My Great Northern Adventure: The Sequel

January 1-January 11

On the 8^th, after meeting back in Diane’s town and enjoying another bowl of soup curry with her and another local ALT, it was time for me and Jenni to leave Hokkaido. However, since we were headed to Jenni’s town in Miyagi Prefecture, we took the night ferry back instead of flying. I wish I had taken more pictures on the boat because there was a lot of fun stuff to do on it, including a little game center and theater, karaoke, and a sento (public bath similar to an onsen). The bath was fun because you could feel the boat rocking you back and forth in the water!

The ferry Jenni and I took.

The previous picture was taken from the Waiting Aria.

Before the boat departed we took a couple pictures up on deck and then ran inside to defrost.

This is the room we stayed in. It was women and children only and those little futons were surprisingly comfortable.

After our bath Jenni and I joined some fellow travelers for some karaoke. They got a kick out of us singing English songs…or maybe they just thought it was funny that I’m such a bad singer :P Surprisingly, the 15 hr. boat ride was one of the most fun parts of my trip.

When we arrived, Jenni and I hauled our stuff off the boat, grabbed a taxi to take us to Sendai station, and promptly stored our stuff in a coin locker so that we could explore the area. Now, I said explore, but really we had a specific (VERY DORKY) destination in mind. We were headed to a One Piece Exhibition.

For those of you who don’t know, One Piece is my favorite anime/manga (comic) and I got Jenni interested in it earlier last year. This glorious exhibition was filled with life-sized representations of the characters that progressed chronologically through the main events of the storyline. We nerded out for a very long time, took a lot of pictures, and just had a magnificent time!

We did do some exploring of other areas and I tried 牛タン (cow tongue) jerky and had a salsa burger. Finally we headed to Jenni’s small town of Ichihasama. We tried to go to a restaurant where you can eat bear meat but it was closed so we stayed in and made eggs benedict for dinner.

Sendai station was huge and had a lot of interesting stuff inside.

The salsa burger I had for lunch. It was not bad but not that great either.

Walking around Sendai.

The mascot for Jenni's prefecture is soooooo cute.

Melon bear stuffed animals. Jenni and I each won one from a UFO catcher!

The tongue beefy jerky was delicious!

The next day we headed back into Sendai so I could catch the bus from there to Tokyo. That day was a national holiday in Japan, the Coming of Age Day, where 20 year olds celebrate becoming adults. Because of this holiday there were many Japanese girls walking around in full kimonos. My favorite was seeing them in McDonald’s where Jenni and I had lunch-we had been drawn in by the signs advertising a Big American burger.

McDonald's is doing a limited time special of burgers supposedly based off different states in America. The first one was Texas and the burger had chili on it, though I thought it tasted a bit more like curry than the chili I'm used to.

Much like the salsa burger, it wasn't that great but it wasn't that bad.

Girls in kimonos in McDonald's, gotta love the contrast.

Finally I sadly headed off on my own. The bus to Tokyo took several hours and I fell asleep and woke up on the shoulder of the guy next to me. It was rather embarrassing but he didn’t seem upset when I tried to apologize. I had several hours between arriving in Tokyo and taking my night bus back. I was still pretty tired and I didn’t really want to do any exploring in the cold so I went to the café that was part of the hostel I had stayed at previously. I had the soup of the day and sat there and read my book for several hours. I also made friends with one of the Japanese servers. He had lived in Virginia for several years so he had great English and had actually been to North Carolina. Eventually, it was time for me to catch my bus. As you can see, I made it back to Himi safely after traveling all over the place. I had an amazing time and was very happy to see my favorite ladies again!

These next pictures were all taken as I was leaving Jenni's town.

A wild Pikachu has appeared!

Beautiful!