Kitakami day one

Enough of the Goldmine for now and now for a quick catch up from last week. We drove up to somewhere near Sendai on Friday and stayed over in a cheap hotel, the traffic was fine and because we had the new ETC card it only cost us ¥1000 for the highway. We set off to Kitakami the next morning, got stuck in the traffic for a while because of an accident so we arrived at the campsite just before lunch, so we pitched the tent and grabbed a bite for lunch before heading down to Tenshochi to meet Vicky and Kathryn.

We walked the length of Tenshochi, under the beautiful cherry blossom trees, all 10,000 of them and the flowers were in full bloom although the locals would complain it was crowded I doubt anyone who has ever gone to Ueno park in hanami season would call Tenshochi crowded !

They also put up koinoburi over the river, we even spotted a couple of eels.

It was great to meet Vicky and Kathryn in real life, we had a good chat and the kids played, it was a bit on the cold side but they kept themselves warm by chasing each other around. They all headed off and we stopped at the festival food stands to get something for dinner. Ebi-kun was drooling over the oysters (that he has never tried before) so daddy ended up buying some and Ebi-kun gave them the thumbs up.
Then we wandered back along the river and up the hill to the campsite. Despite the extra blankets and quilts I had packed it was a cold night, thankfully Tomoe-san lent us some blankets the next day but more about that tomorrow...