I had to force myself to get up in time to hit the tail end of bath hour at the ryokan. After groping around for a robe in the dark room, I suited up, put on the plastic hotel slippers, and slunk downstairs.
It was really peaceful in the fog of early morning grogginess and steam from the bath. I showered then stared out the steamed up window that opened up onto some bamboo in the back yard, and soaked.
The guys got up and while they got ready, we put the TV on. Here's a sample of some fantastic Saturday morning programming.
Breakfast time and we were stumped. Not having that much time (and being really hungry) we cut to the chase, and walked back down to the Tomato Cafe Jr. we'd seen the night before.
The breakfast set seemed to be our best bet. Here, the Japanese take on a western breakfast: coffee, white bread toast, a dollop of egg and a squirt of ketchup.
We booked it back to the ryokan. Businesses were only starting to open up!
Inspired by the coffee, I did a jig near the entrance to the inn. Then we ran inside and gathered our stuff and Miho came and picked us up.
Rolling out of the city through the streets of Sendai, we passed this little eatery. There were ceramic gyoza stuck to the tiles!
We buzzed along the freeway to Akiu, to transfer our junk to our hotel for that night. For some reason, every hotel in Sendai seemed to have been booked for Saturday night, so we used it as an excuse to hang out in this resorty onsen town.
After stowing our luggage at reception, we scooted out the the car and took off for Mt. Zao.
We drove by a big dam. It really looked like the Lake District.
More rice fields.
And little towns.
With all the green, and the low lying mountain top clouds, it also looked a lot like Hawaii.
We made a little stop to see some water falling.
And saw this tiny shrine tucked away off the road. It looked like a scaled down tourist gift shop, and I'd like to imagine a small vending machine lived right inside the little glass doors.
The clouds and fog pressed in closer as we climbed the mountain. Miho's friend had called to say it was a bit sketchy up there that day, and when we found ourselves in impenetrable fog and dirty snow, we decided we'd seen as much as we were going to see up there, and turned back.
Of course, stopping for another falling water view.
And a snack! I was so thankful for this guy selling konyaku out of his minivan!
The salty starchy sustained us till we made our way down the mountain. We passed a bunch of touristy restaurants in favor of a well known noodle place Miho's friend recommended. Her friend even drove out to show us the way! That's her in the van ahead of us.
UMEN!
The friend came inside to say hi to the ladies in the restaurant, the took off.
Leaving us to our umen lunch. The noodles were really pretty, but the flavoring was so subtle!
Evan got a hot soupy dish.
After eating, we went out back to peek at the party room. I'm guessing this was a well known establishment, as the people who ran the place kept a mounted poster of a shot of this room that was used in a Japan Rail tourism campaign, featuring some famous actress.
I gave in to the siren song of the vending machine. Coffffffeeeeee...The little lego looking character pasted to the vending machine window is the cute-ified version of Sendai's iconic
Date Masamune.
Then it was time to check out a castle! Miho said Grandma Oi told her she'd lived in this town for a bit.
Shiroishi Castle lookin' pretty dramatic.
This was the first of a series of challenging castle stairs we'd encounter. They really weren't catering to anyone with this boulder-walkway. I felt bad for the guy picking his way down the treacherous rock with a toddler dripping down the front of his shirt.
This nice old gentleman started us out on our tour.
Then we wandered through the multi-storied building.
Even the inside stairs were not for slackers. Look how steep these things are! Can you imagine running up and down these things with slippery socked feet first thing in the morning?
It was pretty windy and misty moist when we got to the top. I really wouldn't mind having this 360 view on a royal daily basis.
And before we left, a chance to dress up! Miho and I, of course, were disqualified from wearing this outfit, Brian wouldn't do it, so it was up to Evan.
Lookin' fierce!
There was a samurai residence down the way that we wanted to hit before closing. We passed these two kids hanging out by the gutter. They were very absorbed in something.
Torturing crayfish!
