After Tokyo we had planned to head north of Tokyo, basing ourself in Sendai and then doing days out to different areas of northern Japan by using our rail pass. From our hostel in Asakusa, we grabbed a quick Lawson breakfast before taking the metro to Ueno station. From there we got our JR pass stamped (meaning we now had 3 weeks use of it) at Ueno JR where we then boarded the Yamabiko 45 shinkansen to Sendai- it was very easy to find our way throughout the stations with English on the boards and you can easily use JR rail pass app to find out when the relevant trains are- they will give you the name and time of the train so you can figure out which one you need to get on at the station. At the station they highlighted which carriages were reserved/unreserved and we easily found the non-reserved seat carriage. The shinkansen, bullet trains, themselves are a highlight when in Japan. These amazingly fast trains make the country really accessible, seats are comfy and as per custom in Japan they are very quiet. The train to Sendai allowed us to watch out the window at the city and then soon changing to the wonderful, peaceful Japanense countryside.
Initially when planning our trip we had booked into a hostel in Sendai for the week via air bnb but on putting out a couchsurfing message Kodo had responded offering to put us up for the week. Kodo was a highlight of our Japanese, an amazingly bubbly, friendly Japanese monk in charge of looking after a local temple he regularly hosts couchsurfers. Kodo picked us up from the huge Sendai station and apologised as he had lost his voice from taking his son illegally to a trance rave! One unique monk. Kodo offered us accommodation in either his small hostel lodge (sunset house) or in his RV. As we had the choice we obviously went for the different option of staying in an RV. On arriving at his home and the temple Kodo invited us into his home where we met his 5 cats, 2 dogs, tortoise and chicken and offered us drinks from the temples community area vending machine. He showed us briefly around the Japanese temple and his beautiful, peaceful garden. After getting acquainted with our RV accommodation we went by ourselves for a wander around Sendai downtown, exploring the shops, the ghibli shop and tried to find an infamous Japanese sweet shop (??) to try their edamame sweets? Although this happened to be closed as it was later in the day. We headed to the local coop (after initially walking to the wrong one!) to grab some cheap food and beers before settling down for the night in the RV.
After a leisurely morning of grabbing breakfast items from coop and figuring out where we wanted to visit for the next few days we headed to Sendai train station to book tickets for some of the trains for the next few days (some shinkansen require reservations). After this we found the JR senseki line, grabbing the train to Matsushima-kaigen, which is a small quaint town/ resort on the coast. We wandered around the bay, exploring a small island off the coast to the east of the bay looking at the small local temples and the stunning bays (Oshima island). It is possible to do boat trips in the bay leaving every hour til 4pm for 1500. We initially had planned to do this but instead ended up just walking around the bay enjoying the view from the shore. We stopped at a traditional tea house, Karantei Tea House on the bay, trying matcha tea, made in the traditional method with us having a matcha green tea and squash set (500) and matcha green tea and zunda mochi (edamame flavour- 600). There was stunning artwork and screens and we took our shoes off, sitting on the wooden flooring with our tea on little stools in front of us looking out over the bay. We explored the quaint artisanal shops and tourist shops. We wandered around the back temple area before getting the train back to Sendai in the late afternoon. You could definitely spend a good day or two at matsushima kaigen if you wanted to do the boat tour, explore some of the bigger islands (Fukuuraiima) off the coast (paying 200 for crossing the large bridge), Matushima castle and fully explore the temple area. Beautiful place.
In the evening we met Kodo and another couchsurfer staying with him, Wolfgang, for a special ceremony in the temple called Otsukimi which pays gratitude and respect to the moon in autumn. We were invited to the tatami room in the temple where we had fruits, edamame and mocha (round things put out to the moon), where with Kodo we prayed to the moon for other people’s happiness and drank sake. A very special experience, and something you only get by meeting and staying with local people, we were very grateful we got to share this ceremony with Kodo. After this Kodo took all three of us out to a lovely sushi restaurant where we had a private room and we had some beers, various sushi sets on Kodo’s recommendation and plum wine. He also had the chefs prepare a local delicacy which is prawn fresh as it is served with It still mobbing and fresh baked heads- not for me but interesting to see the local dishes. We chatted away with him about how he had met his wife, why he was vegetarian and about a host of topics including drugs and travel. It was a fantastic evening and great to hear about his life.
