I'll start off from the beginning, we left on Wednesday from DFW airport where we all met up around 8:30. I was a bit late because of traffic, but Mark & Cora patiently waited for me to arrive. After checking in we went into security where we waiting for our 10:30 flight. The plane ride from Dallas to Tokyo took 13 hours and the whole way we saw the sun. It was interesting to see the flight route as we headed up towards Alaska and Korea then went back down towards Japan. Although the flight was 13 hours, it didn't seem so long for me as they kept feeding me with thing like a ham sandwich and curry chicken, not he best in the world but kept me satisfied. The plane also had a pretty decent movie list. I ended up watching 4 movies: anchorman two, nelson mandela, wolf of wall street, and a Japanese movie. We got to a town called Narita which was about an hour from Tokyo in which we met a travel agent with a Dallas sign. He showed us the way and gave us tickets for the train to Tokyo and Sendai. The travel agent also helped us carry some luggage which was great because we had a bunch. We hoped on the train to Tokyo and go to Tokyo in about an hour. When we got out of the train in Tokyo we saw a lady with a Dallas sign and she was in a panic. We quickly got our luggage and power walked through escalators, different levels, left turns, right turns and who knows what else I was just trying to keep up with this lady while carrying a big box. Luckily we made it to the train, apparently the travel agent was in a panic because she though we were going to miss the train. From Tokyo to Sendai it took about 4 hours, at this point I was pretty tired and don't remember much of the trip as I was dozing on and off. We arrived into Sendai station and we had a warm greeting of many individuals. They helped us with our luggage and drove us to the hotel. We dropped our bags and ate dinner at the hotel restaurant. The food was great, I love sea food and they had some great seafood. After dinner, Mark took us to check out the streets of Sendai and show us places that we could run in the morning. After that I went to bed only to wake up at 3 in the morning. It was weird how the sun rose at 4:30 in the morning and I would wake up around 5.
The next day after not being able to sleep, I called my family back home. Luckily they had amazingly fast wifi, and I was able to use the facetime on my phone. At around 6 I went downstairs and saw Cora who was also getting ready to run, so we ran together. We ran to the park that Mark had shown us. It was a pretty nice run as the sidewalks were huge and were easy to navigate. Sendai is known as the city of trees, and there were definitely a great deal of trees, it was really nice to see how the city was organized and a emphasis on nature and cleanliness was evident. We came back took a shower and ate breakfast around 8 in the morning. Now breakfast was great it was a buffet style with a bunch of different foods. From seafood to eggs and fruit, there was a little bit of everything. I definitely loved the food and I think I overate on that first breakfast as I wanted to try all the different food they had. After breakfast we met in the lobby with the other sister city teams and walked to the city hall where we got together for a conference with the mayor and the vice mayor. The gathering was great as we got introduced with a round of applause from the city hall staff, Mark received a bouquet of flowers and everyone was extremely nice. At the press conference Mark gave a speech and Cora and I were introduced. People took a great deal of photos and the runners received their uniforms and race shirts. The uniforms were awesome they said Dallas in Japanese letters. The shorts were a bit too short for my taste and I would end up wearing my Texas shorts instead. After the conference we walked back to the hotel where we had an awesome lunch again. I cant stress how good the food was and I was trying all kinds of food much like breakfast. After eating a great lunch we hoped on a bus that took us around the course to check it out. As mentioned earlier I didn't get very much sleep and at this point I was dozing off. I remember some parts of the course but not much as after having a great lunch and not sleeping well I was tired. Never the less the course looked awesome and I was excited and just happy to be there. We got back to the hotel where we met in Mark's room to arrange the goody bags for the other sister cities. The City of Dallas had donated some awesome bags with a Dallas skyline. Lukes had donated some goodies that was in the heavy box I was carrying the day before. The Rockwall Running Club had also donated a bunch of shirts that we distributed in the goody bags. We had dinner at the hotel and again it was amazing so much good food and we distributed the goody back to the different sister city that included:
Riverside, California, USA
Rennes, France
Acapulco, Mexico
Minsk, Belarus
Gwangju, South Korea- Dallas, Texas, USA
Changchun, China
Oulu, Finland
Tainan, Taiwan- At this point I was pretty tired and went to sleep only to wake up again at 3 in the morning. This write up about Japan will be continued...
good post; thanks for sharing!
ReplyDelete