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In Morioka
Taking a breather, by which I mean some glorious time by an AC, before trying to head out to the stadium. Apparently it's not supposed to rain at all here anymore, but I'm still bringing my stuff for rain anyway.
Took the local trains from Akita->Yokote->Kitakami->Morioka today, which took about 5 hours in all -- a perfect span from checking out at 10am, getting on a train at 10:24, getting here at 2:35pm, and checking in to the hotel here at 3pm (the eariest possible). Most of the trip was uneventful except between Yokote and Kitakami -- a tetsudou (train geek) sat down across from me and we chatted train nerd crap for the 45 minutes until we got to his stop, which was an onsen in the middle of nowhere. I was impressed that he was wandering around Tohoku given that he lives in Kyushu, and he was impressed that I was wandering around on a Seishun 18 at ALL given that I'm a gaijin -- but to his credit he never actually tried to speak English to me at all, he was just like "I see you have an 18 pass and a clunky timetable book, where are you going today?" which is actually apparently not a bad way to break the ice with other fellow travelers. We compared train travel stories and he told me about some interesting stations that he's been to (Koboro station in Hokkaido, which CANNOT be reached except by train or by boat, no roads go there as it is between two tunnels) and Kareigawa station in Kyushu, which was built in 1903 and is still the original station building, it hasn't changed in over 100 years so it's supposedly a train history tourist spot, a "Meiji-era station"). We talked about Doai and Yubiso, showed off photos of our trips there, and then he had to leave.
Other than that, not much happened on the train.
It occurs to me that I haven't talked about all the trips myself. Mostly, people haven't tried to talk to me on this trip -- an old man got out a map like "excuse me, what country are you from?" and I snarled at him in Japanese like "That's a rude question, we're in Japan."
What's been striking about this trip more has been looking at the Japanese countryside, a lot of places there's only one track, the trains don't run that often, and yet the trains I'm taking are full of JHS and highschool kids. Often we'd stop at a station, there'd be like 10 kids on the platform, 6 would get on the train and the other 4 would wave goodbye and ostensibly go ride their bikes home. I saw some kids ride for like 2 stops, which is 5 miles... it must suck if they miss the one or two trains they can possibly take home.
There are a LOT of stations that clearly used to get a lot more traffic than they do now. Notably several ones I saw had an opposing platform to wait on... which was overgrown with plants or whatever and no longer used; you could see there used to be two tracks at the station but now there was only one and a wide space where a track used to be. I guess cars really are killing the countryside trains. They say that shinkansen are killing the night trains too. Kind of odd how it works; things become more convenient but you also lose something in the process.
Still, I've seen some beautiful places and I'll post photos soon.
For now, I feel cooled off so I think I'm going to try to figure out how to get to the stadium now...
Took the local trains from Akita->Yokote->Kitakami->Morioka today, which took about 5 hours in all -- a perfect span from checking out at 10am, getting on a train at 10:24, getting here at 2:35pm, and checking in to the hotel here at 3pm (the eariest possible). Most of the trip was uneventful except between Yokote and Kitakami -- a tetsudou (train geek) sat down across from me and we chatted train nerd crap for the 45 minutes until we got to his stop, which was an onsen in the middle of nowhere. I was impressed that he was wandering around Tohoku given that he lives in Kyushu, and he was impressed that I was wandering around on a Seishun 18 at ALL given that I'm a gaijin -- but to his credit he never actually tried to speak English to me at all, he was just like "I see you have an 18 pass and a clunky timetable book, where are you going today?" which is actually apparently not a bad way to break the ice with other fellow travelers. We compared train travel stories and he told me about some interesting stations that he's been to (Koboro station in Hokkaido, which CANNOT be reached except by train or by boat, no roads go there as it is between two tunnels) and Kareigawa station in Kyushu, which was built in 1903 and is still the original station building, it hasn't changed in over 100 years so it's supposedly a train history tourist spot, a "Meiji-era station"). We talked about Doai and Yubiso, showed off photos of our trips there, and then he had to leave.
Other than that, not much happened on the train.
It occurs to me that I haven't talked about all the trips myself. Mostly, people haven't tried to talk to me on this trip -- an old man got out a map like "excuse me, what country are you from?" and I snarled at him in Japanese like "That's a rude question, we're in Japan."
What's been striking about this trip more has been looking at the Japanese countryside, a lot of places there's only one track, the trains don't run that often, and yet the trains I'm taking are full of JHS and highschool kids. Often we'd stop at a station, there'd be like 10 kids on the platform, 6 would get on the train and the other 4 would wave goodbye and ostensibly go ride their bikes home. I saw some kids ride for like 2 stops, which is 5 miles... it must suck if they miss the one or two trains they can possibly take home.
There are a LOT of stations that clearly used to get a lot more traffic than they do now. Notably several ones I saw had an opposing platform to wait on... which was overgrown with plants or whatever and no longer used; you could see there used to be two tracks at the station but now there was only one and a wide space where a track used to be. I guess cars really are killing the countryside trains. They say that shinkansen are killing the night trains too. Kind of odd how it works; things become more convenient but you also lose something in the process.
Still, I've seen some beautiful places and I'll post photos soon.
For now, I feel cooled off so I think I'm going to try to figure out how to get to the stadium now...