The samurai house was pretty tiny, and smoky due to the smouldering fire under the hanging kettle.
Evan got all National Geographic and ran off to take pictures in the garden's shrubbery.
Inspired by the waning light?
Actually a recreation of another JR tourism ad. Spot on, right?
On the hunt for some mozuku soup, we stopped in the giant supermarket we'd walked past on the way to the castle. There were all sorts of intriguing snacks.
Like pastries resembling bicycle seats!
And fried bits of goodness. Cheap!
Then it was time to head back to the hotel for dinner. We rolled past more rice fields, and you can see Miho's car in the mysterious reflective surface.
Miho dropped us off and we officially checked in. After getting a briefing on where the restaurant was, which onsen we could visit and where they were, and being led up to our room, we loitered for a second in our room.
It was pretty big - I think we had twice the space (w/ just the tatami mat area alone) as we had at the ryokan in Sendai.
We could see the mountains and the river gorge below our window.
The entrance was probably three times bigger than the ryokan's, too. Our bathroom was off to the right.
Feeding time! It was a buffet, but I liked the name they used better: "Viking Style."
Maybe true to the style of Japanese vikings, the decor was not very austere.
But there were a lot of vegetables to be had! I was stoked!
The guys chilled in the room while I went down to make use of the onsen. Miho had warned us not to soak for too long - something about the heat or radiation or something was supposed to be bad taken in large doses. The giant pool inside was so unbearably hot, I had no problem remembering to get out in a timely fashion. I hopped in the smaller pool outside, which was open to the night air. There was already a group of women there, gossiping and laughing, as I slid into the water with my towel balanced on the top of my head. I felt a little self-conscious, like I was intruding on their hang-out session, but they didn't seem to notice or mind. I went back up to the room steaming and relaxed and set my alarm so I could get up early and repeat.
The sun rose, we got up and had breakfast out on the patio with Aunt Caroline and Uncle Ted. Chandler assembled some sandwiches, and we all piled into the car to go run around Scotty's Canyon, waving to the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere on the way.
Paparazzi were out in full force.
The canyon was so colorful, I had to stop often and take too many pictures for my digital rock collection. This here is mosaic rock.
Can you see the man facing the horse with the flowing mane in this one?
There were also formations that reminded me of Park Guell.
There was a lot of feet-crunching-rock noise, with some conversation in between.
Chandler up to no good.
The reverse view.
We got to the end where Scotty was supposed to have hid when the creditors were out to get him - apparently there'd been an old bed under that ledge bit for the longest time. The white specks above the ledge thing are Aunt Caroline and Chandler trying to find the fresh rock fall the park ranger couple had told us about. After taking this shot I sat and waited on a rock, and it was so quiet it hurt my ears.
No rock-fall found, we hoofed it back down to where Uncle Ted was waiting, inhaled our Tofurkey sandwiches and made our way back to the car.
© 2009 C. Evans. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
The sun was disappearing behind the mountains, making them amazing shades of soft purple and blue.
Sunday breakfast on the patio, sandwich assembly and then it was "So long, Furnace Creek Ranch!"
We parked near Eureka Mine and rolled up to Aguereberry Point.
We were up so high, we could see birds cruising below.
More color in the rocks.
Aunt Caroline packed us some sandwich fixin's, and Chandler and I headed off toward Manzanar.
The sun bounced off the tops of the Sierra Nevadas, making them look even more monumental as we approached them heading west.
We passed by Dow's Motel Villa in Lone Pine.
And 9 miles later, arrived at Manzanar. The interpretive center had a good 20 minute intro video. I'd seen photos, and short documentary things at JANM before, but it was still disturbing to see people who looked like my aunts and uncles, smiling and waving to the camera while being loaded onto buses and trucks taking them away from the lives they worked hard to build, into some pretty trying conditions. After the video, we looked at a few of the exhibits inside before heading out to where the barracks used to be.
Chandler helped demo the remains of this structure.
