Iwate and Sendai Trip Journal: Tuesday, Sept. 23rd

It was Autumnal Equinox day, so we were hoping for most stores to be open. A few were closed including Tomato in the fabric district. But first we headed to the Nippori “Railway Museum” and watched and photographed trains for a while. They had installed a billboard to help you identify the different types that passed. 

E235-0 Series on the Yamanote Line

E5 Series Shinkansen on the Tohoku Line

E233-1000 series on the Keihin-Tohoku Line.

E231-1000 series on the

 

Utsunomiya or the Takasaki Line

E7 Series Shinkansen on the Hokuriku or the Jōetsu lines

Families gather at the "Train Museum" on Shimogoinden Bridge. 2500 trains pass here daily.

We continued up the hill to the Yanaka cemetery where several famous people are buried. These include Tokugawa Yoshinobu - the last Tokugawa shogun, Soseki Natsume, Makino Tomitaro (a botanist). We never found any of them because it turns out that it’s a huge cemetery, and we only went through a corner of it. We did encounter Tennoji, which has an excellent bronze Buddha with hands in Gassho. The temple has a florist on site, no doubt for the cemetery. We saw several other florists with buckets for flowers for sale along the way. The profusion of flowers was likely due the the fact that the Autumnal Equinox (Ohigan) is when many come to tend family grave sites.

Grave markers a the Yanaka Cemetery.

Buddha statue at Tennoji.

Heading towards Yanaka Ginza, we were looking for a shaved ice place called Himitsubira. We found it but there was a huge line, so we skipped. Cute name though - kind of a play on words with “secret” and “syrup”. Later we found a bakery that had nice treats and was less crowded. We looked out for cats, but we didn’t see any other than ceramic cats. Lots of people walking dogs, though. No luck finding omiyage either. We continued on to Sendagi metro station and went back to J!NS at Yurakucho for the glasses that we had ordered. They fit well and looked good.

Yanaka Ginza viewed from the Sunset Stairway.

Long line for shaved ice at Himitsubira.

We went to Tokyo Station to look into limousine bus tickets for the next day because we were concerned that the Yamanote line might be too crowded for us to carry our bags. There was no one to talk to, and there was only a machine that sold same day tickets. The web site was very confusing. In the end we checked with ChatGPT who said that the Yamanote line wouldn’t be too crowded at the hour we were travelling. While we were sitting on the benches trying to figure this out, a robot cop came by and looked at us, and trundled off. A few minutes later a security guard came by and told us, as we were sitting cross-legged, to get our feet off the benches. We were ratted out by a Robot!

Now back to Nippori fabric street where many shops were closed for the holiday, including Tomato. We did find some store open and we were able to get some nice fabric. We found the Indian restaurant that a friend from Hilo had mentioned. We had nan, slag paneer, and channa masala.

Fabric flows out onto the sidewalk at this and many other Nippori fabric shops.

This Tokyo Metropolitan Bus (Toei Bus) in Nippori, is flying Hinomaru flags in observance of the Autumnal Equinox national holiday.

Next, back to Ueno for omiyage shopping. Unfortunately we didn’t find any omiyage that we liked. But we did find a bookstore that had edition seven of Ekiben Hitoritabi. In this edition, the protagonist travels to Iwate, visits Kaboshima, and rides the Sanriku Railway. Another coincidence! Finally, we roamed around Amayokocho for a while before heading back to Nippori for the night.

Animated panda in front of Ueno Station.

The lively Ameyokocho by night.