Sunday January 29th 2023 - Walking all over Sendai - Japan trip for work, day 8, about 6 miles of walking

The original goal when I chose Sendai as my 2 day adventure was to go hiking.  There are some appealing trails near Sendai and being North of Tokyo (as is Haneda airport) it would be somewhat easier logistically to return the car than driving around Tokyo tomorrow morning.  So this morning I headed out nice and early with plans to go to breakfast then on to a hike.  Unfortunately, rental car guy, annoying as he may have been, was right.  Sendai, outside of the expressway and the very biggest city roads, is snowy and icy.  I don't know if they aren't able to plow the side streets or it just isn't a priority or what.  There is only maybe 1 inch of snow in the deepest sections but some parts of the roads (and a lot of sidewalks) have a firmly packed, sometimes clearly icy texture.  The car was very nerve wracking to take up and (especially) down the little hills here in town and I knew going into the country would be foolish. So, by necessity, today became an urban walk about day.

Since I was up pretty early and bagel places here don't open until 9 or 10 am, I picked a bagel shop that was pretty far away but not too far from the subway.  I rode the subway 7 stops south then walked 1.5 miles to a bagel shop.  It smelled amazing but it was a very tiny bagel counter really with absolutely no seating. And way too cold and uninviting outside to just stand on the sidewalk and eat it.  The Sendai subway is nice.  I was surprised how many people came pouring out of it at 8 am today at the Sendai Station (main train station) stop I was at.  I was even more surprised when I looked at Wikipedia and read that Sendai is about 1 million people.  It really doesn't feel like a million people in any way. It's pretty sleepy feeling.

I walked along a major road after failing at the bagel place.  I was enjoying just taking in the car centric Japanese sights.  There are a lot of oddly named places like Yellow Hat (which uses a cowboy hat as a logo) and the signage for most places was really huge.  Subtle is not what most of them are going for.  I ended up try Bikkuri Donkey, a Japanese take of an American Chatzky restaurant like Chili's or TGIF or Red Robin.  They had a very familiar feeling glossy chain menu with giant pages and limited time features etc.  Ordering was done at your table on a tablet device which could be removed from its charging base and used then returned.  but payment was done on the way out at a different kind of machine that scanned your ticket (which your server brings you).  A strange mish mash of full service (they seat you and bring all your food and drinks to you) but you both self-order and self-pay at the end.  The food was filling and tasty.  I had a large hamburger steak covered in spicy sauce and cheese.  it was served with steamed rice.  It came with a cup of miso or corn soup.  I had the corn soup and it was pretty sweet but good.  The hamburger steak was tender and easy to eat with an enjoyable amount of spice.  There was a small shredded root salad and a few warm chunks of a root vegetable also.  Given that I was very hungry I'm glad I got the larger meat portion but I'm not sure if I'll eat anything else all day.  This was the most expensive meal I ate all week except for the going away dinner which I didn't really see the cost of. 2400 yen, about 18.5 dollars.  And as you will see that included an enormous Coke in a large flower vase type glass.  It was all a bit much but I enjoyed the experience.  I even had the interesting 'honor' of letting the hostess know, via Google translate, that somebody barfed all over the men's bathroom. Or as I put it 'the bathroom needs cleaning of throw up'.

I opted to walk ALL the way back to the hotel. Along the way I made a valiant but miserable attempt to be charmed by Pachinko.  I walked around the Pachinko parlor about 5 times before I tried to do anything but I never really saw anybody putting money in or hauling buckets of Pachinko balls around so it was kind of a mystery.  I eventually asked the host and he very kindly walked me over to a machine and pointed out where the money goes and I was hopeful it was pretty much put money in and push a buttton to spin.  No, it's unfortunately a lot more complicated.  There are lots of buttons and menus to navigate and literally knobs to press and a weird toy like illuminated lever you can pull.  It feels like an elaborate toddler play set with lots of things you can push and spin etc but none of it really does anything.  

As best as I can tell (and this is not well) you put cash in (I played 1000 yen or about 8 dollars) and press a button marked (in JP) ball rental.  Some certain amount of metal balls come out into the upper tray.  Each ball is worth 1, 2 or 5 yen depending on the machine you selected.  Then you turn a knob to fire or to adjust how hard to fire the balls up into the Pachinko.  The Pachinko board is kind of a giant version of the children's toy where you have tiny metal bbs and you manipulate the toy help the little balls roll through the maze.  Except this is vertical and the balls basically bounce around somewhat randomly off of pins and you have some vague ability to change how hard they launch and maybe a few other variables.  If they land in the obvious open slot at the bottom they are out of play (lost).  You are hoping they take other, less likely paths and end up in scoring holes.  And there are very complicated random bonus modes and payoff modes you can read about in great detail if you care to. 

What's really funny is that the entire Pachinko industry is built on a legal loophole.  There is no gambling in Japan.  You are playing Pachinko with metal balls and the only immediate outcome of doing well or not is more or less metal balls than you started with.  When you are ready to leave a machine you take your metal balls from the bottom (winning) tray or the top (you paid for) tray and put them into the middle tray where the machine counts them as they go back in.  That value (number of balls times 2 Yen each or whatever) goes onto an IC card (RFID card basically) and the card pops out of the machine.  You can then spend those IC card credits (only inside the parlor and usually only on the same day as they were won) at that redemption center which is in the parlor.  There you can buy snacks, beverages, maybe cigarettes etc with your winnings.  But you can also buy 'special prize tokens'.  I don't know what the special prize tokens actually look like but you only have them for a minute anyway.  Hopefully you then take your special prize token to another location (maybe outside the building maybe just in a little room off to the side) and somebody in there will just happen to be willing to buy your special token with cash for exactly what you 'paid' for it in credits.  So the cash flow goes from Yen inserted into machine to 'rent' balls.  If you don't spend them all, whatever balls you have left or have won are fed back into the machine and load as credit onto a card.  The card is used to buy either a snack (probably just a token thing to feel better about wasting your money) or if you had a really good day you have a lot of credit on your IC card and you buy a special prize token.  You then sell that token to somebody else for the same price but in cash not credit.  It's clearly gambling and a huge industry but if you do this song and dance you don't have to call it gambling.

 I completed my long walk back to the hotel.  I saw a small park along the road and used the lowest tier of bathroom I've seen here in Japan. A squat toilet and some smelly urinals and oddly no real block to keep people from the outside from seeing you pee.  I bought a can of special recipe 'raw' Pepsi and ate my Pachinko cookie. :)

It's 3 pm now and as soon as the bath opens at 4 I'm going to both use the bath and wash some clothes.  Oddly, the laundry is in the locker room of the baths so you can't really do laundry without seeing naked people.  The only other thing I'd really like to do is sit with my laptop and play a game for a while.  But the outlets in the room (just like the ones in Tokyo) are 2 pronged with no ground pins. The Shinagawa Prince had US 3 prong to 2 prong adapters.  And just like in the US almost nobody bothers to ground them when they use them.  Even at the office there were ground wires that didn't connect to anything on a few applicances.  I don't know how Japan is lax about this one seemingly obvious safety thing.  At any rate, such an adpater isn't offered here so my gaming would be on battery power or sitting on the carpet in the hallway unless I can find another 3 pronged outlet somewhere.

Beyond that my energy and ambition for the day is pretty well gone.  Tomorrow I'll be up at 5 and on the road by 6 maybe even a little before to make the long drive back to Narita airport.  My journey home starts at 12:45 pm.