City of trees

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Geo: 38.26, 140.89 - Sendai

Its probably not a good sign when the remarks on your boarding gate say that the flight may be diverted due to bad weather. We didn't get diverted but It was a wet and wintry welcome when we arrived in Sendai. The rain and the sub fifteen degrees temperatures have persisted pretty much for our entire stay.

Our search for a place to have dinner on the first night of our stay became a bit of an ordeal in the rain but we eventually settled on a place very close to our hotel - why didn't we just go there in the first place? Turned out to be good choice. It was a quirky little Tapas cafe run by a chef from Bangladesh and a hip looking Japanese guy. The chef was good for a chat and told us a bit about his life in Japan. He was keen to visit or move to Australia. The food was great by the way.

Not to be deterred by the weather, since it was out of our control anyway, we finalised our plans next morning to visit the fox village located about 50kms south of Sendai. We were delighted to discover that we would ride our first Shinkansen and we were not disappointed. The sight and sound of these beasts at speed is a wonder. Well at least it is to the uninitiated. But to the average local its just part of daily life.

We travelled most of the 50km in under 15 minutes on the bullet train and the remaining journey was a scenic taxi ride up into the hills past rice paddy fields and through deep green forest to the fox village. Some of the foxes were in cages which seemed a little sad but the majority of the foxes were roaming free or more to the point curled up and sleeping on high wooden benches like cats. They seemed like such cute and cuddly animals but at the same time kind of scary, especially when they were fighting over food.

With a couple of hours left to take in the sights of Sendai itself we took the tourist bus to a mausoleum located up in the hills surrounding the city. This was the final resting place of the feudal lord who founded the city of Sendai. The site was surrounded by pretty gardens and included an interesting museum containing artifacts that were buried with the feudal lord about 400 years ago. Well at least the ones that were not destroyed in the bombing raids of 1945. The remaining journey on the tourist bus took us through ancient forests and past the ruins of the original feudal castle. The city fringe seemed to be a maze of streets lined with Maple and Ash and set amongst pockets of forest. Now I know why its called the city of trees.

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