At first I didn't think that I'd be going anywhere for the weekend but it turns out that I was wrong.
Tuan (my Swedish friend) left Sendai on Wedensday back to Aizu to his host family in Japan. I had never been to Aizu before so I got a standing invitation to go visit him and his host family... whom are in the Fukushima region about, 160 km away from Sendai. Since I didn't have a lab meeting this weekend since it is the Obon long weekend, I decided that I would head out and visit him. Turns out the night before I left Sendai, the weather reports told me of an 80% chance of *thunder showers.* So, I thought the plan was moot and stayed up late on the Friday surfing the net.
I woke up late today at 10 am to find it just cloudy in Sendai and checked the weather report to find that today there would be no thundershowers and only a 20% chance of rain. I fired out an e-mail out to Tuan and by noon, I was out of the house and on my way to Aizu. Crazy, the day before Tuan told me that it probably it was fate that we wouldn't meet again before he left Japan. Turns out that fate was on my side.
After a 5 hour ride on my scooter (after taking a few pit stops to admire the scenery and check out random places) I would finally arrive at Aizu to be greeted by Tuan at the train station... whom didn't recognize me at first because I had my sunglasses on while I was standing right in front of him. Heh, what a shock he had when I took off my sunglasses.
We headed out around town to visit a local cafe to get a drink and headed out to Tsurukajyo, an old castle in Aizu to check out on the way home. Turns out that there was a Japanese drum performance happening that evening that we caught and had a great time.
We dropped back to Tuan's homestay family and had okonomiyaki (best description is "Japanese pizza/pancake" made by his homestay father who is from Osaka (the origin of this food), yum!
After having a living conversation about all sorts of things in Japanese and a shower... here I am typing away here. We probably aren't going to sleep early tonight and then we are going to spend the afternoon hanging out in town before I make my way back to Sendai late in the evening.
I am going to say that I am really happy to have made the trip on scooter instead of taking the bus (round trip bus is $50, scooter is $15), I pay for it in an extra 2 hours in round trip time --> it's a good deal for me because I can stop anywhere I like~ And I did manage to pick up some really nice peaches on the way in to Aizu which we will eat tomorrow.
So, that is that. More news and pictures when I get back to Sendai.
1 comment:
Actually, I should have done the trip in 3~3.5 hours instead of the 5.
I ended up making plenty of stops to check out little fruit markets along the road, buy gifts for the family that I would be staying with, checking out the scenery, etc etc.
The roads here are pretty good. when you take the right road ways, you can hit 60 km/h on them... you just need to account for time spent at the stop lights.
The free ways I've been riding on usually have 2 lanes in each direction but go down to one lane in some parts. The nice thing about a scooter is that if traffic gets jammed, I can zip along the side of trafic to get a little ahead instead of waiting in line.
As for drivers, some high way drivers are punks since my top speed is 60km/h they really want to pass me and will tail gait to do it. Aside from that, most drivers here are nice.
The bikers have passed a few salutes to me on the way to Aizu.
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