We arrived in Sendai after a couple of minor mishaps. First we found that we were supposed to have picked up our JR East pass at any of a number of places, Nikko not included. So we had to get all the way back south to Ueno in Tokyo before we could catch a shinkansen high-speed train north again. Then we were a bit over-eager boarding the shinkansen, and got one heading north-west to Nagano instead of north-north-east to Sendai. Fortunately the next stop for both trains was at Omiya so we were able to switch there.

More later when I can be bothered to plug our keyboard into my Freerunner instead of painstakingly tapping at a virtual one on-screen.