The third and last of the 'must see' sites of Japan, it was a picturesque fishing village with high speed mini-ferries waiting to whisk tourists around the islands that surround the bay. The islands are lovely, only a few metres in diameter with bonsai style trees on them. We forewent the ferry in favour of a walk up to Saigyou Modoshino Matsui Park as we had heard that this was the premium viewing spot to catch the whole bay. It was nice but I felt that they didn't fully take advantage of the height. The park was not really available to people after a certain point, so we could only get half way up the hill. It afforded a good view, but not a spectacular one. I think secretly, we both wanted another one of those wee single person chairlifts at Amanohashidate to whisk us to the top of the hill and let us see the whole bay.
It was lovely though.
Afterwards, we wandered along the seafront and turned off into Hiyoshi Shrine. A beautiful temple shrine, it had painted room partitions that dated back to the 17th century. Unfortunately, no photos allowed. Peacocks, gold leaf, cherry blossoms, hawks and all sorts of scenery were round the walls of the shrine. Manasume spent time here. As did the bodies of the 20 men who killed themselves in his honour when he died. Yes, seriously. 16 of them killed themselves when his son died.
There was also a small museum at the side of the shrine , Zuiganji Art Museum, which had some wonderful old Japanese artifacts, not to mention a wooden statue of the main man, Masamune Date. Him, his wife and his daughter (the girls were both bald for some reason - I will investigate and report back on this).
On the way back to the seafront, we saw these caves, formerly burial caves. It was all a bit Indiana Jones.
Manasume Date was given a teahouse, Kanrantei, and it has such a great view of the bay that we decided to indulge in a little tea ceremony ourselves.
It was back to Sendai for some lunch and a trip out Mr Date's castle ruins.
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