Adventures with Tye!: Days 3 and 4. Minamisoma and Soma, Fukushima

5/1/2017

On this day I had to work, so while I was at work Tye walked around and explored Minamisoma.(Again, a lot of the photos I own from these places have already been posted in other posts. So if you'd like to see more, please check out the post titled "Minamisoma Adventures.")

After work I picked up Tye and we went north to Soma. Our first stop was to the Big Stone Buddha/Kannon. Tye was quite impressed with the size of this relief statue.

This giant Kannon relief stands over 26 meters tall. It was started in 1931 by a man named Ara Yoshiaki. It is apparently not finished, and the 4th generation Yoshiaki is still working on it.

We got there right as it was closing. We could still go look at the Kannon and light incense, but we couldn't go into the gift shop or buy omikuji.

The sun was starting to get low in the sky, so we had enough time to go to one more destination before it got too dark. So from here we went to Mano Dam.

Mano Dam is a large and pretty dam located on the border between Minamisoma City and Itate town. It is quite large and the resevoir is large and pretty. I personally don’t think it’s as pretty as the one closer to my house, but it is pretty nonetheless.

It was really windy when we were there, but I think Tye enjoyed himself all the same. He took a lot of pictures with his nice, new camera.

It was so windy!

From there we drove back to my apartment with the fading daylight. Tye took pictures of the mountains and fields of Minamisoma from the car window.

After coming down from Mano Dam I messaged Rihanna and got her recipe for poke. It is super simple.

Poke:

• Choice of raw fish cut into cubes. We chose tuna and salmon
• Raw onion cut into cubes. You can use as much as you want according to personal taste.
• Soy sauce (you don’t need to use a lot, just enough to coat all the fish during mixing) can use as much as you want according to personal taste
• Use a big mixing bowl to mix all the ingredients together
• From here you can distribute into individual bowls.
• There is an alternate recipe where you add some Japanese spicy mayonnaise to create spicy poke. This too is delicious, but a bit more fattening and unhealthy. 

As an alternative we added some chili powder to ours to give it a bit of a spicy kick.


After we finished making the poke we sat down and watched the first episode of American Gods while we ate. It was crazy good! I was so impressed with the cinematography of the episode. It was freaking beautiful! I think they did a wonderful job of casting, and combining humor and drama. I cannot wait to get back to America and watch the rest of it!

The poke we made was really good too! I don’t know how I don’t eat this every day of my life.


5/2/2017

Like the day before I had to work on this day as well. And once again, Tye entertained himself by exploring a different area of Minamisoma.


After work, I picked him up and we went to Minamisoma Beach. We were the only two people there save for two skateboarders, and later some ladies walking their dogs.

When we arrived it was pretty windy and a little chilly, but it was nice. The sun was shining and it was a great opportunity for some photographs.

On the way back we stopped at this old, cool-looking tree. Its branches are so big and heavy that they need to be supported by these large beams.

There was an information plaque nearby that gave information about the tree and surrounding area. It was quite old and sun-bleached, so I wasn’t able to gather much info from it. I do know that the tree was hit by the tsunami in 2011 as it is within the inundation area.

After that we headed back home where I started packing and getting ready for our big trip that was to start the next day.  Tye was nice enough to cook us some curry and rice. After eating we retired for the night so that we would be able to wake up nice and early. We had shit to do!