Matsushima

Saturday K and I took a tour to Matsushima bay in Miyagi Prefecture. That’s actually 2 Prefectures south of the one we’re currently living in, which is Aomori Prefecture. It was quite a long bus ride (4hrs) but well worth it, we both agree it was the best tour we’ve been on so far. The first place we visited was the Marinepia aquarium, we arrived just in time to catch the seal show for that hour. Seal shows are so much fun ^^ The seals names were Andy, Asuka, Noi and Ruthy.  I love all the cute stuff they have them do, they played volleyball 2 on 2, had a race with each other, and a bunch of other fun stuff.

Then we walked around the aquarium and got to see all sorts of awesome sea creatures. They had this giant manta ray that’s wing span was bigger then my arm span! It was freak’n huge! They also had a shark tank, an otter, penguins, electric eels, and hundreds of other things. I have trouble turning off the flash on my camera so I didn’t risk taking any pictures while we were in that area.

After there we headed over to the Zuiganji Temple. Right after the gate into the temple complex is a stand of sugi trees and these wall of caves dug into a rock face that house stone tablets and Buddhist sculptures, many of which were of Kannon. Kannon is known as the Goddess of Mercy and is a very prevalent Buddhist deity. These caves are pretty cool looking, and the statues look very old. The complex itself contains several buildings, the main one being the Temple itself, but there is a nice museum that they built next to the temple containing many Buddhist relics as well as Date Masamune’s armor and a life sized replica of him. Masamune is known as being a great military leader as well as a devout Buddhist. He had the Zuiganji temple rebuilt in 1609 and also founded the city of Sendai, which is now the capital of Miyagi Prefecture. He’s a pretty fearsome looking guy, he had an enormous crescent on his helmet, but it’s kind of funny, the mascot for Matsushima/Masamune is of a cute onigiri with the crescent on his forehead. XD I wonder what he’d think of it as the mascot representation of him?

The temple contains many beautiful paintings on sliding doors and hanging wall scrolls. I picked up a nice book with pictures of artwork since you can’t take any pictures inside the temple. There are some amazing wooden carvings decorating the temple too.

After that we wandered around the city for a bit, got some food and headed to this little island connected to the main land by a little red bridge. There are actually several islands connected that way but we only got to see 2 while we were there. The third one was connected by this incredibly long bridge and if I remember correctly has more Buddhist temples on it, but we didn’t have time to get over there. The island that we did get to that we liked the most was Oshima, and it had dozens of really old sculptures and more caves dug into the rock walls. It was incredible, like walking into history. It wasn’t a really big island either, but it had paths going everywhere, many of which were just the rock of the island worn down by thousands of people over the centuries. There was even a tunnel dug through the rock.

The last thing we did was take a boat cruise around the bay where we got to see dozens of the islands that Matsushima is famous for. A lot had really interesting histories, like this one that legend has it Masamune used to have midnight parties on this one island, and another was where retired horses were sent to live out the rest of their life in peace.

I signed this post up for the SanrioTown Travel the World event - http://blog.hellokitty.com/traveltheworld

I got this bag at the Nabuta festival, it’s so cute ^^ When I’m walking around with it I’ll ocassionaly notice someone point at the bag and go kawaii (cute)

This is from the La Pia Do mall in Hachinohe during the Tanabata (star) festival. For the festival people write wishes on colorful pieces of paper and hang them on bamboo fonds. You can read a bunch on the festival at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanabata

Yay sushi ^^ It’s one of my favorite foods, I find it very refreshing. I like the simple flavor with the tiny bit of sweet from the rice and soy sauce. One of my most favorite places to eat is a Sushi-go-round, they put pieces of sushi on a plate, then set the plate on a conveyor belt that runs around the store. When a piece you want comes past you you grab it off the belt. All of the resturants let you order specality stuff too so if you don’t see what you want you order it. They rebuilt the sushi-go-round at the Shimoda mall which is near here and it really rocks now! At each area/booth there is a little touch screen ordering menu, you pick what you want then hit send. In a couple minutes the food comes out to you on a little Shinkansen (bullet train) on a track and you grab your food off it and hit a button and it heads back to the kitchen.

