Yamagata

So last Sunday we randomly decided to visit Yamagata. It's the nearest city the other way from Sendai (about 50 minutes by train from our little station). By all accounts there's not much there, but one of our friends from training lives there, and we thought it would make a good change of scenery.

We were just going to go for the day, but Alex and his girlfriend Kyoko invited us to stay, and since there was a chance to meet some new people and have some drinks, we thought why not!

Ramen for lunch - you cook this one yourself at the table

John bought a 1 litre can of Asahi beer. Just because he could.

A fresh bank of snow was too tempting :)

You're never too old to play with snow

Pretty shrine

...with pretty trees

Scary doll and a scary boyfriend

There wasn't a castle (just the site of one, standard), but there was this random pretty building

Are you bored of snowy mountain photos yet?!?

Yamagata as a place doesn't really seem to have much to offer - we had a wander round on Sunday but there wasn't anything to see you can't see everywhere in Japan - pretty shrine, a castle site but that's about it. However, we had a really good time and it was worth going for the company alone! We had a really fun weekend and hopefully we're heading back in a couple of weeks time to partake in the only thing most people go to Yamagata for...skiing. I'll keep you posted!