The View from the Towers 塔からの眺め A web log by Nigel Ruddock of life in Germany as an expat, with excursions to Japan and the UK.

Tag: sendai

  • Japan Flashback: 🦪 Matsushima 松島

    (note: This is a blog which was originally published on the Israeli site WIX. After following the boycott of this firm and moving my blog to WordPress I nearly lost this report, but have managed to put it together from archive material.)

    18th April 2025年4月18日

    🟠 Be prepared for the unexpected. This is one of my mottos when in Japan. Is it the unexpected convenience of power sockets at a café table…..?

    予期せぬ事態に備えよ。これは私が日本にいるときのモットーの一つです。

    日本での多くの驚きの一つ

    🟠 Or the civic pride in a manhole?

    仙台のマンホール

    🟠 Or the discovery of a cassette player in the local department store?

    カセットテープは復活するのか

    🟠 Or a box to carry sake up a mountain to offer to the gods?

    大山に酒を運ぶ箱

    🟠 Or the discovery of a museum 5 minutes walk from your hotel?…..devoted solely to butterflies and Kokeshi?

    Mr. Bunzo Kamei was the third president of the Kamei Organisation. But he had a passion: butterflies. He travelled all over the world in search of specimens. And they are all here in Sendai, all 14.000 of them…….

    I am not going to try and name them…….

    亀井文三蝶々美術館 仙台

    Kokeshi? They are wooden dolls turned on a lathe. Originating from this region: Tohoku

    こけし人形

    🟠 Or how about these guys? They are about 2,500 years old and were found in graves from the Jomon period

    縄文時代の彫像

    🟠 Almost every day I am surprised by things here. I am walking through a residential area and suddenly come across a cement works. What next.

    ここではほぼ毎日、驚くような出来事に遭遇します。住宅街を歩いていると、突然セメント工場に遭遇するんです。次は一体何が起こるのでしょう。

    天王町のセメント工場

    🟠 Or I am walking in the forest and see this sign – it is so old. Is it a warning of some sort? I start decifering the Kanji: Security Forest?…..Protected Forest maybe? What about Forest Reserve. That sounds more plausible.

    仙台の森で

    🟠 And then there is the  sheer accuracy of the train carriage plans on the station platform……am I standing in the right place? (yes)….

    私は正しい場所に立っていますか?

    🟠 The pride in the railways……Indeed, I think this pride is part of the story behind Japan’s extraordinarily efficient transport system. They seem to love trains. At some point in the 19thc. somebody must have said > “This is it. If we are going to modernize this country it’s got to be trains”. And trains it was. Not cars. Ever been on a Japanese motorway? It’s boring. Trains are much more fun. And you almost set your watch by them.

    星川の歴史

    Hoshikawa history…..

    🟠 But for some inexplicable reason, there is no pride in getting English right. My hotel in Sendai has friendly staff, is efficient, modern, clean…in short everything you need…..except this… surely it is not that difficult to get a good English translation these days…or maybe this is Irish…..😅

    この翻訳は良くない 👎👎👎👎!

    You sometimes see strange English aswell….

    🟠 I’m now sitting an a rather squeaky clean train heading north out of Sendai. It’s the Sensecki local service to Ishinomaki.

    仙石線 宮城県

    🟠 I’m alighting at one of Japan’s beauty spots – Mitsushima Kaigan. I want to see the sea. The beautiful but destructive sea. The sea which removed sections of this line in 2011. And here it is, looking deep and calm. A few cruise boats are lined up. Not for me. I find the loud commentaries on these sight-seeing ships maddening.

    松島海岸

    🟠 This tranquil bay, dotted with little islands, was spared the worst of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and Tsunami, being protected by Miyato Island/peninsular to the east (the red dot on the map is where I am)…..

    🟠 One of the first things I saw after leaving the station was one of those helpful signboards with all the sight-seeing spots marked. At least two islands connected to the land by bridges, with woodland walks and temples. But my map showed another small island which was not mentioned in the tourist blurb. Ojima. Some instinct in me (which rebels against being told what to see) led me to walk in this direction. I passed through a boat yard, and followed a trail cut out of the rock…….

    尾島

    ……..and was astonished to come across these caves along the way….also cut out of the rock

    cave for meditation はんせい  反省

    🟠 Crossing the small red bridge- the Togetsukyō Bridge  (a replacement for the one destroyed 14 years ago) I soon found myself on what can only be described as a sacred island……There is even a strange word attached to it – Utamakura (歌枕, “poem pillow”) – a rhetorical concept in Japanese poetry.

    Ojima

    🟠 I had not done my homework (sometimes a good thing) and didn’t really know what I was looking at. The island had apparently been a retreat for monks, and is littered with manifestations of Buddha, the caves being for meditation. There are also Shinto shrines, and inscriptions from the famous poet Bashou.

    Many statues have been eroded by the elements, but still receive offerings…….(I have often wondered what the point of those 1 yen coins are, now I know)

    I followed the path around the island…

    私は島の周りの道をたどった

    …with the sea lapping under the cliffs….

    Now why was this island not on the tourist maps? I wonder……..I will let you come to your own conclusions.

    では、なぜこの島は観光地図に載っていないのでしょうか？ 不思議ですね……。結論はご自身で考えてください。

    🟠 Sightseeing is hungry work. The wind was cold, and all I needed was a warm soup. All the restaurants on the sea front were offering either oysters or beef tongue  (ぎゅう a local speciality). I felt like neither. Then I noticed it, having walked passed it once and dismissed it as off the scale regarding grubbiness and a general shabby air. There was just a glass door with words pasted onto it   ラーメン (Ramen)  カレー (Curry). I stepped inside. A little old man stood up from his television and gave me a broad smile of greeting….”Yes, of course I have Ramen…just take a seat….”

