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Maybe it would have been a better idea not to go to Obama City on such a LOUSY day
But seriously, today was like, a can anything else go wrong? kind of day in some ways.
I overslept breakfast at the hotel, almost, so my breakfast was a bowl of miso soup and three croissants that had been sitting out for a few hours. Checked out and found myself with an hour to waste in Tsuruga -- and it turns out that at 10am the city is just as totally dead as it is at 10pm. So I walked around a bit and went to the train station and waited there.
It started raining as the train pulled out of Tsuruga station, and it never stopped -- so instead of having a nice view of the mountains and the shore along the northern coast of Japan, I mostly had a view of sleet and wind and grey clouds.
But even better, I got to Obama City an hour later, around noon, and it was pretty much blowing wind and sleeting and snowing and raining. I went to the tourist center by the train station like "So, uh, what can I do in this city in this weather?" and the lady there is like "Not much... and a lot of things here are still closed for new year's, so you can't even really go to the Chopsticks Museum or to some of the nicer temples." She suggested I rent a car and drive out to a few places, but I had to explain that I can't legally drive in Japan. Anyway, she suggested I go to Izumicho, the covered shopping street, and she said there'd be a few restaurants and stores near there. I threw most of my stuff in a train station locker so it wouldn't get wet during the day, and set out.
There are "Obama for Obama" signs (or "I ♥ Obama", or "We Support Obama") all over the area near the station, which was kinda cute... some with caricatures of Barack Obama, or American flags or whatever. It was a bit surreal. But I don't think there are any actual Americans living in the city :)
I found my way to Izumicho, which turned out to be all of like, a block and a half long, and the only things open there were like 3 stores selling fish, and one store selling what looked like sembei and other traditional Japanese sweets. Oh, and a flower shop. All of these were fairly useless to me. And no restaurants were open anywhere in the area as far as I could tell, except Mos Burger.
I rounded the corner though and found Wakasaya, which basically ended up being the saving grace of my trip there. This is an entire store dedicated to President Obama merchandise (with a tiny bit of local Fukui stuff thrown in). The lady there really loves Obama but speaks very little English, but when she heard I was American she got really excited and showed me all kinds of crazy stuff they had. Eventually I basically said, "What should I do today?" and she got out a pamphlet and circled some places like "this has good sushi... this has another shopping area..." and told me how to get to the castle ruins and all. I told her I'd be back, and went off to check things out.
The rain didn't stop though, and I found my way to the waterfront, and to where she said there was shopping/food, and I found food, at a place by the Fisherman's Wharf. I ended up having a curry udon / sauce katsudon set. The katsudon was amazing, the curry udon was interesting (I think it was homemade noodles, and I'd never had curry udon before) but there was WAY too much and I couldn't actually finish it.
I walked another 10-15 minutes to the Obama Shrine, which is in the middle of the walls of the Obama Castle Ruins. It was deserted -- there was nobody there, so I couldn't buy an Obama mamori or anything. Doh. I climbed to the top of the wall though, to where there used to be a huge tower, and it had a really fantastic view of the water and the city -- aside from it all being cloudy and rainy and cold. Actually, the rain stopped for a few minutes and I took a photo of myself up there... and then it started again. I also dropped my cellphone on the way up and nearly had a heart attack when I found it on the ground in a puddle, but it seems okay, I guess I lucked out. I sat in a little teahouse/pavilion to dry off for a tiny bit before heading back -- my shoes were totally soaked, my socks were soaked and my feet were cold, my bag was soaked, I was freezing cold, it sucked.
Anyway, I got about 2-3 minutes on my way back to the Wakasaya ahop, AND SUDDENLY THE RAIN STOPPED ENTIRELY. It stayed unrainy for my entire walk back to the Wakasaya shop. WTF?! By then I was too tired/cold to try to go back anywhere to take photos anyway.
I bought some souvenirs at the Wakasaya shop, and then walked to the station. It was 3:20pm and the next train was 3:27pm! Bonus! I got on the train, found a seat, was going through my stuff...
...and just as the train was getting ready to set out I REALIZED THAT MY OTHER BAG WAS STILL IN A TRAIN STATION LOCKER OH FUCK OH FUCK.
