh out of the oven, while reading McCall Smith's "Portuguese Irregular Verbs".
I don't know whether it is a combination of having the right set of holiday mind, or having a delicious hot bread, or being utterly fascinated by the dry humor of Professor Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld's absurd little life, or I-don't-know-what - but I started giggling uncontrollably in the middle of Cafe de Crie Sendai. Two elderly ladies who were sitting three tables away from my table looked up, puzzled and then started smiling at me. And then the store clerks also looked at me and started laughing. I looked at them a little disoriented for 2 seconds and then started laughing along with them. I like these people of Sendai, they're very friendly.
You see, in Tokyo, normally if I suddenly have a giggling fit (which, to be perfectly honest, happens quite often; especially when I'm reading a rather comical book), people around me will be disturbed by a sudden unusual outburst, and in trains some people might actually poke me and say, "Sssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"
Not in Sendai! Ah, I like Sendai people. I do!

Then it came the time to pick TCG up from her Japanese class. I was a little early, so I wandered into the recycle shop nearby. Ole ole ole! That day was indeed my lucky day. I walked into a display of an open-heart necklace that I lost some years ago. About 14 years ago, my J-mum in Niigata gave me a valentine day's gift in a form of a Tiffany silver necklace. It is a very simple pendant, but I loved it very much. About 7 years ago, the chain broke, and thus I stopped wearing it. I finally got a replacement leather chain, but I have searched and searched, the pendant disappeared.
Until that fateful Friday when I walked into the recycle shop. I saw that they had that pendant with the chain, and it costed only 5,000 yen (about US$45)! My heart skipped a beat, and then I walked right to the shop lady and said, "Excuse me, I'd like to buy that necklace."
She said, "Do you know why we're selling it cheaply? The chain is a little dirty, but I'm sure you can get it cleaned."
I said firmly, "I'd like to buy it. Could you wrap it, please, thank you."
I was a 10 times happier girl when I left the store. Finally, I found it again!!! (FYI, this necklace if bought new would cost US$215 before tax)

Friday was such a beautiful day. TCG and I decided to go on a McDonald's picnic by the river on the way to visit Aoba Castle. Sendai is indeed a very beautiful green city. The water at the river was so clear. After we finished our burgers and took some photos, we decided to do a bit more exploring.

Interracial ducks couple

Don't you think it looks like we're sitting somewhere in Europe?

We walked up to Aoba Castle. The hike up was a little steep, but fun nonetheless. The castle was a little overrated, I have to say. Predominantly because there is no castle on site. It was demolished during the war time (WWII). So what we found were merely the foundation walls where the castle once was. The view from the top was still breathtaking, though!

TCG posing with the one-eyed dragon dude (Sendai's shogunate mascot)

TCG had to go back to get ready for the circus that evening, while I still have a few hours to kill and decided to visit Miyagi Museum or Art . With the 'steep' entrance fee of 300 yen, I gained admission to several nice exhibition by artists from the Miyagi prefecture area.

Of course it's nothing like The MET or MoMA, but still the collection is quite varied and sporadic.
If you do go to visit the museum, please don't forget to check out Churyo Sato's gallery. Mr. Sato is known to be Japan's greatest concrete sculptors. His works is similar to that of Rodin's. Mr. Sato is also known to be the first Japanese artist to ever having exhibited at Musee Rodin in Paris.

After that I went back to TCG's hotel and got ready for another privileged circus performance. TCG had organized a seat for me with the circus band in the pit for that evening. Let me tell you, I've sat at every possible wing and seat available, from the cheapest seat, to those very special seats where I could literally touch the stage. Whilst all those were very special, it doesn't get anymore special than to be amongst the inner circle. This experience deserves a special post, so I will leave the details to another day.

I think this recapped the brilliant second day of my visit in Sendai. Along with the especially delicious memory of the exquisite gyu-tan (beef tongue) meal at Rikkyu. Not only the meal was delicious and moderately priced, they deserve a special mention for their display of true customer service: admitting us in when we're 10 minutes past last order time, and left us to eat in peace until midnight, when the restaurant actually closes at 11 PM. Domo arigato gozaimashita, gochisosamadeshita from the bottom of our heart!

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!