"The Zoo AND Sendai."

Monday 15 October. Day 81. Misty becoming fine, but humid with rain coming later.

Shouko went to work, so it fell to Toshiharu's lot to entertain us. He drove us across Kanoya to a large sports complex. On the way we passed a rather old fashioned railway train standing on its own piece of track. This was another piece of the solution to the puzzle of the line that no longer existed.
The railway station, we discovered, no longer existed. It had been demolished and rebuilt as shops. There was no time warp as at Peronne in northern France where, disguised as several dowdy shops, the railway station still stood complete with all track and signalling gear, but with giant weeds doing the service of the cobwebs in Miss Havisham's sitting room in " Great Expectations".
Toshiharu took us to a large sports complex. There were facilities for tennis (a pro was giving a lesson to a group of ladies), baseball, soccer, kendo, and sumo. There were some tiny grounds for smaller children and a zoo. There were birds and animals.
We had great fun identifying the animals. Sometimes the name was in kanji, so Toshiharu pronounced the character and then we could search for the sound in our romaji dictionary. Otherwise the names were in katakana, so they could be sounded in various pronounciations until the familiar name was discovered. In certain cases Toshiharu mimed some characteristic of the creature or gave another clue to its identity. Anyway there were chooks, peacocks, turkeys, pheasants, grouse (maybe), macaw, eagles, finches, budgies, ducks, Japanese monkey, crab-eating monkey, small deer, mountain pigs, racoon, goats, rabbits, and a prairie dog or gopher.
Not surprisingly, walking around, looking at things, and talking to people (Toshiharu knew someone everywhere we went), took the entire morning as if it were a quarter of an hour.

Lunch was a chicken curry provided by Itsuko.
Junko (whom we had met the day before at the ton katsu restaurant) ate with us. After lunch we were to go to Sendai to stay one or two nights with Ritsuko, and Junko was to drive us there.

We drove out on the familiar highway past smoky Sakurajima towards Kagoshima. The scenery was beautiful.
To the left, the land sloped into Kagoshima Bay and from some points you could look right down the bay to Cape Sata, the southernmost point of the island.
Occasionally we passed burnt buildings, pachinko parlours or restaurants, testimony perhaps to the economic downturn and the murkier side of life. On the right the land, covered thickly with bamboo, rhododendrons, and other shrubs and small trees, rose sharply for hundreds of metres. This time we were able to pick out the remains of the permanent way, clinging to the escarpment high above us. In several places landslides had carried it away.
We by-passed Kagoshima and arrived in Sendai at half past three. A key had been left for us, so we were able to wait in Ritsuko's apartment (in a block called "Belle Fille"). The apartment was a shower/bath/toilet just off an entry, and a bed/sitting room. A kitchen was on the other side of a bench. Ritsuko herself returned from university about an hour later.
A cool breeze arrived. Very nice as the day had been hot. We decided we would cook spaghetti bolognaise for tea. Ritsuko and I walked to the supermarket to buy ingredients. Then we walked back again to buy beer and wine.
Colin cooked the bolognese sauce and Ritsuko made a salad of octopus and okra for an entree. How can you drain spaghetti without a sieve or colander? Simple! Ritsuko picked up the whole lot with a pair of cooking chopsticks. What can be done with chopsticks rather than the implements we use is always amazing.
So, in the end, we had a sort of Queenscliff meal with Japanese touches. We ate cheese and biscuits, too, and drank the beer and wine. It was a very relaxed meal with a lot of laughs.

Tomorrow, A_Day_In_Sendai