Morioka

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Today I headed off to Iwate prefecture's capital, Morioka. This city is much bigger than Mizusawa or Hiraizumi and more used to foreigners, which meant that much more was written in Romaji (Japanese written phonetically in Roman letters) or in English. The journey itself was very picturesque, taking us through paddy fields and villages, with a stunning mountaineous backdrop.

Morioka itself was... cold and grey (although not actually raining). Having walked around Chuson-ji the day before, I decided to give Morioka's temple district a miss and headed instead for the park with the ruins of the old castle and the Sakura (cherry blossom) shrine. Some cherry blossom - the weeping cherry trees - was still out and made for a stunning backdrop. The castle and grounds are now the city park, and give commanding views over Morioka and its surroundings.

No trip to Morioka would be complete without seeing the famous rock-splitting cherry tree, which, sadly, was no longer in bloom, but was still very impressive.

I decided to eat lunch at a fast-food (ish) restaurant. I was thoroughly confused over the method of ordering, which was this: at the entrance to the restaurant stands a sort of vending machine, with various pictures of the meals on offer. You select a meal (in my case, haphazardly) and insert your money and in return receive a token for the waiters. Sounds simple? I managed to get myself and my poor (but incredibly patient) waitress hopelessly muddled but, thanks to her efforts, I managed eventually to order and consume my meal (which was very tasty).

In the evening, I was back in Mizusawa, and went to a traditional Japanese restaurant with my brother, where we sampled various Japanese (and at least one Korean) dishes. I find I really enjoy Japanese food, of which I was entirely ignorant before this trip. We were fairly conservative in the restaurant, though. In the pub we went to afterwards, the owner, delighted to have foreign customers and naturally generous, treated us to a few of the more... unsual (for a Brit) Japanese delicacies, such as octopus balls, pig's tongue and intestines - the latter of which are so chewy, you have to swallow them whole. Quite an adventure, but believe me that everything tasted amazing (even if I'm not quite comfortable with swallowing whole pieces of meat just yet).

The bar had a lovely atmostphere - cosy and welcoming. It was quite small and so my brother and I were essentially the centre of attention and the evening's entertainment. However, the people were lovely and tried hard to talk to us (with my brother that was a lot easier as his Japanese is coming on at a rate of knots) using dictonaries, gesturing and mime where necessary. I had a great evening.

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