Matsushima Bay

Hi All - I arrived via the Shinkansen (bullet train) last night about 10:30 pm here (so about 20 hours since I left the house) and crashed hard.
Today we went on a trip to Matsushimu Bay for a trip then came back and had tea at the University.

Here is the view from my window in my hotel in Sendai this morning at sunrise. Sendai is not so crazy, it is about the same size as Edmonton.

There is snow on the ground here still.



Here is a picture of Matsushimu Bay - if you look closely you can see the fat snowflakes coming down. We went on a boat trip around the islands then we came back and had a small tea ceremony (it was cold - it was in an open house). Then we we went for lunch. As you can see I had the shashimi (tuna, scallops, shrimp, octupus) and the fried oysters which are in season from the Bay. They were very good, the picture is the plastic replicas they have in all the restaurants here so you can see what you will get.







Finally, we returned to Sendai and went to the University. They have a very nice museum there and see the fossil below, it is from the Burgess shales that highlight the Cambrian explosion 600 million years before - the really rare fossils. I have never actually seen one of these before so I have to come all the way to Japan to actually see this thing! Probably no blog for the next few days as I will be in boring meetings. Off to sample some saki and more shashimi I hope tonight. A lot of them still said they had a good time in the Edmonton meeting I hosted a few years ago for this group.