Day 14/63

We left Sendai in the morning to head for Koriyama, where our main purpose was to leave our luggage while we’ll go to Aizu-Wakamatsu tomorrow. Our hotel room check-in was at 3pm, so we had some time to look into the city around before that. There is not a whole lot going on, how ever, we stumbled onto a weird drumming noise that was coming from the station. Perhaps around a 100 policemen were squatting on the public entrance, listening into these crazy kids playing their impressive instruments. This was nothing but a press release about traffic accidents and how they just don’t want to have any more of them.

In fact, they have come up with a whole day, the 30th of September, where NO ONE is allowed to die in traffic in the whole of Japan. Why this needs drumming… Well, we’ll never know. Perhaps it was to increase the unified spirit of the police or something. After squatting and drumming, they all were giving out a bag of wonders to the public around the area. It included some pictures with helpful advice like ‘be aware of ninjas’ and ‘fasten your seat belt’.

An elderly officer came to me with his bag of wonders and caught into a conversation with my husband about why are we in Koriyama, why he speaks such a good Japanese and where are we from. Of course i have head variations of this conversation about every day with all kinds of members of the public, the waiters in restaurants, taxi drivers and even with other police men… SO I kind of know what is said in there. But at the same time, I feel my Japanese is gradually improving.

Last time when we were in here, I didn’t know the difference between Udon, Ramen and Soba. I had no idea what kind of noodles I wanted, that is. This time I can read at least half of hirakanas/katakanas, I think, and I can carry on very small conversations. I recall words that I have forgotten, but suddenly now remember what they mean, like “kippu” (ticket)… I can even get my favorite onegiri, which is ’sea chicken btw’ (the tuna mayo one). I impress myself because I have done nothing to improve my language skills since my classes ended back in 2005, when I completed as much Japanese as you can do in my university back in Jyväskylä.

For the rest of the day, we did some work and went to have some Ramen in one of those restaurants which you won’t know are restaurants, if you don’t actually read Japanese… Outside they have a ‘noren’ (which means a cloth that you hang to cover your door halfly, where you can walk through), which usually says ‘udon’ (big fat soup noodles) or something like that. And inside, it looks like someone’s living room. Tourists just have no chance of finding these places. The food is usually great and much cheaper than on the street by the station. This is why my husband and I have began to wonder – perhaps other people don’t travel as cheap as we do in Japan either. I mean in China, it is obvious that they try to trick you for making you pay the tag price instead of the bargained price, but even in here, it also really pays to know the language.

Day 13/63

Sendai sightseeing day

Our day started with a train journey, just like many of our days in Japan. Our targets for the day were: A temple, a grave, a museum and a castle. We took a JR line to where Tsunenaga’s grave was suppose to be, by a temple. He died two years after returning from his mission to Europe and Manila – the cause of his death is unknown. Perhaps he died of illness, but what would be much more likely, was that he had been found guilty of Christianity and slaughtered like many of his kind back then in Japan.

We had some slight problems finding the temple. This was due to the fact that Japanese decide randomly to turn their maps upside down, just to make life difficult. You know, north is down and so  on. Once we did find the stair path to the right temple (you wouldn’t believe how many there are…) we jumped through a herd of grannies poking their bums in the air, performing samu (cleaning) of the whole area. We ran into a man called Ken O-uchi, who was the son of the high priest of this temple and were lucky enough to get a private showing of a painting inside the temple, illustrating Tsunenaga’s trip with San Juan Babtista to see the pope. Ken san’s wife and daughter had gone to Cardiff for two years to study English. I baffled my mind around this fact: Was it that the daughter had decided to go and the mother didn’t allow her to go alone? I have no idea how the Japanese think, as had become evident on this trip.

After scouting Tsunenaga’s grave sight and his memorial, we found ourselves in the tube line back to the centre of Sendai. We had a curry for lunch on our way to the castle, which we decided to walk to, past the river that goes through Sendai. On the castle grounds I sighted a statue of Tsunenaga and the whole climb to the castle was filled with grandeur of big stone walls and gates. However, the castle itself is very unimpressive. World war two destroyed it and for some weird reason (the Japanese normally don’t act like this) they had not rebuilt it in its former glory. However, they did have a whole computer animation and auditorium built to show off how cool the castle area had been. The also english-translated story told a very different version of history, where Masamune started off a new era of trade for Japan… Which is of course a load of bollocks as he failed in his mission to do so.

We were a bit walked out at this point of the journey so decided to get the town’s sightseeing bus back to the centre. Its friendly name was ‘Loople’ and it took us to the arcades in order to perform the last bits of tat shopping the the form of yukatas and some studio Ghibli crap for a friend of mine. Can you believe that they sell aquariums with the whole Laputa built inside? Poor fish. These tanks were so small that I wasn’t too happy with the animal treatment there…

Later on, I went outside for some scenic photography without Jonathan, but I do believe I have a thing or two to learn still about shooting nightskylines. Well, I’ll try again in Tokyo, or perhaps Yokohama. Maybe I should take some more lessons from Stuck in Customs, aka the best HDR photographer that I’ve come across.

Later on that night my husband was in the bath, clearly a bit drunk. He yelled at me: “Did I hear you farting”, and as I denied, he continued: “The Japanese old ladies let out massive farts in the tat shop queue today!” Now there is a thought I could have lived without knowing.

16th of September

Day 13/63

Today started well, my husband dragged me out of bed and we were on our way to Ishinomaki by nine. We stopped by at the station to pick up reserved seats for some of the shinkansens that we’ll be travelling on in the days to come. We’ve got two weeks of Japan rail passes, which cost us around 350 of euros/pounds each, but it means that we can travel on JR lines as much as we want, including the Shinkansen.

