Day 96: Visiting The Fam In Utsunomiya

Day two of the JR Pass. We had lunch plans with my family in Utsunomiya (this area is famous for their gyoza but I am yet to actually eat gyoza from here) before travelling up to Sendai for the night. I was excited to stay in a hotel for a night because, even though I like our Airbnb, it's nice to have a bit of a change. Plus this hotel had an onsen in it so that just made it even better.

Another early(ish) start. This is the bridge that goes over the train tracks to our station. I think these ladies are volunteers who help to keep the bridge clean or something? Not sure, but there is a photo of them in their orange jackets on the bridge.

Adam fanning out over these shinkansens. He has both of these in model form on his desk at home.

The train cleaning lady ready for action.

So enamoured were we with the katsu sando from yesterday that we bought one each today and ditched the ekiben.

We met up with Sachiko, my aunt who isn't really my aunt but my Dad's cousin. Does that make her my second cousin? Anyway, we met up with her, her daughters Seira and Riri, Seira's boyfriend and Kunchan (Sachiko's mum) for a sushi lunch near the station. It was so nice to see them and it was pretty convenient that they could speak a bit of English too. 

This restaurant gets their fish from Tsukiji and transport it to the restaurant every day. Lunch ended up being about $18 which was actually amazing considering how good it was.

After lots of waving good bye, we headed back to the station and jumped on our train bound for Sendai.

Patiently waiting for the train.

Kunchan packed us a snack pack with these rice balls and some senbei. So good!

It was a rainy night in Sendai and the gyutan (beef tongue) restaurant we had planned to go to was closed that night so we had to try and find another spot. Fortunately there are a tonne of gyutan restaurants in Sendai so we found one pretty easily.

The guys here do gyutan sets and that's about it. Small or large. That's about the level of choice you get. Makes it easy for someone as indecisive as me.

The set comes with a few slices of gyutan, pickles, rice and ox tail soup.

Gyutan sits in a big pile and the old boy places them on the grill as the orders come in. For such a small place with such a small menu there were a large number of staff. Odd.

Grill boyz.

We didn't want to go straight back to the hotel so we found a wine bar not too far from us. It was a dangerous place because they offered all you can drink wine for ¥1300 for 100 minutes. Of course we said yes.

At least we weren't the most drunk people at this place. The guy directly in front was well asleep and the guy to the right had a sleep while his girlfriend chowed down on some noodle soup.

After drinking our fair share of wine, we found ourselves a conbini (of course), some snacks and crashed in our comfortable hotel bed awaiting tomorrow's hangover.