    牡蠣はごめんなさい。牛タンもごめんなさい。ラーメンはOK！

    Food of the gods. Stuff the oysters and beef tongue.

    🟠 Of course Matsushima is not all Buddhas and shrines. The beaches reveal molluscs…..barnacles…..

    まんきゃくるい     福浦島

    And oysters have been harvested here for centuries……

    かき

    A bamboo shoot pushes out of the sand like a rocket…….

    たけ    竹

    …and behind it is that glittering Pacific Ocean…..

    きらめく太平洋

    always moving things around…….

    leaving its flotsam on the beach…….

    ひょうりゅうぶつ

    Oh! low and behold, a rarely-seen object, probably left by some uncouth western tourist many years ago…..

    外国人観光客が残したものだと思います!

    However, the beach is so searingly beautiful…..and so casually adorned with flowers….

    美

    🟠 Do I really have to go back to Sendai tonight?

    今夜仙台に戻らなければなりませんか？

    The bridge beckons.  I must go 😔

    福浦橋

    🟠 As always, thank you for reading, and if you know anyone who might be interested in this blog then do send it on.

    読んでくれてありがとう

    See you……. matane!

    Nigel 🖋️

    nigelwruddock@gmail.com.

    https://www.instagram.com/nigelruddock/

    THE END 　終わる

    Japan

  • Japan Flashback 🚅 Sendai 仙台

    12th April 2025年4月12日

    Sendai is about 360 km north of Tokyo – that’s about 21/2 hours with the Tohoku Shinkansen (bullet train). First, I give myself plenty of time to navigate Tokyo station………..

    忙しい旅行者。東京駅

     and find my platform……..

    私の電車はどこですか？

    A Shinkansen glides in smoothly……..

    新幹線が到着する

    The smartly dressed cleaners are ready with rubbish bags (holding them out to passengers as they disembark). One has a small hoover. Announcements are made. A civilised queue waits on the platform. When I think of Frankfurt Station….no…don’t..

    If you are not sure which is your train just get on the one which is going at the time published. It will be the right one….

    印象的な

    A cool wind greets me as I step out of the train at Sendai a few hours later.  I walk to my hotel, crossing the bus lanes and other traffic on high overhead pedestrian bridges. I’m not good at heights, but the hotel 8th floor is bearabIe. It could be worse……..

    仙台のホテル

    It’s only early afternoon, so I decide to walk to the castle (or what’s left of it)…..It was a stiff climb, but well worth it……

    仙台城

    At the top, Masamune Date, the powerful feudal lord of Sendai, glares out imperiously over the countryside and the sea….

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_Masamune

    He chose a good site for his castle, I must say…..

    街の素晴らしい景色

    Add a few early blossoms and he doesn’t look quite so fierce…..

    東京より遅い開花

    At important historical sites in Japan you will often see these great cedars – more of them anon….

    大きな杉

    Sendai is not really a tourist destination, but the place is a-buzz. Come evening and the Izakayas (pubs) and restaurants are heaving with young people eating, drinking, talking animately and laughing. Whilst outside the buses and taxis and cars seem to weave past on a sort of smooth wave……..

    仙台の夜

    A shopping mall…..

    The next day I used the circular bus route which links most of the historical sites around the city. The old feudal lords of Japan always found good spots to be laid to rest ( a prime example is the last Shogun’s -Tokugawa Ieyasu – shrine in Nikko, Tochigi ). The lord of the Tohoku region was no exception – Masamune Date. His mausoleum – the Zuihoden, originally built in 1636,  is a blaze of extravangant colour unlike anywhere else in Japan. You start first with a modest temple in a small garden….

    From here it’s a steep climb up to the mausoleum itself…..(the more important the ruler, the tougher the climb. Well that’s my experience).

    You pass the Nirvana gateway (as all good Buddhists know, Nirvana means reaching a state of enlightenment where worldly desires are no longer an issue and you escape the cycle of birth and rebirth)………..

    The mausoleum – front view

    藩主の瑞鳳殿

    派手な色彩

    The adjoining museum, which has relics of the pre -1945 original…….

    It may disappoint Europeans to learn that this whole complex is actually a replica of the original. But this doesn’t seem to worry the Japanese. There are colour postcards of the place pre -1945, and it looks exactly the same. Obviously the Americans wanted to destroy the port of Sendai, but fire bombing a 17thc. historical site, way outside the city?

    Leaving the precincts of the areal I took a woodland walk back down the hill.

    私は丘を下って森の中を散歩しました。

    At one point I came across a graveyard for children of the ruling classes….

    貴族の子女の墓地

    …. some of these cedars are about 380 years old….

    杉の樹齢は約380年です

    Before I had left for Sendai there was a job I had to do. I have a little friend who has just discovered the joys of pulling a bow across a string. But she is still not yet 3 years old! So did I have a violin small enough for her? As luck would have it, yes –  and it was easy to smuggle it into the overhead locker on the plane. Time to do a delivery in Sagamihara…

    Making someone happy. Is that not one of the greatest joys there is?

    幸福 🙂

    Meiko-chan was soon grabbing the bow – none of that beginners’ pizzicato for her….

    最初のステップ

    …and her brother was not to be left out…giving me a cheeky smile across the table…..

    小さな波

    Of course you soon end up on the floor….

    Kotaro-chan

    音楽一家

    As always, thank you for reading, and if you know anyone who might be interested in this blog then do send it on.

    音楽一家 🎶

    ~

    読んでくれてありがとう

    See you……. matane!

    Nigel 🖋️

    nigelwruddock@gmail.com.

    https://www.instagram.com/nigelruddock/

    THE END 　終わる