Hey
guys! Here I will talk about one of the best scenery in Japan (actually 3rd
best scenery according to a survey): Matsushima. It is located on the seashore
of the Miyagi Prefecture, a small lovely sea town.
After
the great east Japan Earthquake, Matsushima is one of the luckiest towns in
Miyagi Prefecture and all the east
coast. It has a bay and this bay acts as a natural protector from any big wave
or in other word “tsunami”. When I went there for the first time (it was about
7 months ago) I could only see a couple of collapsed rocky cliffs on some of
the uninhabited islets on the
shore of Matsushima. 
At
Matsushima you can take a ferry tour around the bay of Matsushima and you can
travel across small islands. Also at ferry you can feed sea gulfs with shrimp
chips (unless you finish it first). Of course you can take as many pictures of
Matsushima and islets as you can.
On
the shore you can visit the old Buddhist Zen temple “Zuiganji” and Zen school
temple “Entsuin”, They were partially damaged due to the earthquake, but still
you can see almost many part of them, and now they are under reconstruction. Zuiganji was built in 828 but more importantly it was rebuilt by Feudal Lord Date Masamune who was the Lord of the Sendai too. Entsuin was built in the honor of Date Masamune’s grandson. Here also you can visit The Zuigan-ji Art Museum which contains various calligraphies, paintings, portraits, tea cups and so on.
For the eating, you can taste grilled mussels, oysters, if you like:) or basically you can stop by at a udon/soba shop.
For me it was really good. I saw penguins, seals,
giant crabs, piranhas and many other fish that I haven’t seen in my live
before. Also I watched a show of seals. They made some artistic jumps, races
and even they played volleyball, it was totally awesome.
Getting to Matsushima only takes 30min by car. You can also use JR train or you can a ride bicycle to
there (I did :) it was fun )
--
Text and Photos by Mustafa