The next day we woke up and had to make our way to Sapporo station so we could put our luggage in a locker for a few hours while we waited for a bus that would take us back to Tomakomai so we could board another overnight ferry that would take us back to Sendai. One thing that really bothered me about Sapporo was that they do not clear their sidewalks of snow. They just leave the snow to be walked on and packed down until it either resembles sand (which is preferred, although more difficult to move through) or ice. I can’t tell you how many times over the course of this weekend I nearly biffed it! I got a good photo of what most of us looked like as we tried dragging our heavy luggage through the snow on the sidewalks.
We got breakfast at this lovely little restaurant called J.S. Pancake Café, which had the tag line “Tastes Good, Feels Natural!” I had some lovely pancakes, eggs and bacon. Delightful!
After that we walked around the mall and shops killing time.
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| This man was making daifuku with a strawberry inside. |
We went to the Pokémon store, and I bought some Team Rocket socks. My feet were killing me and there was no place to sit down, so I rebelled. … I was promptly asked to move.
We got on the bus and got to the ferry. This ferry was a lot nicer than the first. It had a grand staircase going up through three floors. It also had a nice onsen and a karaoke room. You also could not feel the motion of the ocean nearly half as much as the first ferry.
After dinner we booked the karaoke room for 3 hours. Peopled passed in and out of the session during that time, but after our 3 hours was up, we were still in a mood to sing. So we set up shop in the common area and had a “Sing Song.”
Cormac started it. He says it’s a tradition in Ireland at a wedding, after the band or dj goes home, and people are still in a mood for singing, they will sit in a circle and just sing songs or recite a poem, or whatever, to each other. If you know the words you join in, or you can just listen. We kept this up for three and a half hours. People again wandered in and out of our sing song, and we even had many Japanese people wander over and join our sing song. It was a fantastic night. It went into the wee hours of the morning. And I sang for all 6 and a half hours that evening. And if I do say so myself, I think my time in Japan has helped me return to my high school voice range and stamina.
After that we went back to the communal room and crashed for a few hours before we had to wake up again. I got about 3 hours of sleep that night on the boat.
We got up, ate breakfast and then disembarked in Sendai. People were eager to get home and do things, so I gave a few people a ride to the train station. But I wasn’t ready to go home yet, and Cormac had mentioned wanting to see Dr. Strange. So, while waiting for the movie time to come around went to the top of a sky scraper in Sendai that is open to the public. It is near the train station, although I don’t know what the building is called. On one side you can see this:
And on the other side you can see this:
It was pretty fun watching the shinkansen move to and from the station.
We then went to go see the movie. But when we got there we realized that it was only being played in Japanese and there was no English showing for another three hours or so. So Mac go on his phone and found that there was an English viewing in Fukushima City that evening. So we made our way to the car and drove back to Fukushima City using the back roads. It took over two hours, but it was a nice scenic drive.
We were cutting the start time of the movie pretty close, we made it just in time for the trailers to start playing. It was a pretty good movie. There were some parts of it that bothered me and were inconsistent, but it was entertaining overall.
After that I gave Mac a ride home and drove back to Minamisoma myself. I still had work the next morning. It was a fantastic weekend, which I will never forget!
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