Ishinomaki - Yudanaka: April 28

We had a lot of travelling to do on this day, it took around four hours to take shinkansen and local trains all the way from Ishinomaki to yudanaka, I ended up sleeping for most of it because the rocking motion of the train usually gets me tired. We also spent a significant amount of time just waiting for trains to arrive, so a lot of our day was lost to travel. Once we arrived in Yudanaka, we trekked up the hill to our hotel, which was a family owned ryokan (traditional inn where you sleep on the floor on tatami mats). The family hosting us was very nice. They had a good idea of why we were visiting, as Yudanaka is famous for its snow monkey park, where macaque monkeys hang out in hot springs. After checking in and dropping off our bags we walked up to Kannon World Peace Statue, Kannon is a goddess of mercy in the Buddhist faith who is very popular in Japan. This is a big statue of Kannon on top of a hill with some Ukraine flags, I'm assuming in an attempt to bring forth peace.


    The view from this area was pretty nice, Yudanaka rests in a valley in between two mountain ranges.


    After seeing this statue we explored the nearby area and saw a variety of shrines and temples, I didn't really keep track of which is which, so I don't have much info on these, but it was interesting to visit these nonetheless.



    Once we were done exploring cultural spots we were getting hungry so we moved on to searching for food. We ended up finding a ramen restaurant which was run entirely by one person, taking orders, making food, running food and all.


    He had this sweet music corner with all this old tech and albums and tapes.


    I had the katsudon (a breaded and fried pork cutlet over rice with a fried egg on top) and it was so delicious I had to let the owner know. I made sure to tell him "umai desu" (it was delicious) on our way out.

    Then we headed back to home base and got to bed early so we could be ready for an early morning of visiting the snow monkeys in the mountains.

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