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During our second pandemic golden week, my husband had two days off and we felt comfortable enough to drive to a couple of cool places in our prefecture. These are specifically places I had not been before and that made it significantly more exciting for me Another excellent part of this plan is that tourism within our prefecture is usually relegated to the big city and places quite close to it. In order to negate those effects and avoid situations with poor social distancing opportunities, we chose the opposite paths and went further into the countryside. Our main stop one day was Marumori in southern Miyagi, which I will remember for its one adorable historical Street. The biggest tourist attraction seems to be Sairi House, a museum that used to be the family estate of a rich merchant family that left the area some time ago and gave the estate to the city to honor its historical relevance. It's far from being a castle, but it still gave an interesting look into the lives of people who lived here centuries ago. Some of the store rooms showed the impressive number of well maintained service sets, complete for fanciful dining,. This is the the kind of thing a guest would expect to see and use during fancy meals on an estate like this in olden times. It brought to mind a kind of Japanese Downton Abbey. In addition to the architecture of the buildings themselves, which were pretty special inside and out, there was also some great stuff in less expected places. As with many spaces in Japan, the details were everything. The metal panel surrounding the grips to open the door of one of the store buildings was decorated with fanciful metal work complete with etched detailing. This was so wonderful it is one of the few things I remember quite vividly from the trip itself. At the entrance, we were greeted by a young foreign woman who spoke impeccable Japanese. After receiving brochures in both English and Japanese by request, we enjoyed our walk through the grounds. We explored each of the open buildings, including a large residential hall for dining hall in the back. On the second floor of this western-influenced building, they even had a huge layout of the town as it would have appeared centuries past, all done up in miniature with motion control lights and weather. The gardens were all so lovely and at this time they were also done up for blue carp streamers to remember the children lost in the tsunami, set up by The Blue Koinobori Project. All in all, it was a great time for the whole family with lots of history and exploration combined with very few people.