Day 7 - Sendai & Matsushima

We left Naeba on the 7am bus, arriving in Echigo-yuzawa before 8am. Got tickets reserved for the trip to Sendai via a train change at Omiya. The shinkansen here was 2 shinks joined together, that would separate later. This Hayabusa was a fully reserved train and got us into Sendai at 10:40am

We found some new days food, chicken schnitzel rolls, and then found our way to the close by Hotel JAL city, where we'll stay for the next 3 nights ¥52000 For a triple including breakfast. It was too early to check in so we dropped bags and headed out.

First stop was the 31st floor of the AER for a nice free high view of Sendai. Then back to the train station for a trip to Matsushima. Here we followed the small crowd to the bayside. We had a look at the close by temple Godaido, accessed by some wide tapped wooden red bridges. After this we purchased tickets for the bay cruise to Shiogama ¥1500 per adult.

The cruise took about 50mins past some nice looking islands (this is supposed to be a top 3 view in Japan). I wouldn't rate it that high, but it was nice, though shorter would have been fine too, once you'd seen a few islands they all were kind of the same perhaps if we understood the commentary our view might have changed. From Shiogama we caught the train back to Sendai.

After checking in, we hunted down Tonkatsu Matsunoya, (by the way it's on the 2nd floor), where we had an amazing meal that was astoundingly cheap. My tonkatsu was under ¥600, hubby's double was ¥830, and the kids meals with toy and drink were ¥400. (I think we ate at one of these in Nagoya a few trips ago).

After dinner we let the kids loose in the Pokemon store, then got some family mart dessert.Read more