I did manage to get off the train before it started, and I ran to the locker and got my stuff and ran back... and the train had left. This being Middle-of-Nowhere, Fukui Prefecture, the next train wasn't until 4:21pm.
I did at least tell myself that it was much better that I realized my stuff was still in a locker there BEFORE the train left... I'm not sure how much more time it would have taken me to get BACK there to get my stuff if necessary. But dang, if only I'd remembered one or two minutes earlier, I would have been able to get back on the train!
So I found myself with 50 minutes or so and nothing to do with it. I didn't really want to walk back into the cold, though I thought about it for a bit. I sat in the waiting room for a while, I also went back to the tourist info office for a little bit and looked at some maps and pamphlets. I went to the bathroom (hooray countryside places with no western toilets AND no toilet paper AND nothing selling tissue packs -- thank god I still had one in my bag). I sat around a bit more. Finally around 4:05ish I went outside into the train station... thought I'd take some photos next to the Obama station sign. Which was on the across platform, so I walked there, and just as I got set to take some photos, I am not kidding, IT STARTED RAINING AGAIN. WTF.
The train ended up being a minute or two late rather than 10 minutes early like the one before it, too. But I got on and got a seat, a good one even, such that I had another bench facing me. I took my shoes off, I took my soaking wet socks off, I put on my dirty but dry socks from the day before, I put my feet up on the seat opposite me, and... pretty much fell asleep for the entire ride back to Tsuruga. Whatever, it was too rainy out to see the nice scenery anyway.
Got back to Tsuruga, debated whether to go hunt down that "Europe" style katsu place... then decided I was too sluggish/cold to leave the train station, and just went up to track #7 and got on the Shin-kaisoku that'd take me to Hikone. I got a seat, which was important, and spent the entire hour of this ride reading college baseball magazines instead of sleeping. (Unlike the dude next to me, who slept the whole way and I had to wake him up so I could step over him to exit the train.)
Hikone seemed a LOT more promising than Tsuruga -- when I got off the train I could actually see an open McDonald's and a convenience store! Wow!! There were other assorted restaurants, a pachinko parlor, a department store... so I checked into my hotel, it was 7pm, then I went out to go find food and stuff. After investigating a few places that turned out to be closed, including a hitsumabushi place, sigh, I ended up at the department store, which closed at 8pm, BUT on the 6th floor they had some restaurants, so I got a "yoshoku bento", which was Japanese hamburger and soup and rice and salad and assorted stuff, and self-serve all-you-can-drink coffee. For 780 yen. Man. My lunch was also like 780 yen... the one nice thing about the inaka is that you can get a LOT of yummy food for cheap! The department store also had a model train shop! But it was also closed. I could see in though, and there was a HUGE model train set up which looked awesome.
I stopped at the 7-11 to grab a drink and some bread to eat tomorrow morning, and came back to the hotel, and have been here since, basically sitting around and wasting time. I watched some TV (they had a show about some women who went on diets and lost a ton of weight, it was kinda funny and kinda depressing, but I couldn't stop watching. One lady went from 190 kg to 100 kg, which is basically like 400 pounds to 200 pounds (not exactly but you get the idea). I feel kind of sick -- not super-sick, but as you'd expect someone to feel after spending 4 hours walking around soaking wet and cold. Hopefully it won't get worse, though.
Tomorrow morning I should get up early and hopefully see Hikone Castle though the forecast is also for sleet and stuff here too. Sigh. Gotta leave town around 10am to go to Nagoya to see Jeff and eat miso katsu, and then home to Tokyo, maybe via Shizuoka, I haven't decided yet.
It's been a good trip even though I've been whining about it a ton. Really, of all the things I fucked up, nothing was catastrophic, just inconvenient, so I'm not really sweating it. Aside from some train snafus where I really do have to be on a particular train or get stuck somewhere for 2-3 hours, it's not like I'm really on anyone's schedule except my own. The weather today was very frustrating and I'm sure Obama City is a very nice place when stores are actually open and you aren't stuck walking a few miles in cold sleet and rain, but at least I was successful in going there, which was more the point.