The following day we headed reasonably early to the train station where we headed to Echizo-Yuzawa (via Komachi and Tokai Max). This is a mountain/ski resort town and due to it being tail end of summer was not very busy. We had not gone for the town itself however but as we had seen on Japan Abroad that the station itself had a room of sake vending machines so that you could buy tokens and then try a whole host of different types of sake from all over Japan. Due to it being still early, before starting on the sake, we wandered around the town, there were quite a few restaurants/cafes around so we stopped for lunch having spicy curry (820) and spicy pork with noodles (700) before mooching around the town. We found a small footspa in the town centre from the local thermal waters where we stopped to soak our feet- seeing how long we could keep them in as it was scaldingly hot! Then we headed back to the sake vending machines where we purchases our tokens (500Y for 5) before choosing which sakes we wanted to try. They varied drastically and this was a fun experience, without it costing a lot. We explored the rest of the shops, market areas and stalls in the station, getting to try different food samples that were out. We found a decent café in the train station where we had a hot chocolate and then another brief walk around different parts of the town before heading back to Sendai on the trains. In the evening we picked up food at the coop so we could have dinner back in the RV to balance out food and drinks costs from earlier in the day.
The next day we grabbed butter buns from a bakery in the station before getting the train to Kakunodate (1 ½ hours) which is the area of the samari. We walked from the station to the samari district looking at the tree lined avenues and old traditional houses. We paid to go in and see the inside of one of the traditional houses, Ishiguro House (400) and also Aouagi. There were lots of areas, architecture and exhibits with samari artefacts to explore. Tours were in Japanese so we explored independently reading the English on the signs. We got to try out some traditional armour and hats from this period which was interesting. After wandering around the quiet tree lined streets we headed back to the station and go the train to Morioka (50 minutes). This is a much bigger standard city but we still walked through a nice castle and park by the river. We had hoped to find places doing the wanko soba challenge, as we had seen on Japan Abroad, which is a food challenge where you see how many bowls of cold noodles you can devour. However on getting there we found most of the food places were closed and without knowing Japanese we struggled to find restaurants that did this or when they would be opening. We did find what we thought would be an interesting restaurant area in the evenings when open but instead settled to have dinner at a Matsuaya rice bowl place- which was probably more tasty than a load of cold noodles anyway. From here we grabbed beers from 7/11 for the train back to Sendai. In the evening we wander to the Ghibli store so Dave could buy bits for his niece before watching a film back at the RV.
Our last day we met up with another couch surfer, who had offered to take us out for the day. Megumi was a sweet young woman who wanted to practice her English. She was very quiet at first but very nice. We met her at the station and then took the Tohku train to Matsushima-machi. From there we took a taki (1300) to Ishino Karawakura (we think) to a sake factory. We sat through the Japanese briefing video before getting a tour of the factory, seeing the process for making sake. A lot of the signage was in English, which was helpful but it was just interesting to see the process. From here Megumi then took us to another smaller sake factory, which also had a kimino exhibition and an exhibition about a local singer called Frank (400 entrance fee). A very bizarre combination but why not! From here we got a taxi back to the train station (970) and then got the train back to Sendai. Megumi then wanted to take us out for lunch to try beef gyutan, a local Sendai dish of cow tongue. We tried a see of this, rice, runny egg and stock and we also had sachimi pike and sashimi mixed sea food platters. It was all very tasty. We also shared some beers and sake, drank in the traditional celebratory way where it sits in a wooden box and is poured over the glass and flows in the box. We talked a lot comparing Japanese and English cultures, which was interesting for us all to here about similarities and differences. Megumi showed us great hospitality and would not let us contribute to the bill, just wanting to show us some traditional foods of Japan. In the evening Kodo knocked on our door and offered to take us out to show us a few local places with another couchsurfing couple that were staying. Kodo apparently would usually take couchsurfers out to see more local places, however he had been quite unwell during our stay. We headed out in his van for the evening where we saw some sights around Sendai at night- small shrine with a waterfall, shiva statues, the castle with a great view over the city at night, a Tibetan stuppa and a 100m Buddhist statue arriving back after a whistlestop but fascinating tour at 11pm.
Sendai worked out to be a fantastic place to be based to see highlights in the north but our best experiences were definitely from spending time with Kodo and Megumi there- speaking with them about life but also getting to witness ceremonies, taste local dishes and see local sites. Whilst staying in Sendai in the RV we also experienced several minor earthquakes where everything shook for a couple of minutes, as someone who comes from a country without anything like that it was scary and that wasn’t helped by my phone coming through with alert signals. Everything was fine though and it was only a minor one for Japan which can experience some really bad natural events (hug storms/cyclones, earthquakes, flooding and tsunamis!).
The following morning we headed to the train station to make our way to our next destination of Takayama.
Alex
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