Hitome Senbonzakura

April 13, 2017

So for those of you that aren’t caught up yet, after finishing my job at the end of March, I decided to follow Caoliang to Sendai where he will perform with Totem in the last city of their Japan tour. For the next two months I won’t have a job and will be technically be a tourist in Japan. Before leaving to Busan, I ended my residence visa early in exchange for a tourist visa upon coming back to Japan, therefore I am technically a tourist in Japan now. So for the next couple months I’ll be jobless and basically relying on Caoliang for support. Sure I still have my savings so it won’t be a complete dependency but with not having a job, I would have more free time than I’ve had in awhile.

The beginning of being in Sendai was also the beginning of sakura season! In Sendai it was a bit later than the rest of Japan so we were lucky to enjoy it through April. One of the first days off we spent was at Hitome Senbonzakura, which translates to 1,000 sakura trees at a glance.

It took us about thirty minutes from Sendai Station to Ogawara Station which from there, we walked a couple minutes to get to Shiroishi Riverside. The nearly 1,200 sakura trees lined the river side all the way up to Funaoka Station about 3 km away. So we started at the Ogawara end and walked alongside the river to Funaoka. Along the way, we also saw some food vendors and tents being set up for people to enjoy the sakura and have a bite outside. The weather was sunny but so windy that it was very chilly at some points.

Even with the wind, we still enjoyed the walk and stopped many times to snap photos. It was beautiful to see so many sakura trees along a nice backdrop of Mount Zao with snow still on the top. Being that we spend so much of our time in the city, it was nice to get out a little onto the countryside of Sendai.



xx
t