This weekend was my "get out of Sendai" weekend. The last couple weeks I have been busy on weekends and have had no time to go out and do anything before the winter cold sets in. So yesterday and today I was out of Sendai and out enjoying Tohoku to it's fullest in a weekend dripping with historical content. Today I met my manager, yes my boss, in Koriyama station and we drove together to Aizu-Wakamatsu. Aizu-Wakamatsu is famous for the Byakkotai "White Tigers". The story goes that during a time of civil war a group of samurai were waiting at Iimori mountain for word from the castle, Tsuruga, when they saw smoke raising up from where the castle stood. Thinking that the castle had fallen into enemy hands the group commited seppuku, ritual suicide. The ... read more

In Sendai we have this weekly newspaper called, Sendai Weekly. It's a lot like the Independent in Raleigh. It has ads for restaurants, concerts, coupons, and articles about things that are happening around or in Sendai. It's in Japanese but I have been going through it and practicing my Japanese and trying to learn new kanji and vocabulary. It is fall, or becoming fall, up in Tohoku, so most of the newspaper is about things that families can do together in the fall. This weeks Weekly was about Yamagata; which is the next prefecture over from Miyagi. There were ads for pear and grape picking, and for Imo-ni in Yamagata. Imo-ni is a Japanese potato stew that is famous in Yamagata and Miyagi Prefectures. "imo" means potato and the "ni" is a way to say in ... read more

The trip back to Taipei was a little longer and a lot funnier then the trip to get to Keelung. As typical foreigner behavior we tried to get to our platform early. Walking up to the ticket gates Amy put in her ticket....only to have it shot right back out the other end and onto the platform floor. It had to wait till a station worker came by to retrieve it for us. Luckily, a lovely old man came over and explained why we couldn't go through, and then we checked out tickets to see that they didn't have magnetic back, so, of course, they flew out the other end. There was nothing to catch them. It's a 45 minute train ride out to Danshui from Taipei station. It's the end of the line on the ... read more

So, I finally have some time to write about my awesome vacation to Taiwan! The last month has been crazy busy at work and I haven't had that much time to actually sit and get stuff done. Here we go! Sunday So on Sunday, July 27 my friend and I started out adventure by missing our train to Narita. I was running down the platform and watched as our train left the station. It was an express and would have taken only a hour but we were lucky and a local came only 10 minutes later. After the long almost 2 hour ride we made it and with no problems we were right on time to catch our plane. Our plane was a Hello Kitty plane! Hello Kitty was on the plane, in the bathrooms, and ... read more

When one thinks of Japan what do we think about? Ninjas, anime, comic books, and samurai of course. In modern Japan there isn't much in the way of Samurai anymore. Sure there are the splash of them in pop-culture and video games but they aren't much of anywhere else in my wonderings. Up in Tohoku you find a lot of history along with some pop-culture thrown into the mix. Kakunodate is the samurai spot in Tohoku. This old castle town has the most well preserved samurai houses that are lined behind beautiful black painted wooden fences. They are mostly free attractions but a couple of the houses, including the oldest and biggest, are pay to enter. They city is also famed for its swinging cherry trees that line the samurai district and along the river bank. ... read more