Matsuri-bayashi - Sendai day 3 (part 3)

After we got back to Sendai, we wandered around for a while looking at the decorations that had appeared since yesterday. It was pretty amazing.

Each store in the shopping arcade had their own decorations they'd made and hung.

The variety was incredible.

The arcade consists of two intersecting roads, each a half mile long or so.

I couldn't figure out how to get a photo that captured the scale.

It just went on and on and on.

Many of them were extremely intricate. I have no idea how many months the store employees must have spent working on these a little at a time.

Totoro!

The detail is exquisite.

It was really crowded with people admiring the work.

Several were Olympic-themed.

After looking around a bit we headed back to Sendai Station.

Really tall bamboo stalks!

The inside of the station was decorated, too.

Stained glass inside the station -- a popular meeting spot.

There we met up with Lisa's friend, Sis. Teranishi, and had dinner with her.

Thus ended our last full day in Sendai.

The Larger Bowl - Sendai day 3 (part 2) - Zao-san

Finally we got as high as you can go by car, which was fairly near the summit. Walking to the peak would have taken another hour or so, but all the cool things to see were within a few hundred yards of the parking lot.

The first part of the walk was through a big area of flowers and smallish plants. There were insects all over.

Then we came out into the open where we could see the main attraction, a crater lake in a caldera of the volcano which is Zao-san.

Zao-san is the most active volcano in northern Japan. This sign was slightly unnerving. It says, essentially, "This is a volcano. If something seems amiss, run like heck."

The lake is also known as the "five color lake," because the color of the water is supposed to change fairly dramatically with weather and lighting. It did get just a little patch of direct sunlight on it while we were there, but not enough that we could see a drastic shift in color.

Here there is a patch of sunlight on the water. It is a rather different shade of green where the sun is hitting it.

In the other direction there was a shrine up at the top of a hill.

On the other side of the shrine was a large meadow of flowers and plants.

There was a good view of the mountains on the other side.

It was really hazy, which makes it hard to see the 20 or so layers of hills going off into the distance.

On the other side of the shrine people had kind of gone crazy making stacks of rocks.

Daniel got in on the fun.

I got a kick out of this couple who was trying really hard to use a selfie stick with an SLR. It wasn't going well for them.

I couldn't resist taking a few shots of this car in the parking lot. It's a Honda S660.

On the way down the mountain we stopped in a village that had a "foot hot springs." We stuck our feet in the water for a bit.

The water flows out from the far end, and cools as it slowly makes its way along the trough. Daniel got brave enough to try the upper pool. He could handle this spot, barely. He tried sticking a foot in at the far end, but wasn't able to keep it in the water for more than a second or two.

It was an interesting conclusion to a fun trip! Thank you, Endo-san!