Sendai and Matsushima

Now I've been to two out of the 日本三景, only 丹後天橋立 to go. Strangely Amanohashidate is the closest to Osaka out of the three places. Should be able to go there as a day trip - add to the things-to-do list.



Yesterday it took me about five hours to travel across the country, from Niigata to Sendai. On the way I journeyed through three prefectures: Niigata, Yamagata, and Miyagi. Yamagata prefecture reminded me of the mountains I saw in Gifu prefecture. The unending scenes of snowy mountains, valleys, turquoise-green rivers flowing alongside tall evergreens - it's eye-poppingly beautiful.

After a night at that depressing hotel in Niigata, this hotel I'm staying at in Sendai is pretty awesome. Previously I had stayed at the Super Hotel in Hiroshima, that was quite nice so I booked at the same hotel in Sendai. It's a short walk from the underground station, and next to the downtown shopping area, quite convenient. In addition to the en-suite, there's also a public bath in the hotel. And even though I only booked a single room (7,980 yen for two nights including breakfast), there's a nice flat-screen TV and a sofa! So technically it could have accommodated two people (there's extra bedding placed on the sofa).

I think I quite like Sendai. It's absolutely freezing, but the streets are pretty, there are parks in the city centre and people seem quite stylish (whereas streets in Niigata seemed a little bit tacky). The hotel is located near Mitsukoshi and another department store; in order to save money (I'm going to be broke at the end of this trip!), I bought dinner from the department store and ate in my room, and a packed lunch to eat in Matsushima. For today's lunch I bought a katsu sandwich, which is basically katsu pork between slices of bread. Whoever came up with this idea might have thought it was a good idea. Well, it's not. It didn't taste bad, just not good either...

Matsushima was beautiful. Despite its name, Matsushima is actually a bay with numerous small islands around it (rather than one island).

I went onto one of the ferry cruises available at the port. The view was really beautiful, and obviously I took out my cameras to take photos of the sea, the sky and the islands. Many passengers were feeding seagulls. I have to say this - I hate freakin' seagulls. They're like pigeons (which are rats with wings), and even worse than pigeons, seagulls make that annoying noise (e.g. "mine mine mine" from Finding Nemo). Okay yes it was quite interesting capturing pigeons flying, but at one point I just wanted to shout "piss off - get out of my way!", would have actually said it if seagulls understand English (or Cantonese). It was actually quite difficult trying to take a photo without a bloody pigeon flying into the frame.

I also wanted to go to the local temple, Zuiganji. It was open, but the exterior was covered up for renovation. I thought there wasn't much point if I couldn't take photos of the structure, so I didn't go inside. But the pathway leading to the temple was simply stunning. It was lined with many very tall pine trees, the atmosphere was breathtaking.


P.S. I couldn't help myself and ate a fresh raw oyster at the local fish market. Yum :P