#80 - Sightseeing in Sendai: Loople and Zuihoden

Sendai is the largest city in the Tohoku Region in Japan with around one million inhabitants. There are several good tourist and cultural spots in Sendai, but they are sometimes a little too far apart to travel to if you have limited time in the city. What could you do?

Loople Sendai Bus

The Loople is a bus service in Sendai. As the name suggests, it travels in a one-way loop across the city, and stops at several useful locations for sightseeing. Stops include Sendai City Museum, Aoba (Sendai) Castle, Osaki Hachimangu Shrine, and the Miyagi Museum of Art, as well as other.

It leaves from Sendai Station, which is a convenient hub for the bullet train, local trains, subway and other bus routes. You can identify a Loople bus easily. It has a wonderfully nostalgic design which incorporates a lot of wood in the design, and it looks very different to other services. The service starts at 9:00 and the last is 16:00, which seems early, but as this is intended as a city touring bus, you should bear in mind that most attractions or tourist spots will be closed around the same time. Buses leave every 20-30 minutes, depending on the season. 

Perhaps the best way to use the Loople is to buy the 1-day pass. This will let you get on and off the Loople any time you want during the day. It costs 620yen for the 1-day pass (single fare is 260yen) so if you stop to visit 2 places, you have already saved money! Even better, the 1-day pass allows a discount at some tourist attractions! 

Zuihoden

One of Sendai's most visited attractions is the Zuihoden Mausoleum (瑞鳳殿). This mausoleum was built in 1637 for Date Masamune, one of the most powerful feudal lords from the Edo Period, who died the previous year. Zuihoden was designed in the style of the Momoyama Period, which features intricate woodwork with bright and vivid colours.  

Zuihoden - the mausoleum of Date Masamune.

Steps up to Zuihoden.

During the Second World War, the mausoleum was destroyed by bombing, but it was reconstructed in 1979 to be an exact replica.

Kansenden and Zennoden.

 On the grounds, you can also find the mausoleums of other members of the Date clan: Kansenden (感仙殿), built for Date Tadamune, and Zennoden (善応殿), built for Date Tsunamune. There are also the graves and tombs of other descendants. There is a small museum exhibiting items which were excavated from the site.

#56 - Ruhrsee

This weekend me and a couple of friends decided to go on a small trip. As one of them was told by someone at their univeristy about a place with lakes and lovely scenery, we decided to go to Ruhrsee.Although the weather was not the best (and thankfully it didn't rain) it was still a really nice place to visit. What I noticed the most was how quiet it seemed to be in the area. Just looking around makes you feel peaceful.

Ruhrsee is a small village on the bank of a river, which connects several lakes. We took a boat trip along one of them to a dam, which looked very interesting. It also had what looked like steps for a giant going down the side. Also, in the After higher area of the water stopped by the dam (I don't know the technical name for it) you could see the sun reflect in the water, and as it wasn't too bright and also because there were clouds, and also due to the stillness of the water, it looked as though there was something under the water glowing.

Going back and quickly having something to eat, we got on another boat and this time headed in an opposite direction, passing sailing boats and people swimming. Although the bus ride took almost 2 horus to get there, it was worth it. Perhaps I will visit there again for a week on holiday in the future, and swim and sail in the beauty!

#55 - Berlin Weekend

As part of an excursion with the summercourse, I went on a trip this weekend to Berlin. I had never been to Berlin before, and so I wanted to see it as I had the chance.

On Friday morning at around 7am we left on the bus. The journey to Berlin took about 10 hours, so it felt very long! We arrived at our hostel in the east of Berlin which was actually quite nice. After a few rules from the hostel we shared out the rooms.

On Saturday there was a meeting at Checkpoint Charlie and then a tour organised for the afternoon. I missed otu on both of these due to getting lost on the train and then not being told where the meeting place for the tour was. Nevertheless I wandered around Berlin's 'centre' with a friend and saw most of what we wanted to see, and had fun too. In some ways I think going by ourselves was better, as we had more freedom than we would have on a 3 hour Stadtrundgang.
On Sunday we decided to go to Berlin Zoo. It is very big, and as we had no map of it we got lost very easily. It was quite relaxing to see all the animals, and in the Aquarium it was interesting to see the fish and other water creatures. Unfortunately my battery in my camera ran out just as we arrived at the aquarium so I have very little photos of that!

In the end we ended up having to rush both the Zoo and Aquarium because we were going to join the 4pm boat tour organised for us. Of course we missed this too, so spent a while sitting around Berlin Dome while a small brass band (possibly from a school) started to play music. We eventually met up with the others who went on the tour and followed them (lead by one of the teachers) onto the train and to another part of Berlin. I do not know why we went there, as it consisted of an hour or more just walking around the streets. The only sights to see were Turkish restaurants and the odd quasi-interesting poster on the side of a building. So after reaching a U-Bahn station, I left the group, and because it was getting fairly late evening, went back to the hostel.

Monday morning we had to leave our rooms by 10. As the bus was arriving at 13, I went on a small walk around the area. We headed along the main street just to see what was there, and eventually found ourselves exploring a cemetery, which sounds really grim, but it was actually really interesting. There were of course headstones there, but a little further in and under the older trees and plants were big family graves. It also turned out that the little church in the middle I wanted to take a look at was not a church at all but another big (and no doubt expensive) family tomb!

The bus ride back to Aachen was so long and uncomfortable. It didn't help that the woman in front of me put her seat right back as far as it would go, basically giving me no space to sit. She didn't even lay back on the seat, but she led on the bottom part of it across 2 seats, so why she needed the extra flatness I do not know! And when she wasn't laying down, she sat upright and read magazines!