Japan Trip 2009 - Day 3

We got almost a day left in Sendai 仙台. As at night, we would be in another city in North East, Hachinohe 八戸. That would be our second destination which we would stay for another 3 days. So, day 3, we decided to take a look in the Sendai 仙台 city.

Sendai 仙台 is a real old city. There are lots of historical and beautiful places for you to see. There is a bus route that could take you a round trip in the city's famous sites. The best thing is, you pay once but get up and down the buses of the same route at all those fixed stops without extra charges. However, there are 12 stops. It could take you a whole day to visit all these sites. And, we could not afford a whole day as we had to hurry for the train to Hachinohe 八戸. So, we picked only 2 sites.

The bus route is called 'Loople'. Obviously, from the name, it said that the bus would loop through the city. You can easily find the bus stop near the JR station. See the logo and the bus. So outstanding and pretty, right?The first site was Zuihoden Mausoleum 瑞鳳殿. It is an old temple with quite a large scale. It was built at the foot of a hill. Everywhere is with huge giant size trees. There are three temples for people to admire a Lord, Date Masamune伊達政宗, in Japanese Warring States Period. It is a tomb somehow, but we cannot see the tomb at all. Actually, Sendai was an important city in that warring period. Date Masamune伊達政宗 is the lord of this city. Thus, there are so much historical stuff of that period around the city.For that temple, it was revamped for several times as it is a real old temple. You can see a little museum inside the area which shows histories of that lord. Worth to take a peek on Japanese history.

The next visiting site was the Site of Sendai Castle. Actually, the castle was collapsed for quite a long time. There you can see the foot of the castle. Only few rocks left there. And a sculpture of Date Masamune伊達政宗. The castle was owned by him at the warring period for military usage. Now the area is acted as a park with some footprint of Date Masamune伊達政宗. Quite a nice place. From there, as it is a high place on hill side, you can see the whole Sendai city. The view is nice. That day was also with sunny sky. The view was so great.There is a temple for visitors to admire the lord. You can make wishes there by hanging up some small wooden plates, or tying up paper wishes as a knot on the strings. Similar to those in other Japanese temples.Leaving the temple, we took the 'Loople' bus back to the station area. There is a street for shopping. We've walked several times there previously. Window shopping is real good there. We then went into the train station. There is a mall with so many restaurants. It was lunch time, so we walked into one to eat ox tongue again. Still, it was so delicious. It was grilled with pepper and salt. You must try when being there.After that, we walked a while on that shopping street again. Then went back to the train station and wait for the train. Again, we were going to take bullet train. And we wanted to try the meal box so bad last time. So, we bought 2 to try on the train. See, the box packages were so nice. But, the content... not worth to try. Anyway, we took the train and headed to our great destination. We arrived there at night. So checked in the hotel and went to bed early for enough energy to deal with the coming journey.

Japan Trip 2009 - Day 1

The first time to Japan. You can imagine how excited we were.

The very first day was a transport day. We had to arrive the first destination before 2100, because we reserved a hotel at our first destination and had to check in before that time. It was a hurry day as we could not manage transportation precisely, you know, especially the traveling time and schedule, and something unexpected. Lucky that the good thing is transportation schedule is pretty good in Japan. As planned, there are plan A, B, C when we could not make one happen. Anyway, everything should be planned well before execution.

We took an early flight from Hong Kong to Tokyo Narita Airport. Actually, it was a 0930 flight. There are 2 airports in Tokyo. Narita is the one to handle 90% or above of international flights. Time difference between Hong Kong and Japan is just an hour. Thus, no jet lag this time. We landed before 1435 Japan time, as planned. It was planned to catch Narita Express to Tokyo train station and catch another bullet train (Shinkansen 新幹線) to Sendai 仙台, the first destination.

However, we got a situation at Tokyo. I took Hong Kong SAR passport. There were no problem for me to get into Japan. My gal, holding Malaysia passport. From website and a travel agent friend, claimed that there were no need to apply VISA for Malaysian passport holder. The fact is, Japan custom would cut in and prevent you entering Japan if a Malaysian were without VISA. So, my gal had to apply at that time, which took around 30 minutes. Thus, we were 30 minutes behind schedule. As planned, we knew that there were trains in another 30 minutes. And, no problem, the hotel check in time was planned to be padded with buffers.

Then we went straight to the train ticket office. Lucky that there were not much people queuing up. Almost all of them are Hong Kong people. I heard some of them were planning to buy train tickets, but anyway, I were in a hurry. I took out my JR East Pass receipt (bought in Hong Kong to save time) to exchange my real JR East Pass, and booked seats for NEX (Narita Express) to Tokyo and Bullet Train from Tokyo to Sendai. Surprisingly, the ticket officer's English is so fluent. Easy for us to communicate with. Then we got the tickets and went straight away to catch the train.

It took us almost an hour to Tokyo Train Station. Then we hurry to catch the bullet train. The Tokyo Train Station is real huge. It is a terminus for almost all kind of trains, including normal JR trains, underground, bullet trains, etc... It was hard for us to figure out the way to get on bullet train. Lucky that most of the sign boards are with chinese words. So we followed the sign boards to get on the platform. And wait for the train to Sendai.

The platform is hanging with lots of digital sign boards that display so much train information for passengers. It is the same as what I have seen in Japanese cartoons. Information are very well-organized. You can find the correct queue for the coming trains, the platform for your transit, the ETA and ETD time, route, and number of cars...etc

Our bullet train was called Hayate, in Japanese is "Fast as Wind". A very good name. The train is pretty nice. Seats are comfortable. There were so much businessmen there. They brought along with dinner boxes and drinks on board. When sited properly, they started eating. Then took nap until reaching the stations that they were going to take off. Seems like routine habit. Busy guys living in this busy country. A pretty interesting scene for us. The train took us almost 2 hours to reach Sendai. We still got plenty of time to locate our hotel.

With the printed out Google map, we took almost 20 minutes to locate the hotel. We did not understand the streets arrangement. We knew there should be order for the arrangement but still could not figure it out. We, at last, asked a high school girl where the hotel is. She is very helpful. We communicated in simple Japanese. Lucky that we could understand.

The hotel is quite a good one. Simple, nice, clean and tidy. Good for business trip people. Sendai is one of the biggest city in the North East region of Japan. So there are so much business men and women, and would stay for few days. Such kind of hotels are in good demand.

After checking in, it was time for dinner. We walked around the streets to find something to eat. We decided to walk in a small Japanese restaurant and tried Japanese food. The shop is in a basement of a commercial building, with nice decoration. We ordered 2 sets dinner and were tasting good. We were so full after the meal and went back to hotel. Rest more for the next day's visits.