Day 60-61

Day 60
Really not long to go now! I can’t believe our trip is winding down to the last few weeks now it really has gone by so quickly!

Today marks the beginning of golden week in Japan which is basically just a weeks worth of bank holidays and everyone in Japan travels and takes time off work so it can get very crowded particularly in the large cities. Luckily further up north where we are didn’t feel too bad today.

Today we needed to travel out of Niigata to Yamagata prefecture. This isn’t actually our final destination but we are staying in Yamagata for one night just to break up the journey. We had two options: take two bullet trains there and get there in 3 hours and spend £100 each or take three trains and two buses and get there in 6 hours and spend £25 each. Guess which one we chose? If you chose the bullet train route you would be wrong! Although, I think by the end of the day we definitely would have wanted to go back in time and choose the bullet trains. However, being golden week the bullet trains would probably be extremely busy and the bullet trains are basically the only trains you can book in advance so we thought we’d have a much quieter journey on the other route, which in all fairness we did. Golden week didn’t seem to affect our transport route at all really.

I won’t bore you with the details of our long day but it was in fact very long. When we arrived at one train station and we found out that we were so rural they didn’t have any English translate button on the tickets machine, it wasn’t looking good. Asking the station master for help he simply pointed us back at the ticket vending machine… great! We managed to work out the fare and get two tickets and then as I was walking to the door the station master called us back and started rambling away. Looking at him blankly I guessed he was asking us where we were trying to go. A lucky guess at that as he responded well and we managed to communicate with him to secure tickets for our next train all the way to Yamagata saving us the hassle on the other end!

When we finally arrived we went to the hotel, checked in and had a really quick dinner in a nearby restaurant before crashing to get an early nights sleep!

Day 61

Today we just had to make the final push to travel from yamagata prefecture to Miyagi prefecture more specifically Sendai city. Sendai is the largest city in the Tohoku region which is the most northern region of Honshu island. For those who don’t know, Japan has a few more layers of location than we do in the Uk. So in the uk we might say we live in this city in this county in this country. (Im hoping I haven’t left anything out there!) Japan, you have the city in this prefecture, in this region, on this island, in this country. For example, Sendai city in Miyagi prefecture in the Tohoku region on Honshu island in Japan. It’s not that many more layers than the UK but I know I found it confusing when I first looked at Japan!

So we made the final journey to Sendai city and as we began walking to our hotel we walked through a large market with lovely fresh produce so we eagerly picked up some fruit and wondered through it slowly. Grabbing a bite to eat and enjoying a crème brûlée latte which was delicious we checked into our hotel and spent a few hours walking around the city exploring before heading back for a relaxed late afternoon and evening.Read more