So many trains...

Long time no post! So anyways, after we got back to Kobe we prepared for the next leg of our journey, heading north. Spent Wednesday having a break at Becky's house (you can't sightsee every day!) and then headed out for dinner and pool with Becky, Raukura, and Tim who came out from Shin Osaka again.

Thursday - Sendai! The best thing about the train system here is that you don't really have to worry about knowing where to transfer etc. You just go to the counter and say 'Sendai?' in a hopeful voice, and they sort it all out and hand you your tickets and off you go. So we left for Sendai just before lunchtime, arrived around 5ish, and no dramas. Met Nigel, which was cool, he met Joe (we started going out after Nigel left for Japan) and we headed out to Ochiai which is the suburb Nigel has lived in for the last 2 years.

After leaving our bags at home, Nigel took us to a local yakitori bar (specialises in grilled chicken) and we had a few beers, ate a few interesting skewers, and I attempted to eat a baked potato with chopsticks. Not so easy. Then we headed down to a quiet little bar called Asa, and met Kumiko (hope I've spelt that right), Nigel's lady friend. She is lovely, and we played darts and learned to say 'hitta' and 'joysu' which mean bad and good in terms of skills. Oh and ganbate! Do your best!

The next day Joe and I headed out to Yamadera which was just awesome. Just the train ride out there was gorgeous, the Japanese countryside is so peaceful and such a difference to the big cities. At Yamadera we started with an ice cream from some super cute locals (chorushing Irashaimase! Welcome!) and then headed up the hills. Lots of steps, and as we were going up we passed all the school kids who had just been up there. Which was nice, because when we got to the top they weren't there :D

Came back, went into Sendai, met Nigel, and this is where some super awesomeness comes in - We went and watched Sendai Girls Pro Wrestling - AHHHHH So cool! I'd kinda hoped to see some Japanese wrestling while we're over here, but hadn't been sure how we would find out about it given how lacking in Japanese we are... But Nigel found a flier in the bathroom of the bar from Thursday for it, and so we went...

It opened with a chick singing what is most likely their theme song - ' Sendai Girls are rocking the world, Sendai Girls are Wres-u-ring' - and moved into some tag matches. The girls seemed a bit green in these openers, but everyone's got to start somewhere :) One girl, who was heaaaaps bigger than the others, looked like she was channelling Kevin Nash, slow moving and leather pants, hilarious. After the tag matches there were 4 matches that I'm pretty sure are part of a tournament, and the winners of the matches are moving on to the semis and final at the next show in a month. These girls were goood.. And they really don't seem to pull their punches. Maybe they're just really good at selling, but they really seemed to be smacking each other in the head, and kicking in the gut, and elbowing hard. Good times :)

The audience was almost more entertaining that the performers - it was so weird! Most of the crowd was silent during a bunch of big moves and then once the series of moves was over, there would be this super polite golf clap. And they really didn't get that excited. Up on the balcony with us, though, were some awesome dudes with drums who cheered super loud. And we just did our regular cheering, booed the ref sometimes and called out things like 'Ganbate Murasaki! Go Purple!' We didn't know their names...

Anyways, that was super fun and as soon as we have our lap top connected we will upload photos and videos :)

The next day we set out for Sapporo. We had booked tickets the day before and were due to be on the Shinkansen at 10:38. Cept we stuffed up and missed it :S Which actually turned out to be useful! See, when I booked the tickets, the lady handed me four tickets and told me the second train was full so we'd have to try our luck at the non reserved seats. I took this to mean that there were two trains. How foolish! When we rebooked our tickets the dude handed me 6 tickets, and I thought, my how fortunate. Had we gotten the early train, we would have not known to change trains quickly after the first one, hung around waiting for the second one, and then found out we were in the WRONG CITY. Yay for lateness!

Anyways! We're now in Sapporo. Met up with Liv (yay!) and went to an izukaya (drinking restaurant) for some snacks after the long train rides. On Sunday we went out shopping a bit (the weather was pretty yuk) and Joe and I now have cute summer weight Kimonos. At least I have a Kimono and he has whatever the boy version is called. We had a quiet night at home which was really nice.

Yesterday we went to Odori Park and went up the TV tower, which is pretty much a replica of the Eiffel tower. Apparently there is a mascot of the tower with a french moustache, we bought a badge with him on :) Lunch in the tower, interesting pasta (mine was on a hotplate and had a raw egg on each end of the plate that cooked while I ate the pasta.. a bit weird) and then walked through the park in the rain. Had a bbqd corn cob while walking, delicious! And odd. But yum :)

Liv took us to a local sushi place for dinner, and then we had another early night. Well, Liv did, since she had work today - Joe read into the early hours of the morning and I finished Memoirs of a Geisha and tidied our luggage, what fun! I'm pretty sure we won't exceed our weight limit, now that we've delivered the marmite, pineapple lumps, 42 below, baking soda, gingernuts and other goodies we were asked to bring over :)

Today we are off to the Sapporo Beer Garden, which I've heard means a brief tour through a museum and then very cheap beer... Mmmmm could be messy! I'm sure we'll be sensible drinkers. (yeah right)

Edit - PHOTOS! Five more albums. All up. Have a look :)