Anyway, on Saturday of last week, I went to visit Sendai Castle. Sendai used to be quite the metropolis back in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century, when Date Masamune, one of the many warlords of the period, decided to make it the seat of his power. In fact, I just read on the official come-visit-Sendai website (which might be a little biased) that the Spanish Ambassador in 1600 said that Sendai was a busier city than Tokyo.
Anyway, he built a very big castle on a cliff just to the south of what is now city centre, 115 meters above sea level. I took the Loople Sendai to get there, a really cool set of buses painted to look like oldschool streetcars that run in a loop to eleven of Sendai's major attractions. They were intended for out-of-town visitors, but they are cheaper than the city buses, so they are usually very crowded with Sendai residents who may or may not be using them to get to the sites in their own city.
The castle itself was destroyed by fire and the nearly constant civil wars of the period. One small segment of the wall still exists, and they have rebuilt the guardhouse. It houses the most famous statue of Sendai, the one that graces almost every brochure about the city:
While I was admiring the statue, I heard a Japanese couple saying "Sumimasen" (Excuse me), so I said "Hai?" (Yes?). They were quite upset to have attracted the attention of someone with blonde hair, but once I proved my understanding of what they wanted (a photo with both of them in it) and how to use their cell phone camera, they let me take their picture. And then I asked them to take mine too. Unfortunately, I had left my camera at school on Friday, so I will have to return to get a better version of the iconic I-Visited-Sendai picture:
The courtyard also provided gorgeous panoramic views of the city, but those photos aren't even worth keeping. As an aside, you'd think a $400 cell phone would be able to take a decent photograph.
Inside, they had the typical assortment of coffee shops, omiyage shops filled with boxes of cookies featuring Date Masamune and his weird hat, and gift shops with things like pens and cell phone charms featuring Hello Kitty dressed up as Date. I bought a pen -- I have a weird affection for kitschy tourist souvenirs...
They also had a museum, which featured artifacts from the period (samurai armor, several letters written by Date, tea sets and small tables) and a miniature model of the whole castle. They also had a film about the history of the castle. The Japanese narration was apparently amusing, but the English that came through the special earphones the staff kindly supplied me was pretty bland and didn't do much to un-complicate the bad computer-generated reconstructions on the screen. I didn't understand much except that there were rooms and platforms and chairs specially set aside for the Emperor, even though he never came and was really never expected to come, and there was a very large Noh stage.
One final note on Date Masamune. This is onigiri, made of rice and nori (seaweed sheets):
And this is the face of the Visit Sendai campaign:
Why they choose to represent their city with an onigiri dressed up as a 16th-century war hero and ruler is beyond me. Isn't he cute (kawai), though?On Sunday, I went through a haunted house for the very first time! My friend Kristin had been invited to the Miyagi University of Education fall festival and didn't want to go alone. Before her friend showed up, we braved the carnie-like food vendors ("Japanese food!!" "Oishi desu ne?!?!" "Iraisshimase!!"), helped to judge a photo contest without being able to read the names or the titles, and admired some rocks and some monk-made handicrafts from Mongolia. After her friend arrived, we also acquired three of her students, two 1nensei boys and a 3nensei girl, and went together to brave the haunted house. Only three people were allowed in at once, which meant that we had to wait for quite a while before our turn. This meant that we got to see everyone else's reactions: some, reassuringly, came out laughing, but an awful lot of girls ran out shrieking...
My experience with haunted houses is nonexistent, so I can't compare -- but I thought this one was pretty creepy. It was only one room, but they had done it up as a maze. You had to go through a variety of doors that opened onto hanging headless Barbie dolls or tableaus of murder scenes. They also had a variety of tasks, communicated entirely in Japanese -- luckily, the kids knew what was going on -- the completion of which usually resulted in masked and costumed actors jumping out and shooing you along. I wasn't really scared, but I had no desire to stay in there any longer than necessary.
Getting through, and out, though, was complicated by the girl. She had been looking not-so-good while we were waiting, and as soon as we got inside she was utterly terrified. Terrified in a I-am-going-to-cling-full-strength-to-the-waist-of-this-person-I-barely-
know-and-refuse-to-move kind of way. (She did keep apologizing the entire way through, though.) I had to literally haul her through the entire thing, especially when we had to go through a door. Left to her own devices, I'm not sure she'd ever have gotten out. Once she did, she collapsed onto the floor in hysterics. It was both awkward and very funny.
Possible plans are in the works for an ALT-run haunted house next year. Maybe we'll have two paths -- one scary and one not-so-scary...
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