Kabuki

On Saturday we went on a tour to see a Kabuki show. It was a lot of fun, and a lot different then I thought it was gonna be. I thought I was going to be all traditional and serious, but in fact they kept with the original theme of the show, that it was for the masses more then a show for nobility. Before and after there was a drum and variety show that was so much fun. Since it’s just guys that play all the roles in traditional Kabuki they played on that by having a funny dance number with a dude in a woman’s ball gown did this funny dance number. Then this other guy came out in a dress but had giant red lips on and did a parody of the first guys dance XD Unfortunately we couldn’t take pictures during the show.

The story we watched was about this guy who had been arrested before and just got out of prison and was heading to visit his sister. When he shows up the sister is now married and has a daughter (his niece). He gives his niece some money to go buy some pretty cloth for a new kimono and she runs off. Then the sister’s husband shows up and wants nothing to do with the man because of his bad reputation and kicks the guy out. The daughter shows back up at this point and is so happy because of the gift she got, so she shows it to her father and he takes it and throws it on the ground. That starts a fight between the two men, and it was a pretty nifty fight scene, then the father gets his butt handed to him, so he runs in the house and grabs a knife and they start fighting again. But the daughter tries to stop them and gets knocked into the fight and accidentally gets stabbed. Both the father and brother stop fighting and are so upset at the girl getting hurt. It’s a very dramatic scene while she is dying, but the men manage to reconcile their anger, but then the police show up and the brother offers himself up to them for killing the girl, and they take him away.

The theater that we went to is the oldest wooden working Kabuki Theater in Japan. We got to go on a tour after the show, they took us back stage. It was pretty cool, they showed us the trap door called the snapping turtle door because it resembles a snapping turtles head, and the rotating stage that is human powered, and the dressing room. The dressing room’s walls are signed by all the actors that had/have worked there. I got some pictures, some didn’t come out so well but others came out nice.

Here’s some history on Kabuki. It was originally performed by women who after the shows were prostitutes. So then the government banned women from performing in the plays because it wasn’t “conducive to good morale”, whatever that meant XD So then young males played the roles, and then prostituted themselves out afterwards, and then they were banned, and only older males were allowed by the government to act in the plays.

http://img364.imageshack.us/my.php?image=28910016mq4.jpg
The front of the Korukan Theater, it was built in 1910. The front is western style, but the inside is all Japanese style.

http://img518.imageshack.us/my.php?image=drivegn7.jpg
The driveway up to the theater, very festive.

http://img127.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dressingroompm2.jpg
The dressing room, it’s bigger then the picture shows, but all the walls are covered with the signatures of all the people who have acted here. There are some famous ones that they put a sheet of glass in front of so that they won’t get diminished.

http://img477.imageshack.us/my.php?image=narakucp7.jpg
A little sign they posted about the rotating stage.

http://img477.imageshack.us/my.php?image=pushpolegg7.jpg
One of the poles used to push the rotating stage by hand.

http://img504.imageshack.us/my.php?image=rotatingstageof5.jpg
A wider picture of under the stage, it’s really big, I was really surprised.

http://img249.imageshack.us/my.php?image=wheelfu0.jpg
One of the metal wheels that the stage moves on, it’s big.

I’ve entered this in the Sanrio Town’s Travel the World Event: http://blog.hellokitty.com/traveltheworld

Sendai

Sendai is northern Japan’s fashion and electronics center. We took a bus trip down there from Misawa which was a 4 hour drive. When we got there we realized the train station was right downtown and we could have saved ourselves 3 hours of traveling but oh well XD live and learn. So we had about 5 hours to walk around there, and it was raining out XD It was clear in Misawa so we didn’t even think to bring an umbrella with us lol. The whole down town is practically an outside mall, there is so many stores. Oh, and tons of arcades ^^ I really enjoyed those, I played a couple UFO (claw game) machines but didn’t win anything ; ; I really tried to get a Piplup (pokemon) plush, it was huge, but the Japanese claw games are much harder the the American one cause most only have 2 claws instead of 3 or 4. A big majority of the outdoor shopping area is covered so we were dry for the most part. Oh, at one of the intersections there was a big clock that when it struck the hour and half hour it played a melody and panels rotated around and little guys played instruments.

I’ve entered this in the Sanrio Town’s Travel the World Event: http://blog.hellokitty.com/traveltheworld