Whee.
I overslept breakfast at the hotel, almost, so my breakfast was a bowl of miso soup and three croissants that had been sitting out for a few hours. Checked out and found myself with an hour to waste in Tsuruga -- and it turns out that at 10am the city is just as totally dead as it is at 10pm. So I walked around a bit and went to the train station and waited there.
It started raining as the train pulled out of Tsuruga station, and it never stopped -- so instead of having a nice view of the mountains and the shore along the northern coast of Japan, I mostly had a view of sleet and wind and grey clouds.
But even better, I got to Obama City an hour later, around noon, and it was pretty much blowing wind and sleeting and snowing and raining. I went to the tourist center by the train station like "So, uh, what can I do in this city in this weather?" and the lady there is like "Not much... and a lot of things here are still closed for new year's, so you can't even really go to the Chopsticks Museum or to some of the nicer temples." She suggested I rent a car and drive out to a few places, but I had to explain that I can't legally drive in Japan. Anyway, she suggested I go to Izumicho, the covered shopping street, and she said there'd be a few restaurants and stores near there. I threw most of my stuff in a train station locker so it wouldn't get wet during the day, and set out.
There are "Obama for Obama" signs (or "I ♥ Obama", or "We Support Obama") all over the area near the station, which was kinda cute... some with caricatures of Barack Obama, or American flags or whatever. It was a bit surreal. But I don't think there are any actual Americans living in the city :)
I found my way to Izumicho, which turned out to be all of like, a block and a half long, and the only things open there were like 3 stores selling fish, and one store selling what looked like sembei and other traditional Japanese sweets. Oh, and a flower shop. All of these were fairly useless to me. And no restaurants were open anywhere in the area as far as I could tell, except Mos Burger.
I rounded the corner though and found Wakasaya, which basically ended up being the saving grace of my trip there. This is an entire store dedicated to President Obama merchandise (with a tiny bit of local Fukui stuff thrown in). The lady there really loves Obama but speaks very little English, but when she heard I was American she got really excited and showed me all kinds of crazy stuff they had. Eventually I basically said, "What should I do today?" and she got out a pamphlet and circled some places like "this has good sushi... this has another shopping area..." and told me how to get to the castle ruins and all. I told her I'd be back, and went off to check things out.
The rain didn't stop though, and I found my way to the waterfront, and to where she said there was shopping/food, and I found food, at a place by the Fisherman's Wharf. I ended up having a curry udon / sauce katsudon set. The katsudon was amazing, the curry udon was interesting (I think it was homemade noodles, and I'd never had curry udon before) but there was WAY too much and I couldn't actually finish it.
I walked another 10-15 minutes to the Obama Shrine, which is in the middle of the walls of the Obama Castle Ruins. It was deserted -- there was nobody there, so I couldn't buy an Obama mamori or anything. Doh. I climbed to the top of the wall though, to where there used to be a huge tower, and it had a really fantastic view of the water and the city -- aside from it all being cloudy and rainy and cold. Actually, the rain stopped for a few minutes and I took a photo of myself up there... and then it started again. I also dropped my cellphone on the way up and nearly had a heart attack when I found it on the ground in a puddle, but it seems okay, I guess I lucked out. I sat in a little teahouse/pavilion to dry off for a tiny bit before heading back -- my shoes were totally soaked, my socks were soaked and my feet were cold, my bag was soaked, I was freezing cold, it sucked.
Anyway, I got about 2-3 minutes on my way back to the Wakasaya ahop, AND SUDDENLY THE RAIN STOPPED ENTIRELY. It stayed unrainy for my entire walk back to the Wakasaya shop. WTF?! By then I was too tired/cold to try to go back anywhere to take photos anyway.
I bought some souvenirs at the Wakasaya shop, and then walked to the station. It was 3:20pm and the next train was 3:27pm! Bonus! I got on the train, found a seat, was going through my stuff...
...and just as the train was getting ready to set out I REALIZED THAT MY OTHER BAG WAS STILL IN A TRAIN STATION LOCKER OH FUCK OH FUCK.
