Yonezawa north

North of Takahata

North of Takahata

Yamagata, the train to Shinjo

Oishida

Oishida

Obanazawa, Yamagata

Ticket prices from Shinjo to Akita

The crowded Ou line out of Akita city...it was like
being back in Tokyo. Though within 25 mins the train
had emptied out.

Local train lines of Tohoku

 At the best of times it has been difficult to get information in English on the local trainlines in Tohoku, and probably to be fair for the whole of Japan.  There is a distinct preference for providing information on the well travelled, more frequent and more profitable Shinkansen lines.  Since the earthquake it has been much worse - which lines are open, which are not, which are going to be repaired, which are being written off.
In Itoku supermarket in Takanosu the other day they were having an exhibition of photos from trainlines in the north of Tohoku. There was a big map of the local lines which was instructive.
The blue on the map show private / non JR lines.
The red lines on the map show lines that have not been reconstructed.
The black lines are the JR lines.
The situation continues to improve. The Hachinohe line was re-opened between Hachinohe and Kuji on 17 March.   Kit Kat are now selling packets of Kit Kats promoting the Sanriku rail lines. JR is promoting the coast as a destination again.   There is much to be done still, particularly at the human level, but in terms of infrastructure, JR is doing very well.
The map below is quite helpful for planning a seishun 18 kippu.
There will probably be another post to follow.

Local trains of Tohoku - this will need to be opened in a new tab to get the writing big enough.

A clean copy without my scribblings...

Gono line、五能線

The Gono line which traces the coastline from Higashi Noshiro in Akita to Kuwabe, just north of Hirosaki in Aomori, has been a poster pin up for JR East for the last several years as both a seishun 18  destination as well as being home to the Shirakami Resort Liner train.  The Shirakami Resort liner takes its name from the World Heritage Shirakami beech forest on the inland side of the train line.  It's a bit ironic since the sales point of the Gono line is the view of the ocean which has  people looking in the opposite direction to Shirakami... but nevermind.  It's been on my "to do" list for a long time.

I took the opportunity while up there to take a trip on it with Hiro's parents.  Local (non resort liner) trains are painfully infrequent along the Gono line.  I think there are two that go the length of it each day - one in the early morning and one in the late afternoon. (4 if you count both directions).  We took the 6.24am train from Odate to Higashi Noshiro to catch the morning one.  We opted to take the first train from Higashi Noshiro which terminated at Noshiro and wait for the through train there.

Mamorogawa to Akita

From Mamorogawa I took a train to Akita City and changed for Odate, arriving at 10pm.  It was a loooong day of travel, and less efficient than the Japan Sea Side route but I took the Yonesaka line for the first time which made it worth the extra time. 

This amused me just for the fact that yokubAri means
glutton in Japanese.

Akita station signboards for a Korean drama that is filmed there.

Akita station is one of the few places left that seem to sell
photo postcards. I saw some in Aomori as well but they were
indecently expensive.

A map of the Akita station area - the area has spruced up quite a bit.
JR East is investing money into the Shinkansen stations -
Yamagata, Shinjo, Akita all look good (Yamagata a little less so).
There is an international university in Akita that is presumably
a factor in the excellent English signage around the station.

Mamurogawa 山形県、真室川

From Shinjo there was a train that went a few stations north, terminating at Mamurogawa.  I decided to jump on it rather than wait in Shinjo for the train to Akita.    The risk of not getting a seat for the two hour journey was worth the opportunity to take a look at somewhere different.  Most people  in Yamagata I imagine have never heard of Mamurogawa. It's  a little town with a big river, a park and a few shops and a couple of hundred or less houses.  I bought some delicious sumomo  - plums - at the station which kept me happy till Akita.

The Mamurogawa park

Onsen nearby would make it a potential place to stop off overnight-
4.5 km would be a bit of a hike in winter snow though.

Presumably a cattle farm, though I'm not sure what makes it
special enough to get a sign in the town.

