On the third day our plan was simply to get ourselves to Sendai. We’d planned to get up early, but that didn’t happen because of jet lag and we ended up leaving to the station at noon. We stopped by a convenience store on the way to the station to get breakfast and umbrellas because it was still raining.
We took a train to Shinjuku and from there to Ômiya. As when we came to Chôfu, the Keiô line was packed but it wasn’t so bad because we had only small bags with us. We got to Ômiya at 2 pm and reserved seats to the 2:22 bullet train to Sendai. I’m not sure if taking the bullet train from Ômiya instead of Tokyo station saved us any time, but it was kind of fun to go there anyway.
Once we’d settled on our seats, we ate the rice balls and other snacks we’d bought earlier and had some coffee. The speed and comfort of the bullet trains never cease to amaze me. We reached Sendai at 15.37, so the 321 kilometre trip took only about an hour and 15 minutes.
Because our group doesn’t seem to be familiar with the concepts of planning and preparation, we hadn’t booked a hostel in Sendai. After arriving to the station, we located the tourist information booth and they kindly got us rooms at a youth hostel called Chitose Youth Hostel or Ryokan Chitoseya, which was about 20 minutes walk away from the station. We could’ve taken a bus but we decided to walk so that we could see the city. The walk was actually quite pleasant because the weather was cooler and less humid than in Tokyo. Walking turned out to be a good choice because on our way to the hostel we bumped into the woman who owns the place.