Miyagi Trip (finally)

We went on a 4 day road trip up to Miyagi for O-bon, hoping to escape a bit of the heat. But it turned out to be pretty hot up there too!! And rainy! We took the tent with the intention (haha) of camping out, but a serious lack of camping areas meant that the tent never got to see the light of day. A week later here is the round up of our trip.

Wed August 13th
We left home at about 8:30pm, so K pretty much fell asleep right away in the car.And she stayed that way until 10minutes after we stopped for "the night" at about 4:30am at a service area, when she decided to wake up (just as J and I were finishing counting sheep) so I had to then entertain her in the back of the car (as it was raining outside) for 2 hours.

Thursday August 14th
When J woke up we drove to the nearest town, stopped again and we all had a very average breakfast of soba noodles at a 道の駅.
Today we went to Kesennuma city, to the Ice Aquarium, which I had seen on TV recently. It was bloody cold in there - they have the aquarium in a walk-in freezer, basically, and hand out thick coats to wear as you are going around. It is only really tiny, thank goodness - only took about 3 mins to walk around it, because did I mention it was cold in there?!? Not really worth it, but hey, you get that. It was still raining and K was getting grumpy after this, so we stopped off at Aeon to get some sushi packs for lunch, which we ate in the Aeon carpark then drove on to Onagawa, another sea port, where we set up camp (well, parked the car)for another night.

Friday August 15th
Let R and K run around the sea port in the morning to burn off some pent-up energy, then drove down the Oshika Peninsula. It was a lovely drive - nice coastline. We stopped at Oshika Town for lunch at this little place. J and I both had uni (sea urchin) rice bowls and they were delish!! Oshika (Ayukawa) is an old whaling town, so there was a whale museum there too, but at 700yen entrance fee, we decided to skip it and drive further down the peninsula in search of a camp site to relax at for the day. Found a park at the end of the peninsula that had these gorgeous orchards growing in the wild
I had to really control myself not to pull out a few to throw in a vase!

Unfortunately the beach that J camped at when he was a wee lad with his parents was no longer there, and the only other campsite an expensive "auto camp site" so we stopped off at the roller-slider for a bit of a slide with R and K (they lurve their slippery dips) before heading towards Ishinomaki, then Okumatsushima in search of a better campsite.....only to be dissapointed that there was nothing better, in fact, the closer we got to Matsushima, the less chance we had of finding a campsite, as apparently you are not allowed to camp anywhere in the Matsushima region. Even the youth hostel wouldn't let us set up camp on their lawn, so we got ourselves a dorm room and stayed in the youth hostel for about 4000yen each for the night.

Saturday August 15th
We set off early to get to Matushima, the main attraction of this trip. It is known as one of the top three panoramic spots in Japan. Hmm, I am not sure if I agree or not. It was nice, but I think I have seen more beautiful spots too. I don't know, maybe Matsuhima just didn't do it for me. The town is located on a bay of 260 islands of various sizes, which all have pine trees(matsu) on them, hence the name. The thing to do there is take a sightseeing boat cruise around the islands - 50minutes for about 1400yen. We stopped off at a 7-11 about 1km from the main town area, and I asked for a discount ticket for the boats....well, they showed me the computer ticket selling machine and rushed me through to the boat cruise, so I bought the tickets there for 1260yen - only to find out we had bought tickets for the most obscure boat that only had 2 departures each day, so we had to fill in time before our 10am boat ride, only to find ourselves the only passengers!! At least it worked out well because it meant that K could run around as much as she wanted without having to worry about other passengers. lol.




After the boat ride, we went to the Kanreitei Tea house, which had such a good write up in the tourist books. But I was VERY dissapointed by this. Yes, the view was very quaint,

but the tea they served (at 700yen with a small zunda mochi) was terrible. I am no tea expert, but I have done tea ceremony for a few years(BK), and always look forward to being able enjoy a matcha, but they always dissapoint me. Green tea really needs to be prepared properly to taste nice. This means warming the tea bowl, and definately not using water out of those electric pots because they are just not hot enough. Very very dissapointed (sigh) and I wouldn't recommend anyone going there. Even J's iced macha was bad - it had lumps of green tea floating around in it. Oh, and the thing that amazed me the most - you had to actually put your own tray away - they had 4 different plastic containers to put the tea bowl, plate, tray etc in seperately. That is like blasphemy. The tea bowl is supposed to be one of the most important (and usually expensive!) parts of the tea ceremony, chosen to show your hospitality for your guests. I couldn't believe that any one who actually knows anything at all about tea would be fine with stacking the tea bowls up in a plastic container. (end rant, lol)



After sightseeing we headed off to our pet hotel, booked especially for R! It was up in the mountains, so really quite cool, the first nice cool weather we had - seems Miyagi had a bit of a heat wave for the first few days we were there. Here she is (photo is on the side, can't turn it, sorry) enjoying herself. The pet hotel simply means that she is allowed into our room, as opposed to being stuck alone in the car again. She also got some doggy champagne and cigars when we checked in (no not really haha). The ofuro here was nice, so J and K went in first, then I went in by myself, then later on K and I went in again. We also had a nice morning bath. Being cool outside meant the ofuro was just right!

Sunday August 17th

Had a bit of a sleep in, enjoyed a leasurely breakky and bath, then drove off to see Mt. Zao, but got halfway there and turned back since there was fog about as thick as those o-baka-charachters on Japanese tv, so figured we wouldn't be able to see much there anyway. Also, I got very VERY car-sick on the windy road up there. I never used to get car sick, but ever since being preggars, I guess my body has changed. I get it a lot now. (boo-hoo) Stopped off at a cool little farm that was free to pat the rabbits and goats and sheep. K enjoyed it so much - she is definately not afraid of animals. There was also a cheese factory there, so we spent 30mins sampling all their cream cheeses 20 times over before buying nothing and leaving.

The car ride home was LONG. We got stuck in 2 big traffic jams, the first one 5mins after J decided thatit was time to change drivers as he was sleepy so I got to crawl along the highway at 15km an hour....for over an hour. Fun fun. The second was closer to Tokyo, but just as long. K did a fantastic job for being stuck in a car seat for most of the day, chucking an understandable wobbly at about 6pm when we still had over an hour and half to go to get home.

And finally, last photo is for Gaijin Wife - thought she might like to see that we somwhow ended up in Kunimi!! hahah!


I am buggered now - talk about mammoth post. It has only taken me over a week to get this done, mainly because K really hasn't wanted to leave me alone and gets pissed off whenever I sit at the computer, and because the computer has been playing up a bit recently and making everything twice as long to get done. Congratulations to anyone who read this far - hope I didn't bore you too much, lol!