Sendai Matsu Island 松島 day tour~ (May 2015)

Continuing from the last entry where I finished eating in the fish market, I went around the island to visit temples, try their famous food and shop for souvenirs.







On our way to the temples, there are these traditionally designed bridges~

While you are on the bridges, you can also see views like this~

So relaxing woah~~

Same as the traditional temples in Japan, there is a bell there and people bow, throw coins into the money box underneath the bell, clap your hands twice, then you can make your wishes.

Another side of the temple

As for many temples, there are omikuji (kind of like fortune telling draws that will predict your money, love, health etc)


However, this is my first time seeing omikuji in a machine form! I have always did my draw from the traditional way where you will draw from a box or shake some wooden sticks till one fell out.


It was 100yen for one.









After the temple, we went to visit a mini museum called Matsushima Retro Museum where it displayed many old toys, news, snacks that Japanese people used to have.


It costed 350yen for adult, 250yen for secondary school pupils and 150 for primary schools students.

If you print out the sale coupon online (from this http://ww35.tiki.ne.jp/~akinomiya-m/waribiki.html), you can get 50 yen off.

This museum is on the 2nd floor of a souvenir shop.








~Old magazines in Japan.

There are also newspaper that recorded earthquake incidents and how this island had been destroyed by the 311 Japanese earth quake and how it was rebuilt.




Therefore, Matsushima has many newly built building.



Enough of the heavy topics, let's talk about the Fooooooooood in Matsushima!











Walking along the street, you will see many food stores and souvenir stores.










And there is one catchy shop you can't miss!

This shop was selling huge senbei (Japanese crackers)

Costed 300yen for each.

You can eat inside where they provide free tea~



and they are freshly made from the counter!













But honestly, I can't lie... It's not as good as you think. Yeah it's giant and it will look cool on photos for showing friends.... But it was quite hard and the seasoning was just soy sauce.... So I gave up half way through....

The same shop also sells ice-cream and I wanted to try the pear flavour or the thick milk flavour... but they finished selling them by the time I came.... ><




This shop Matsu Kama sells snacks that are like fish ball but in a stick. Then many of them have different fillings inside. e.g. Toufu, cheese...













You can eat inside where you can grill your own one!!








Another shop sells this Dora boko which is like a dorayaki but it mixes with fish and egg (It might sound a little disgusting because how can dorayaki which is sweet be mixed with fish?) But you can't really taste the fish.


The filling in the middle is cheese cream. (As I have no resistance against cheese, it's an automatic reaction that I bought it when I saw it.)



When I think it's just normal...










Datemon is also a similar Japanese snack.

But they sold a special version: Sendai Miso was being included as one of the ingredients.... well.. let's see how it tastes...

I don't really think I could taste the miso... And I couldn't really tell the big difference between dorayaki and this...... (sorry, maybe I am a taste-blind)

As I have mentioned from my last blog, Zunda (smashed green peas) is a famous food in Sendai, so you can see a lot of souvenirs with Zunda fillings. e.g. Zunda mochi, Zunda warabi(crystal rice ball that is chewy), zunda ice-cream etc


Knowing that it's so famous, I bought Zunda mochi to try.

Well, if you like green peas and if you like mild- sweet things too, then you will like it. (I am the type that like the sweetest thing e.g. caramel and white chocolate so it's not really my cup of tea)




After that we went to another museum/park. But unfortunately, it was closed by the time we went there... it's only 200 yen for the museum btw

So we walked around places where it wasn't shut!










To be honest, I don't really know the history behind these either... so just showing you the pictures...

Then going back by train...

 I just really love their train designs!!!

Oh and in front of the train station, there is this strawberry juice shop!

 It uses strawberries grown in Sendai!

There is strawberry with orange (520 yen); 100% strawberry juice (570yen) and strawberry milk (500yen)

I ordered a pure strawberry juice without any sugar. It's a little sour but after all the sweet things I have eaten, it was a good choice!

And... that's the end of Matsu island... If you have anything you wanna ask, please leave a message!