Matsushima ah!

Because today is 体育の日, or Health and Sports Day, a national holiday, we thought yesterday that we could make a day trip to a famous Matsushima and then sleep long without having to worry about making it work/classes in time.

As the name implies, Matsushima is an archipelago of some 260 small islands covered in pines. Because we had been out on saturday and had a combined nomihoudai/karaoke, we got under way around 12 a clock. Uhum.. for the people who don't know, nomihoudai means that for paying certain fixed sum of money, usually around 2000-2500 yen, you can drink as much as you like in two hours or so. The price includes also some snacks as per alcohol regulations in japan.

Anyway, as we were on our way to the train station in the center of Sendai, we stumbled upon some kind of Matsuri, or festival celebrating the Health and Sports day.

Basicly the festaval was composed of many and various groups of japanese students dancing/walking down the road, according to pre-planned coreography fitted to older or newer japanese music. You can see some of the dance here.

Most of the dance groups had also flag bearer or two, carrying the flag of the group, or flag related to the organization where the group hailed from.

We watched this spectacle for a moment or two (or three) and the continued our way to the railwaystation to catch the train to Matsushima. With local train it takes about 40 minutes and 400 yens to reach Matsushima from Sendai. In Matsushima we were greeted by the smell of the sea, multitude of small shops trying to sell stuff to tourists and groups of said japanese tourists.

According to travel information and wikitravel, the best way to see the actual are is to take a ferry trip, and so we did. About 2000 yens poorer, we headed for for 50 minute trip around the bay. The ferry was jam packed with tourists, so instead of even trying to find a sitting place near the windows, we just sat on the upper aft deck and enjoyed the fresh sea air and spectacular wievs from the less comfortable location.




The famous pine covered isles above, below Jeff and Tomiya enjoying the sunshine on the aft deck.

After the boat trip we wandered around in Matsushima, visited one small museum and had a dinner. After rather uneventfull train journey back home, we were shocked to find that our bikes were not there where we had left them. We lookd for them for a while, and then, luckily found them. I didn't pay anything for my back as it's the legacy of some formef finnish exchange student, but still I would rather not lose it and then pass it to the next exchange student, as per tradition.