"A Day In Sendai."
Tuesday. October 16. Day 82. Warm, raining, steamy.
We had slept on two futons on the floor in Ritsuko's apartment. Very comfortable.
She herself had spent the night in Junko's apartment in the same block but returned here to wash and dress. The night at Junko's had been almost all passed in talking rather than sleeping; so Ritsuko left for university looking distinctly the morning after the night before.
We showered and ate a breakfast of coffee, croissants, and raisin buns. After that and all the usual morning things, we walked to the supermarket to buy starters for the fluorescent light in Ritsuko's sitting room.
Of course a fluorescent tube and a starter are the same wherever you are, but selecting the right starter is difficult no matter where you are, if you fall into the handyman category of "complete-idiot-with-things-electrical". Seeing our indecision, a polite sales-person came to help and soon triumphed over the language barrier: we've discovered that people anywhere can almost always understand your meaningless gibberings, if only you want to buy something.
Back at the flat, with the new starter and tube installed, the light sprang to life, and we congratulated ourselves with coffee. There was time to do a little writing before Ritsuko came back from the university.
Hurray! we are going out to lunch with Yuki and Ritsuko. To a "Gusto" family restaurant.
Lunch was good and a reasonable price: 480 Yen for the day's special. It was a hamburger and three pieces of crumbed fried chicken with salad (finely sliced cabbage and carrot), a bowl of rice, miso soup, and a glass of water.
After lunch, the girls took us to see the Immaculate Heart University where Ritsuko, Yuki, and Eri are all studying. The nine year old building (belonging to the Sacred Heart Order) is constructed of stone blocks. The stones were brought from Spain. The group of university buildings looks quite beautiful.
There is a large quadrangle, with a centre fountain, surrounded by pillared colonnades. This part reminded me of the mosque in the 5th arrondisement which we had visited in Paris the previous month. Curving colonnades lead off the quadrangle.
There is a six sided chapel, austerely simple and very attractive. Regrettably the concrete blocks of which the chapel is built are cracking from a form of "concrete cancer". An earthquake has allowed enough movement to permit water to reach the steel pins which lock the concrete blocks together.
Having shown us everything which we could possibly see, the girls took us to the computer room so everyone could check email. This was good as we hadn't seen our email since leaving London, but we had to keep asking for help because we were continually hitting keys which returned the keyboard to the default encoding, Japanese, and we couldn't understand how to get back to English.
After a solid bout of computing, we went in Ritsuko's car, following Yuki and Eri to a high point from which we could look over the whole city. It was a great view: there were spectacular mountains wreathed with low cloud; the city spread out on a plain below us with the wide Sendai River running through the middle. And this is what the characters for Sendai show.
It was nearly dusk. Ritsuko disclosed that she didn't have to attend university for a few days, so we were to return straight away to Kanoya. We said goodbye to Yuki and to Eri, for the last time as it turned out: a shame; Yuki had more life and fire than any ten other people.
We set off for Kanoya at 6 p.m. Ritsuko was very tired, so we were desired to ask her questions, in Japanese, to keep her awake while she negotiated the winding road in darkness. Colin had mastered some very complicated arrangements of main clause and subordinate clause by the time we reached Kanoya at 8-30 p.m., but we were tired too; what was learned has sunk without trace.
There was sashimi and two other sorts of cooked fish for the evening meal. The dip for the sashimi was one tablespoonful of sugar, two or three tablespoonfuls of light soya sauce and slightly more vinegar than soya sauce. These ingredients were combined with a two inch strip of wasabi. Dipping the raw fish in vinegar softens the bones so the fish can be more easily eaten.
Some interesting things I noted while on the road between Kanoya and Sendai:
1. A restaurant named "Trattria";
2. Very steep mountainsides beside the road had been sprayed with concrete;
3. Where roadworks obstruct the flow of traffic, the approach to the work-zone has two workers, at intervals, each waving a warning flag; then at the work site itself, there is a person at either end directing the traffic to stop or to go;
4. At petrol stations (gasorin sutando) an attendant welcomes the arriving car onto the forecourt; another attendant guides the car to the bowser and shows where to stop;
while the tank is being filled, three attendants clean all the windows;
when the process has been completed, the attendant bows deeply to the motorist;
another attendant ushers the car to the exit, waits for a break in the traffic, then steps into the road halting any oncoming traffic so the customer can enter the roadway;
the customer drives away, pursued by shouts from the attendants, sort of equivalent in Engkish to, "Thank you so much for your custom." and "We are ever your humble servants.";
5. Trucks have lace curtains on the side windows;
6. A sign on a business saying, "Merycury." I wondered if it could have been meant to be, "Mercury.";
7. Two more signs (in English) pointing to tourist attractions along the road, "The Largest Camphor Tree In Japan." and ,"Two Tall Gingkoes." (we caught a momentary glimpse of the latter);
8. We saw rice in three stages of maturity; standing with yellowing leaves and brown ears; cut and drying on racks with covers over the stalk ends; heaps of straw being burned in the fields.
Tomorrow, Markets