The JR pass is a glorious things for visitors to Japan. Any time you ride on the JR line, albeit regular train or bullet train, you are covered. It is not available for residents of Japan... even temporary ones such as myself. So I picked up a smaller version of it, which would cover 5 days worth of rides on JR lines, but not the shinkansen, only regular trains. So, we slow train-ed it up north, and since we couldn't make it all the way up to Aomori in one day this way, we stopped in Sendai for the night.
