Itoigawa is what you would call a sleepy town. We saw industry in our way in, and there seems to be quite a bit of quarrying and the like, but downtown was very subdued, even in the evening. As our hotel had not included breakfast I had gone for a wander and found a supermarket where I bought some items for breakfast including the genius that is two yummy pancakes sandwiched together with margarine and maple syrup in the middle.
I should note here that I have taken a food conscience holiday while here in Japan. Although I (intentionally) have no knowledge of farming methods here, I am confident that eating eggs, pork, chicken requires a high degree of blindness as to their origin. I'm pretty sure the chickens don't live in little individual huts with tatami mats and Ofuro baths in the evening. Given that the people here live in a semi-battery situation the animals aren't going to have a lot of comfort or space. To my shame I just do not want to contemplate the pigs as I enjoy tonkatsu too much. And as for the pancakes and the like, I am just assuming that all ingredients are sufficiently preserved, radiated and modified that they will probably still be in my gut when I come back to Japan.
Today was to be another travel day. We had elected to head north but with a bit of a scenic detour. The first step was to take an ordinary express train, not a Shinkansen, north to Niigata. The risk here was that it would be mainly tunnels and not the sea views we hoped for. We were in luck again. The train travels right along the coast for most of the trip, sometimes right up to the edge of the water with lovely views out over the mill pond Japan Sea. There were actual beaches with actual sand and actual people fishing. They must catch something I guess but the fishing can't be that good as there was ample evidence of commercial fishing in the form of the many little fishing boat harbours along the way and, in parts, long stretches of fishing detritus such as nets, floats and ropes washed up onto the beaches. In some spots there seemed enough to equip a boat and it mirrored in part the occasional float or rope of similar form that washes up,on our beach at home.
Going to Niigata was the zig and now the zag and another zig - a Shinkansen from Niigata down southeast to Omiya, which is not far from Tokyo, and then, changing trains, north to Morioka.
Shinkansen travel is our least favourite. The is something disorienting about zooming along at a couple hundred kph while sitting in a steady and quiet comfortable chair. Nice enough at the time but we both feel a bit weird after the trip. It seems to effect my balance somehow. Weird.
We had a little time in Omiya to look at the huge array of food stalls in the station which, as many are, the bottom part of a shopping complex or department store. Unlike in the smaller towns and cities where food choices have been, at times, a little lacklustre, there was so much delicious looking food on offer here. We bought a nikuman for me and an an for Rosemary (meat and bean paste steamed buns respectively) and I also bought some delicious looking thing that, even after I ate it, remained unidentified to me. It tasted good though.
Eating is de rigeur on long train rides here. The form is you buy bento or an assortment of foods and drinks and then you start to scoff them as soon as you find your seat, sometimes even before the train moves. This is done with such enthusiasm you suspect that it is the eating rather than the trip or the destination that is the desired out come of the journey.
After eating it is then, apparently, compulsory, to engage in the next form of prescribed behaviour, sleep. Sleep is not limited to long trips. Any journey, no matter how short, is sufficient time for a kip. I have seen someone get on a subway train, sit, fall asleep (or do a very good impression of someone with their head lolling about in sleep) and then suddenly wake up and get off - at the very next stop! Presumably this sleep routine was prescribed for the entertainment of other travellers as it is fun to watch the sleepers drooping and sagging and leaning in all directions before reaching that invisible tipping point and suddenly jerking up to start again. Friends sleep,on each other and strangers somehow manage, mostly, to almost sway or lean onto their neighbour, but not quite.
We arrived in Morioka which is blessed with two Toyoko Inns, our lodging of choice, although here they are the same price rather than stratified as in other places (socialists). Arriving at the first we were told there was no room. Requests for the receptionist to telephone the other one to see if they had room were met with blank looks and, apparent, incomprehension. Thinking, even to the edges of the box let alone outside it, was not in evidence here. Contrast this to our experience at the other Toyoko Inn, which did have room, where we not only made bookings for one night, then two, but also were assisted to trawl through hotels in Tokyo until one with a vacancy was found and we were booked into it.
After a little hike around the town, including crossing the river and back, we settled for dinner on a little bar kind of place. There are hundreds of these places where working people come to talk and laugh and let a little loose. And smoke, a strange phenomena for us these days. I couldn't make out the menu and so asked the waitress to choose two items which she at first found, I think, embarrassing or hysterical judging by her laughter but which she then took very seriously and we needed up with a couple of good dishes to go with out beer.
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| Another Express |
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| Incarcerated carcinogenators |
Compulsory kai...
... and then mandatory moe
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