Day 9 - Morioka and Sendai

After another yummy breakfast at the hotel we headed for the train station to use the 3rd day of our five day pass. We caught the 8:08 train to Morioka, the train was another double shinkansen. The trip only took 39mins and had no stops between the two destinations.

At Morioka we went to the tourist office, where they handed over a walking map of the city. We first went up the Malious building to the 20th floor for a free observatory viewing deck. There were some nice views of Mt Iwate.

From here we walked through the main street of Morioka heading for the castle park. On the way we stopped at Mister Donuts for morning tea. We then saw the rock splitting Sakura, and walked through the castle grounds (no castle, just some base rock walls evident.) It was after 12 and we were not sure what to do next. My suggestion wad head up to Aomori, Jason's was head to the Nikka Whiskey Distillery. We looked up the trains but neither would really work out.

So we headed back to Sendai on a slower train, the return jouney was 1:15min , thete was evidence it had rained, and it was 4 degrees. We then went for a 15min walk to find Coco Curry for a late lunch. After this we walked to see Jozenji dori, a tree lined street (though at this time of year they are just sticks). So we headed back to the hotel to warm up, before heading out to dinner.

We have definitely been the only foreigners we have seen in Morioka, and there are definitely only a very small number of foreigners we have seen in Sendai.Read more