Matsushima & Sendai

You could say it's been a busy couple of weeks.

Two weeks ago Kym and I travelled north to the cities of Sendai and Matsushima. The latter is known as 'one of the three most beautiful places in Japan', due to the 260 pine-covered islets that scatter the bay. The recommended viewing point is from a sightseeing ferry that does a loop of the bay. But once the ferry set off, the view seemed to vanish from everyone's minds. Of more importance, seemingly, were the seagulls that flocked after the ferry. Passengers were throwing what I later discovered to be some kind of prawn chips out to the gulls, who swooped and cawed and basically stole everyone's attention. 50 minutes later we arrived back and everyone was like, "Oh, I forgot to look at the pretty islands."

Sendai is a large city with a population of about 1 million, and with a lot of charisma. It was totally unlike the narrow, crowded streets of other cities in Japan I've been to. Take Nagano for instance, known for its narrow, weaving streets that sprawl in any and all directions, as if it had been mapped out by a 2-year-old with a crayon. Now take Sendai, with its wide, tree-lined streets, and well-thought-out city center. Don't get me wrong - I love Nagano - but after spending some time in Sendai, I realised that I wanna live there too.

Also of recent, my good mate Phil left EngForYou and Nagano City. The last two Saturday nights we had goodbye parties for him, both of which ended at 5am after epic karaoke sessions. He's now working in a city about 2 hours away by local train.

Earlier this week I did a live interview on the radio. It was for a monthly corner titled "Shinshu! Fall In Love" - Shinshu is the name of the wider area, and the corner asks a foreigner living in Japan what they think about the country, Shinshu, and all that kinda stuff. It was about 10 minutes long, was completely unscripted and in Japanese, and was broadcast throughout Nagano Prefecture. They took a photo of me in the studio with the host, which you can check out on their site here.