We woke up about 7. We met Michael and Leila about 7.45 and headed out. Our plan was to do Shinkansen tickets first, but the ticket office to exchange our JR passes wasn’t open, so we found somewhere for breakfast instead.
After breakfast, we returned to the hotel to check out. I filled my camelback with water and ice, and we went back to Shinagawa station to exchange JR vouchers and get some tickets organised. Kaoru ran into some technical difficulties, so we didn’t get all of them.
We caught a 10.06 Shinkansen to Tokyo station. It was running 5 minutes late! Not Happy Jan! Kaoru and Michael then sorted out all remaining Shinkansen tickets to get that out of the way.
We then had 2 hours to kill, so found a beer place. We all had a tasting paddle and some food.
After shome shopping for bento boxes, we got on a 1.00 Shinkansen to Sendai. I was expecting the Shinkansen to be nice and cool, and even had a long sleeve top handy…just in case. But no, it was stuffy. After my bento box, I had a bit of a sleep to kill some time.
Sendai – checked in to hotel. Killed time – beer? Check what we did. Ate something
Walked to where Kaoru had found we could see the fireworks for free. Took about 30 minutes in the heat. Very crowded. We walked down to the river but then back up, and tried walking through the gardens, which were packed. It was a “no stopping” area. We got told to move after spending too long “resting”. Eventually found a spot, nad at one stage the security lady picked Michael to be “the line” – anybody behind him had to move on. I think that was easier than dealing with the big Aussie!
There were several firework shows, with a couple of minute gap between them. Each had a differnet company creating the fireworks, so this was there chance to “show off”. It was without doubt the longest fireworks exhibition I have ever seen. After about 45 minutes we decided to leave before the crowds. And even that was hard!
On the way back I was getting hungry, so we stopped at an Izakaya for a little bit of food. A nice beer, some sake, and quite a bit of food later, and we were all feeling much better. We paid and left the Izakaya – it had cooled down a bit, and the streets were almost empty! Seems the crowd had completely gone in the time we were eating. I couldn’t believe how quiet it was for a Saturday night.
We were so tired, that we didn’t even go to 7-11 on our way back tot he hotel. I had a quick shower, which felt great to get the sweat off, and went to bed.