The first couple of days in Sendai

After having tea with everyone at the station, my and Rebecca's families took us to an observation deck to see the city we would be living in for the next 6 weeks. Sendai is quite the large city. It really is. (sorry, just reread The Catcher in the Rye. Now I'm reading it in Japanese!) Seriously, though, downtown Sendai actually reminds me a bit of Shinjuku.

After spending a good amount of time at the observation deck (it was my host sister's first time there!), my family and I headed to their house. You think the roads are narrow in Germany? We were centimeters away from every person and car we passed on the ride home. It was a a pretty harrowing experience, but by now I've gotten use to it (writing this about a week later). The house is quite big by Japanese standards. It has a garage at street level and two floors above that. Inside, I'd hazard a guess that it's a pretty normal Japanese house. There are two traditional tatami rooms with sliding doors and all, one of which is my room! haha, I have to duck to get into it.

In the bottom right of the picture of my room, you can see part of the welcome sign they had at the train station.

After showing me around the house, we went to Coop, which is a supermarket. haha, I made a bit of a mistake in the car. The music playing was your regular J-pop/boy-band type music, which is totally fine with me. However, they asked my what kind of music I liked, and the first thing I listed was hip-hop. We finished up the ride to Coop with Hollaback Girl serenading us >.<

For dinner that night, my host dad decided we would have sukiyaki. From wikipedia: Sukiyaki consists of meat (usually thinly sliced beef), or a vegetarian version made only with firm tofu, slowly cooked or simmered at the table, alongside vegetables and other ingredients, in a shallow iron pot in a mixture of soy sauce, sugar, and mirin. Before being eaten, the ingredients are usually dipped in a small bowl of raw, beaten eggs. It was totemo oishii (very delicious) (that's for Caden).

The next morning, I did what any good Wolff would do when he/she finds his/herself in new environment. I went for a long walk around my neigborhood (Mizunomori). By the way, I've found it's pretty amusing to say my adress translated entirely into English: "Me? Oh, I live in the Forest of Water in the Blue Leaf District of Sendai City. No biggie." It's like I'm in Naruto or something.

Had a delicious breakfast.

I always kind of try to hide the fact that I'm taking pictures of the food, but my host mom is always sees and is like, "Go ahead! Go ahead!" teeehee

After breakfast, I set out on a bike ride with my host dad. The original goal was just to go to the school I would be attending, but we ended up being out for about 4 hours. After going to the school, we went to a temple called Rinnouji that's about a 15 minute ride from the house. The temple was incredible, but what really amazed me was the traditional Japanese garden. I took so many pictures. There was also a 茶会 (tea meeting?) at the temple that day, so there were all of these ladies walking around in kimonos. A very cool experience.

Next, we went to a small 和菓子 (wagashi - japanese sweets) shop that sold a certain type of mochi that Sendai is famous for. Its exact name isn't coming to me right now...

We kept riding until we got to downtown Sendai. We went up the street where they do this things called the "Pageant of Lights" in the winter, which is basically a huge display of Christmas lights. There was some event going on downtown and there were a lot of food stands set up, and I tried a couple of things that I had never heard of before. Finally, on the way out of downtown, we ran into this German festival with a beer tent and everything. I found myself forgetting what summer it was.


Oh, someone tell Yuki I ate at Mos Burger. It was better than McDonalds.