kenleewrites in 日本

I meant to post this a long time ago. Don’t remember what distracted me from it. ^^. Tell me if I’ve managed to make you salivate.

I’ve been to Sendai twice. Once for business and twice for pleasure. ^^.

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Sent a post from Zuihouden earlier from the iPhone. Here are some other photos I took at and around the Zuihouden area. Zuihouden (瑞鳳殿), Kansenden (感仙殿, captured above) and Zenoden (善応殿) are the mausoleums of the first (Masamune), second (Tadamune) and third (Tsunamune) feudal lords of the Date (pronounced DA-TEH) clan. Did I get right? Lots of graves in the pictures. ^^. Can you find the photo of the dragon with the “fire hydrant” sign in the background? I quite like that one.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention earlier, there’s a small museum filled with artifacts that were excavated after the fire (that burned down the original mausoleums in WW2), and before the various re-constructions. It’s really interesting. They found remains of the various lords. For Masamune especially, they found his hair samples!!! That means that they have a sample of his DNA right? Someone help me out here. ^^. Based on what they found, they created a lifelike replica of him. I couldn’t take a photo inside the museum, but you’ll be able to see what he looked like. He’s not a tall fellow, 159cm. Besides the remains and human skulls etc. on display, there were also some treasure that was buried with him and his son and grandson. Old katanas, old rusted katanas but still pretty well preserved considering the 400 odd years of being underground. This is a place you would like to visit when in Sendai.

My 新幹線 (shinkansen) home. Yamabiko (やまびこ). It’s a double-decked version of a shinkansen. I was supposed to leave on a later train. Later and faster… But my companions wanted to leave earlier… so… you know the rest. Apparently if you have a reserved seat ticket, you can also use it to ride any other shinkansen with non-reserved seats. Gives you flexibility when traveling.

My crazy companions in Sendai.

Would you prefer to ride on top or be at the bottom ^^?

I was hunting around for a good Sendai beef tongue ramen (仙台牛タンラーメン) to have before the trip back to Tokyo. I found a shop, but it only opened in the evening. So ended up having a meal here instead. Pretty good ramen. You have a choice between how full flavored you want your soup to be. But the interesting thing is that you have a choice of 3 kinds of ramen. The noodles. 仙台風、博多風、九州風。Sendai-styled, Hakata-styled or Kyusyu-styled. Most ramen parlors have some kind of special lunch service. Here, you can choose between an onigiri or more noodles. (Yeah, lots of choices to make here ^^). The noodles come after. Like a second helping or おかわり. So if you do make it there at lunch time, you’ll get to try out two different kinds of noodles. Don’t think they will refill your bowl with soup though. Remember to leave some soup in your bowl for your second serving.

Nagahama Tonkotsu Ramen.

The shop front. It’s right next to a convenience store (I think it’s sunkus).

I don’t remember well, but it’s in that area. Right off one of the smaller lanes that branch off from the main path. Search for the convenience store and look in the path next to it. You should see the exact same thing in the picture above. Funny I actually found this place when I went into the convenience store to ask the clerk to recommend me a ramen place. And he hasn’t been to this one yet ^^!

Do you have a favorite ramen shop? If so, where is it?

Took the Sendai city loope (loop) bus. Goes round and round the city. The bus comes every 20 minutes on weekdays and 15 on weekends. A one-day pass costs ¥600. Great value.

I was traveling with a chinese friend. So he had to go visit Lu Xun‘s monument. This was a stop before Sendai Castle.

And Goemon just had to see Data Masamune’s bust while we were there. Who is Date Masamune?

You just have to love that crescent moon headgear.

Goemon’s so tiny ^^.

Here’s me with Lord Date.

This is how you carry your gorillapod when you’re not using it as a camera tripod. I love this tool.

Alighting from the bus stop, behold! The gate to Sendai Castle. The stone base you see on the left is the original castle base. Not a replica. It survived various wars including WWII.

The famous large equestrian statue of Date Masamune.

The statue without Goemon in the way.

From the front. You can see the spectacular city view in the background. But from the angle he’s at, he isn’t looking over the city. I wonder what he’s looking at.

This is just me playing with monotone.

I guess if you were a foot soldier kneeling before him, this is how he would have looked. Intimidating.

A clear shot of Date Masamune.

The Gokoku Shrine (Gokoku-jinja 護国神社) on site where the main castle grounds were.

School girls on a trip. I reckon Japanese school kids get more excursions than everyone else. You think so?

Goemon taking in the city view from Sendai Castle.

If it’s one thing I learnt on my visit to Sendai Castle, it has be to this. My friend makes a very ugly girl ^^.

I also wanted to visit the family graves of the Date clan. Didn’t have time. If you do happen to go, let me know how it went. Gotta plan another trip down to Sendai sometime soon ^^.