Going to Tokyo has never been on my list of places to go in Japan. I have never been very enamored with the thought of Tokyo let alone what I had heard or seen in pictures. Yet there I was with my co-worker walking around with no idea what to actually do there. We left @ 8:40am and got into Tokyo Station around 11am. We had booked a hotel through our shinkansen tickets, so it only cost around $200 to stay the night and get round trip tickets. My co and I went about getting our packs locked in a coin locker; which in and of itself was an adventure. We went to 3 different locker bays until we found some with keys still in them. With a vague game plan we headed to a convini ... read more

Today has got to be one of the most interesting days I have had in a while. I decided to head out of historical japan and jump into some pop-culture and it was one of the smartest ideas I have ever had. It has lead to one of the best meetings I have ever had. Yesterday it rained all day, so last night I checked the weather forecast and saw that it was going to be a beautiful day and kept with my semi-plans of heading to Ishinomaki for the day. I've read a lot of my LP and Ishinomaki was way out of the traditional box that most of Tohoku is under. Its claims to fame are that Bashou and his assistant Sora stopped here and that a Manga Museum that is dedicated to Shotaro ... read more

Yamadera or Risshaku-ji is absolutely amazing and anybody who is in Sendai or Yamagata needs to go there and do the extended hike up. It makes the trip up to Yamadera so much more worth it. Especially if your around for the changing of the leaves. At 10:50am my co and I caught a rapid express train out to Yamadera. It takes about 50 minutes and around 820yen on the Senzan Line. Though, you could just pay the least amount and get away with it because there never seems to be anybody getting tickets at Omoshiro-yama. Though I am not sure about Yamadera station either. My co had been to Yamadera before and knew of the perfect hike along the river if we got off at the stop before Yamadera; which was Omoshiro-yama. When leaving Omoshiro-yama ... read more

I have finally gotten around to getting a blog together so that all my friends and family back home can check in and see that, yes i am still alive and that i'm having a great time in Sendai. Here is a quick introduction: I am a recent college graduate that is still thinking about teaching as a goal in the future. I am teaching with Amity/AEON in Sendai, Miyagi-ken, Japan and am loving it! I was looking around travelblog and saw that there weren't a lot of people traveling up to the north of Honshu so i wanted to help change that and get some information out there for those travelers who want to get off the beaten path of Japan and explore "Real Japan". Now to start. The first day, we, all 6 of ... read more