Matsushima Bay

April 20, 2017

Before it was so difficult to correlate our off days because I would have weekends off but Caoliang would have random weekdays off. Now that I didn’t have a job and was living with him, each off day he had, we would be able to discover something new together.

I had gotten an area map earlier in our Sendai stay and tacked it up on the wall in our hotel room so we could see all the places we could discover while in Sendai. After seeing all the sakura trees and basically the area around Sendai Station, we checked the map to see where else we could go for the day.

I had seen a pretty picture of a sunset on the map and saw it was associated with Matsushima Bay. With more research, I found out that Matsushima Bay is said to be “one of the three most scenic spots in Japan.” The bay is dotted with about 200 small islands and many pine trees. This was pretty convincing for us to decide to go here since every day off we try to find nature things to do.

When researching the best way to get there, I saw that many people either went from Shiogama to Matsushima or the other way around. We decided to take a train to Shiogama and then a ferry ride through the bay up to Matsushima. The ride to Shiogama wasn’t long, not going over an hour and then the ferry ride wasn’t that bad either.

On the ferry ride, there were three different levels of seats with different prices for each level. We got the basic level since we didn’t think the view point would be that much of a difference. The boat wasn’t very crowded, actually less than ten people were on the ferry. Going through the bay, there were some really cool shaped islands but overall I wasn’t impressed. Maybe the time of day wasn’t right but it just looked like a basic body of water with random islands.

Once we got to Matsushima, there were more things to see and do. Unfortunately for us, we arrived to Matsushima at 4pm so we didn’t have much time before the sun went down.

For the time we were there, we walked around one of the neighboring islands which was also a small natural park. On the island there was a park in the center with sakura trees and other planted flowers. We had about an hour and a half to explore the little island, snapping photos, finding beaches, and being silly behind a backdrop of beautiful flowers and golden sunlight.

Dawn was soon approaching so we quickly walked back to the main island to catch the train back to Sendai Station. It would of been nice to arrive there earlier to partake in the oyster popular there and other tourist sights but perhaps that’s a lesson learned for next time.

I was grateful for the chance to get out of the city a bit and go to such a fresh place with nice natural sights. It was also nice to have a mini hike on the little island. It felt small enough to venture easily but big enough to be considered a new island explored. Plus, Caoliang and I got some pretty nice photos too!



xx
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