The 7 hour drive

The story of the 7 hour drive from Sendai.

I had decided to join a friend on a small trip to Sendai to pick up his sister. After a full day of training for work in for me and a day of running around doing errands for him in Morioka, we started our journey. Now, getting down there we took the way with no tolls and while we had a small detour it had been quite successful trip to Sendai.

Sendai in my mind is like a mini Tokyo with small traces of western influences. Overall I found it pleasant to walk around, despite the allergies that suddenly flooded my nostrils. After we had found his sister, we ate at Mos Burger and proceeded to make our way back to the little city of Miyako. We decided to drive up the eastern coast since it was only a 4.5 hour drive with no tolls, since he had driven down I offered to drive back up.

Now the rainy season had decided to come in late this year. Instead of May/June of rain, it had been tail end of June and has rained throughout July. Japan, due to its makeup of the soil, is prone to mud slides and sometimes mini floods or raging rivers more so during this time of year. Our first mistake was underestimating the power of mother nature.

3 hours into the drive back home, we encounter a road block. As the worker looks into our car full of surprise to see a group of Gaijin (foreigners) so late at night driving (it was 2am or so I believe), we are informed in broken English and Japanese that the we cannot cross the bridge. The road worker proceeds to then discuss on the radio if anyone knows English in which a loud cry of "EH!?!? EIGO DESU?!?!?!" from his coworkers is heard through the radio. My friend and I chuckle to each other as we over hear them converse about us and saying they haven't studied English in a while.
At this point there is three different options since we are driving through the mountains, my friend asks the worker in Japanese if we can take a right to go onto the other road. Nope. Now we have two options. At this point, my friend decides to drive because honestly I had been driving slow since it had been my first time driving his car on an unfamiliar path (my driving in Japan is a different story entirely for another time).

We proceed with option two to make a Uturn, back track then try a different route slightly more inland than cross over back to the coastal route. My friend had been up since 6am, making sure his apartment was ready for his sister then driving 2 hours to Morioka to run around to do errands then had driven 4 hours to Sendai. My friend's sister had been traveling for more than 20 hours. I had been up since 6am had gone into the city early for training all day for work then had proceed to ride along 4 hours to Sendai then drive from there for another 3 hours. I had at the point had my hard contacts (literally fiber glass in my eyes) in for more than 20 hours, one of them had scratched my eye when it had moved earlier thus I was in a lot of pain.

Needless to say, we were all very tired when we hit our second road block.

We were left with only one option, go all the way back inland to the express way and drive up to Morioka then go our usual route to Miyako. While it was nice to see some beautiful scenery in the wee hours of the morning, we honestly could have cared less. Nothing sounded better than sleep.

And that is how a 4.5 hour drive from Sendai became a 7 hour drive.