Japan Trip Day 13 - 2013-08-08

On Thursday we had the whole day in Sendai and since we had already checked out the Tanabata festival yesterday, we decided to check out some of the other sights today.

First we went to the Sendai City Museum, where we learned about the history of Sendai from ancient times up through modern day. Unfortunately we found the presentation a bit unengaging and dense. It did give a bit of context for the city, which was nice!

One neat thing they had was a Museum of Play with a bunch of toys from various periods in time. They had a Samurai helmet you could try on and also had some puzzles!




We were getting a bit hungry at this point and weren't near anywhere else to get food, so we ended up eating at the museum restaurant. It was actually quite good! I got these fried pork cutlets and Kellian got some udon noodles.



Next we decided to hike over to the Sendai Castle: it looked pretty close on the map so why bother taking the bus? Bad idea! It was up a steep hill the whole way and was super hot and muggy. And to top it off, the castle itself wasn't really much of a castle: the wall remained, but within the walls there weren't really any old buildings. Instead, there were just a bunch of shops and restaurants. On the plus side, there was an excellent view from the top of the hill!



After the castle we were pretty beat, so we skipped the next few museums along the tourism bus's route and went to this neat exhibit at Sendai Mediatheque called Trick Art. It was an interactive exhibit where you were part of the art! The idea was that the art was set up in such a way so that you could take a picture where you looked like you were part of the painting, sometimes as an optical illusion. Pretty neat idea!









The last two were a particularly neat illusion! The room looks square, but it isn't! The last one needs a video to appreciate: it was really neat in person too!


After this exhibit, we headed back to the pedestrian area where the Tanabata festival was for dinner. We ended up eating at a sort of short order place, but it was really good! I had this really tender and moist fish on rice, and Kellian had a noodle soup.


After dinner, we found an arcade that wasn't too crowded and played a game of Tekken (a fighting game). We couldn't figure out how to play against each other, but we did pretty well in single player mode!


Then we headed back to the inn: tomorrow we would make our way back to Tokyo!

5 comments:

Kathleen P. said...

So amazing!! :)

Unknown said...

I'm going to say also Amazing. Looks like allot of fun.

Anonymous said...

Like reading about your very exciting trip!!!

Unknown said...

Ahh!! That's super cool! Did you learn the history of why there was no castle at the top? Because that's an intricate story in itself! [I took engineering classes pretty close to that castle; on the other side of the hill it is on] Sadly I never saw that Museum.

JP said...

Looking forward to seeing the photos on my computer. See you soon.