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We had the grande plan to wake up early this morning and take a bus to the Akiu Onsen and Akiu Otaki waterfall. The waterfall is supposed to be one of the most scenic in Japan and it was only a 90 minute bus ride so we figured why not?
The bus, as it turned out, only went to the waterfall twice a day... And there didn't seem to be any indication as to WHEN the bus would be returning in the direction of Sendai station. So rather than risk taking a 90 minute bus ride to the middle of nowhere, with a chance that we might not be able to get back, we decided to hop off at Akiu Onsen resort area and find ourselves a nice onsen to chill in instead. It was a pretty rainy/shitty day so an onsen was a pretty perfect way to get out of the rain and get warmed up.
After a bit of walking/stepping in large mud puddles we stumbled across this bridge that covered a beautiful gorge with rapids, nice greenery and waterfalls. It turned out the place was called Rairai Canyon. We didn't even know it was there until
we found it by accident. It was too beautiful to pass up so we deviated from our plan for a little bit and walked along the canyon to take some shots. It was so nice! I'm kind of glad we didn't go all the way to the other waterfall since we saw plenty of really nice ones right in the gorge!
Anyway after about an hour of walking around and taking pictures we went to the onsen at the big hotel along the road and took our time relaxing. The onsen was pretty nice because it had a rotenburo (outdoor bath). It was pretty great to get all nice and warm in the water and then stand up and cool off in the cooler/rainy air.
We hung out there for about an hour or so before lazily walking back to the resort information center to catch our bus back to Sendai. We had some time to kill before dinner so we did a bit of shopping and picked up some essentials at Uniqlo. I bought some new jeans and was quite happy to find that I'm down a couple sizes. Yay! It'll be nice to wear jeans that
fit for a change! Jim got some casual t-shirts - typical guy hahaha
A Loft store happened to be close by so we took our time going through there. Loft is basically like a Japan version of Ikea. Everything is neat and trendy looking except it's super over priced. It's a great store for finding little gifts or wall art for your apartment. They didn't have the postcards I was looking for but I bought some stuff for scrap booking - yes I'm one of those - and I'm looking forward to getting it together once I get some pictures printed off.
It was a pretty long day of shopping, hiking and onsening so we took a quick nap at our hotel and watched some really random Japanese variety show before heading out to a late dinner. We'd heard about gyu tan which is cow tongue and how it was one of the specialty foods of Sendai. We both really enjoyed the pig tongue when we ate it at Meat Man so we decided to give it a shot. We managed to find a place in this nice arcade district and got our own private booth with grill.
The cow tongue was pretty damn delicious. They had it sliced nice and thin (though you could buy thick slices too) AND they had pig tongue! We were in heaven :D We took our time gorging outselves on delicious meat there before deciding to head back to our izakaya from last night for a night cap. A few drinks later we were drunk (correction, I was drunk) and I was determined to find a 24 hour purikura booth. No such luck. Instead we walked to the conbini so I could buy some anti-hangover stuff and then stumbled back to our shitty hotel.
Heading home tomorrow 😞
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kaori
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breath taking pictures !