I did manage to get off the train before it started, and I ran to the locker and got my stuff and ran back... and the train had left. This being Middle-of-Nowhere, Fukui Prefecture, the next train wasn't until 4:21pm.
I did at least tell myself that it was much better that I realized my stuff was still in a locker there BEFORE the train left... I'm not sure how much more time it would have taken me to get BACK there to get my stuff if necessary. But dang, if only I'd remembered one or two minutes earlier, I would have been able to get back on the train!
So I found myself with 50 minutes or so and nothing to do with it. I didn't really want to walk back into the cold, though I thought about it for a bit. I sat in the waiting room for a while, I also went back to the tourist info office for a little bit and looked at some maps and pamphlets. I went to the bathroom (hooray countryside places with no western toilets AND no toilet paper AND nothing selling tissue packs -- thank god I still had one in my bag). I sat around a bit more. Finally around 4:05ish I went outside into the train station... thought I'd take some photos next to the Obama station sign. Which was on the across platform, so I walked there, and just as I got set to take some photos, I am not kidding, IT STARTED RAINING AGAIN. WTF.
The train ended up being a minute or two late rather than 10 minutes early like the one before it, too. But I got on and got a seat, a good one even, such that I had another bench facing me. I took my shoes off, I took my soaking wet socks off, I put on my dirty but dry socks from the day before, I put my feet up on the seat opposite me, and... pretty much fell asleep for the entire ride back to Tsuruga. Whatever, it was too rainy out to see the nice scenery anyway.
Got back to Tsuruga, debated whether to go hunt down that "Europe" style katsu place... then decided I was too sluggish/cold to leave the train station, and just went up to track #7 and got on the Shin-kaisoku that'd take me to Hikone. I got a seat, which was important, and spent the entire hour of this ride reading college baseball magazines instead of sleeping. (Unlike the dude next to me, who slept the whole way and I had to wake him up so I could step over him to exit the train.)
Hikone seemed a LOT more promising than Tsuruga -- when I got off the train I could actually see an open McDonald's and a convenience store! Wow!! There were other assorted restaurants, a pachinko parlor, a department store... so I checked into my hotel, it was 7pm, then I went out to go find food and stuff. After investigating a few places that turned out to be closed, including a hitsumabushi place, sigh, I ended up at the department store, which closed at 8pm, BUT on the 6th floor they had some restaurants, so I got a "yoshoku bento", which was Japanese hamburger and soup and rice and salad and assorted stuff, and self-serve all-you-can-drink coffee. For 780 yen. Man. My lunch was also like 780 yen... the one nice thing about the inaka is that you can get a LOT of yummy food for cheap! The department store also had a model train shop! But it was also closed. I could see in though, and there was a HUGE model train set up which looked awesome.
I stopped at the 7-11 to grab a drink and some bread to eat tomorrow morning, and came back to the hotel, and have been here since, basically sitting around and wasting time. I watched some TV (they had a show about some women who went on diets and lost a ton of weight, it was kinda funny and kinda depressing, but I couldn't stop watching. One lady went from 190 kg to 100 kg, which is basically like 400 pounds to 200 pounds (not exactly but you get the idea). I feel kind of sick -- not super-sick, but as you'd expect someone to feel after spending 4 hours walking around soaking wet and cold. Hopefully it won't get worse, though.
Tomorrow morning I should get up early and hopefully see Hikone Castle though the forecast is also for sleet and stuff here too. Sigh. Gotta leave town around 10am to go to Nagoya to see Jeff and eat miso katsu, and then home to Tokyo, maybe via Shizuoka, I haven't decided yet.
It's been a good trip even though I've been whining about it a ton. Really, of all the things I fucked up, nothing was catastrophic, just inconvenient, so I'm not really sweating it. Aside from some train snafus where I really do have to be on a particular train or get stuck somewhere for 2-3 hours, it's not like I'm really on anyone's schedule except my own. The weather today was very frustrating and I'm sure Obama City is a very nice place when stores are actually open and you aren't stuck walking a few miles in cold sleet and rain, but at least I was successful in going there, which was more the point.
Whee.