@calchan Nice long story! It's a pity that traveling with a bike on trains is not as popular as in Europe so people in Japan might not know how to deal with a bike on a train.
The BBQ photo is actually from last June when I visited a coffee roaster in Sendai where I usually buy coffee from. With friends from Mastodon, I also enjoyed visiting Aoba castle. Sendai is also famous for "zunda", sweet "an" paste from green soybeans from which I took my handle name, while I'm originally from Tokyo :)
If you're interested in, the coffee roaster has an account on Mastodon (@ nelsoncoffeeroaster@pawoo.net). The online shop doesn't actually accept US credit cards but they ship outside Japan: https://ncr.official.ec/.
@zundan Oh, I'd love to go there! I did go to the Sendai morning market though, and it had a lot of fish. Long story...
One day I wanted to ride my bike from Inawashiro, climb around mount Bandai and up to lakes Hibara and Akimoto. I love this area.
So I took the train from Omiya to Koriyama with my bike, but when I got off I was pushed by 4 very rude salarymen. I realized later my phone fell in the train at that time, with my bank card and driver license in a pocket in the back of the phone. I also no longer had a map because I was going to use my phone for that. I decided to keep going anyway (nothing I could do at the time), but I got lost in the mountains and ended up climbing up to Grandeco ski resort. 😆
At the end of the day I took the train back to Omiya and asked my wife to call JR for me (my Japanese is far from good enough for that). They said they found my phone and it was in Sendai, that they could mail it to me but it could take up to 4 weeks. I was supposed to fly back to the US 2 weeks after so I said I'd go to Sendai to pick it up. Plus, I had always wanted to go there.
So the next day, I took the direct Shinkansen to Sendai (1 hour and 5 minutes, it reminded me of back home in France), picked up my phone at the train station and walked out. My first stop was the morning market, it was early on a Sunday morning so there weren't a lot of people yet. Then I walked to Aoba castle where I was lucky to catch a group performing some folkloric dances. I ended my day at the history museum which had interesting Joumon Jidai artifacts (my favorite period of Japan history).
That was an unplanned but great day! Too bad I didn't know about the Yuriage market because I would definitely have gone there.