It’s about an hour to Ishinomaki. While on the train, we got to see the Matsushima airbase, where some pilots were practising their flight movements – beautiful.Then 20minute taxi to see the San Juan Babtista, which was our main target of the day. My husband is thinking of writing a book about this guy who was basically send against his will in the 17th centrury to built the 500 ton Galleon and sail it to Europe to see the pope. This man was called Hasekura Rokuemon Tsunenaga. He was sent to Europe by Lord Masamune of Sendai who had an evil plan to try and persuade the Spannish (Hispania as it was then called) empire to trade with him and in return, he’d let the people of Sendai to be turned into Christians.

I visited the ship, San Juan Babtista, or actually the well made replica of this gorgeous piece that now served as a tourist and school children attraction. It’s a tall ship that you don’t really see in the Tall ships race back home in Turku every year, gorgeous and huge. The fact that it actually took 180 people to Mexico and Philippines was really astonishing to me. It had three levels of living/goods sections and at the back, I think around four.

This guy Tsunenaga must have had a lovely seven years on sea trying to complete a mission that was doomed to fail when he left in 1613. Japan on those times had convinced that Christianity was destroying their own culture, which is why they slaughtered everyone who wouldn’t deny the fact that the Christian god exists by swearing on a plate. My husband wrote a book about Shiro Amakusa, who was a young, Christian boy leader samurai, who fought to the bitter end back in 17th century for the Christianity. We investigated him on our previous visit in Japan and went through Kyushu for that.

Japanese are a cruel kind when it comes to torture and death, which you probably know… However, boiling people alive in hot springs, crusifying them and letting the tide then drown them, burning people alive in their straw rain coats and buring them up to their necks alive and then stomping on their heads with a horse while their wives were watching – were just a couple of the charming examples on what would happen to you if you had *anything* to do with Christianity in Japan, in the 17th century.

Despite of the excellent visit to the San Juan Babtista, we’ve had a bit of a low day. This was due to a lost wallet with four credit cards and a huge amount of cash inside. In an occasion like this, it’s very difficult to enjoy the day as it is – I even if had Whale on a stick as my lunch…

We made a visit to the local police station, where we completely fucked up their computer system, as they didn’t really get Gaijin who loose their wallets… Like, ever. That was about half an hour when they took all our details, and another hour on the train back to Sendai. I cancelled my one card in three minutes in the internet. Jay for Finnish banking system. Don’t come and tell me that Sampo is a bad bank… I already ordered a new one as well. It wasn’t quite as simple for my husband’s cards though, due to the difficulties we had for not having a working cell phone at the moment. Who knew, that the number *before* the actual number that you need to dial before you get out of our land line hotel phone to abroad is:  0-001010 and then the actual number… This took about an hour and a half. Finns are efficient, what can I say.

After all this upset and faffling around, we decided to have a 7-11 dinner with some booze at the safety of our hotel room. Sushi, salad and stringy cheese with wine… On a day like this you have to look at the perspective: 1. Neither one of us is dead. 2. We are not ill or injured 3. We still have access to money, 4. We’ve got our passports, our tickets and our railpasses (which btw, saved us a ton of money since we can get as many seating tickets on the Shinkansen as we want) So to be far. It could be worse. And as one of our very best friends told us before we left: “There will be a day when you reach the bottom. For me it was when I woke up on the beach with a crab eating my hand.” So could be worse, there’s no crabs in this hotel room yet:)

15th of September, I am catching up.

Day 11/63

It must have been the fastest ever I’ve gotten off a hotel room. I woke up at 9:28 only realising that our train from Hakodate to Sendai was to leave in one hour and 12 minutes. Before that I had planned to shower, go to the post office to send one package to Australia, one back home to Finland *and* have my breakfast. It seemed like a doomed possibility, since most of our stuff was around the room yet and no packing had commenced. However, I can be organized and the post office was just 40 metres away from our hotel, so we managed to be at Hakodate station with the luxury of 20 minutes to spare, buy our saru soba lunch for the train and get some Pocari Sweat as well.

The train from Hokkaido to Honshu goes underneath the sea in a tunnel so long that there is actually a station underneath. What one does underneath the sea, I wonder… Perhaps takes care of the tunnel? We changed the normal train to shinkansen at Hachinohe and were in Sendai for about five hours.  Our hotel in Sendai is the same as in Hakodate, the Chisun grand. There is even a Lawson near by.

Sendai is supposed to be the most beautiful area of Japan. We got the only room in our hotel that is both meant for two people and has internetto in it. Fastest connection so far btw, I caught up with my picture uploads as well as my television, kind of. Internet really means a safe haven now a days.

We went out for dinner to the local Teramachi, which means a shopping arcade (it’s called the ‘CLIS ROAD’ btw… Not exactly GLIS as my reasech group’s name but close enough). After some city ramble, we located a rolling sushi place, which I think my husband chose because he could pretty much take the night off translation business and we can just have whatever we want from the plates floating by. Everything was very cheap of course, around 100yen a plate (75cents), so my dinner was about 5 euros, even though on that amount of Sushi in Finland, you would have easily ended up paying 20euros. Easy.

We also checked out the tat shopping possibilities and came across a rather high quality tat shoppy which sold samurai things and wooden plates and stuff. Jonathan almost bought some more yukatas, japanese style bathrobes, which he has completely worn off since the last time he bought them in 1992. Finland is a land of saunas, so we are eventually wanting to get some to ourselves as well as our potential guests to our so far potential sauna that we hopefully someday have…

Sendai seems like a busy city. I still haven’t seen enough to make up my mind if it’s the most beautiful place in Japan or not.