A look out in the Mamurogawa park

A map of sights  in the local area for anyone interested in visiting.

Don't miss the bus!

Niigata to Yamagata

Regrettably I didn't take pictures in Niigata - between reading Captain Underpants,  catching zarigani and trying to work out how to reply to emails on Lily's i-pad. there wasn't a whole lot of time. Zarigani catching seems like a quintessential Japanese summer childhood experience.  Wikipedia's entry says that they are sensitive to water quality.... I am not sure how true this is - there was no way we were eating anything that came out of that water - it was  basically a storm water canal..  Most of the zarigani that we caught we tossed back.  The others became temporary pets that were going to be returned in a few days time.
From Niigata I took the train into inland Yamagata, rather than the more conventional coast line.  Services are infrequent - in some places 4 a day making it difficult to get out and look around anywhere that was not already a terminal station.
The countryside is very pretty in the mountains - more so I imagine once the leaves start turning colour. The windows of the train were in need of a polish, and photos haven't done it justice.  I passed through Oguni, where one of Hiro's uni friends lives, they get upwards of 3 metres of snow there in the winter...

The mountains have lots of hydroelectricity.

One track trainlines

Yonezawa station

Covered cultivation on the hills around Yamagata

Yamagata walking map at the station

An impressively bubble economy building next to
Yamagata railway station

The bubble economy building has a hands on science museum there that includes
wind up dynamos to show the amount of energy used
to power different kinds of lights.  LED requires minimal effort.
The long life ones a lot more.

Yamagata

Shinjo - I have already been to Shinjo so took a
train a few stops north to Mamurogawa

Seishun 18 Kippu, the verdict and tips

For anyone with sufficient time, and an inclination to go to places off the Shinkansen lines, seishun 18 kippu is great.  To a large extent the Shinkansen lines determine where the popular tourist sites are; it doesn't always follow though that these are the most worthwhile destinations.    The seishun 18 kippu opens up places that are seriously off the beaten track relatively easily and very cheaply.   The fact a single ticket can be used by multiple people makes it very flexible, not to mention that only walking would be cheaper:  going to Odate via Niigata and returning on the shortest route would cost about 50,000 Y (around  550AUD), compared with 7,100 yen using three days of the seishun juu hachi  ticket - and I could have done it in a two day trip (4,600Y)

Caveat and tips for successful and happy seishun travel.

* it may make for a happier trip to combine a seishun pass with shinkansen / night bus / plane travel., or for an overseas visitor combining it with a JR pass, especially if time is limited.  The scenery from the train through the dormitory towns out of Tokyo tends not be inspiring.    Having said that though - the more you travel in a day, the cheaper the per km rate of travel becomes.

* know when the seishun ju hachi kippu seasons are. The JR East website has the info.
http://www.jreast.co.jp/e/pass/seishun18.html

The tickets are not sold by JR for the last two weeks of the seishun period  though they can be used.  Discount ticket shops may have them though.

* reasearch the trains - some lines have only a few services a day.  http://www.jorudan.co.jp/ has a function that restricts the search to seishun eligible trains. (It's only in Japanese but the google translate function is very satisfactory - there is an English search engine but you need to manually eliminate shinkansen, private lines etc from the search - it may be a little less reliable as there are some exceptions to travelling on express lines.) See the picture for what the itinerary looks like, I printed it in Japanese but have written in the English letters for the place names.

*  have your intinery printed out.   Jorduan's itinerary builder  shows all the connections.   This also will give the destination of the train and not just the your own destination - much easier to find the right train at the station.  (It often has the platform number on it as well.) 

* a mobile ph. with internet capacity or a JR timetable will give the capacity to change the journey mid way through. (At Yamadera I got back to the station earlier than I anticipated and was able to re-search and a different route worked out to be faster).   This applies particularly when there is more than one potential route. (scribbled jottings of the best connection.)

* pack food and drink if connections are tight. 

* if you have long stops, you can use your time better if you know what may be of interest at the stop over point.
* have a calm  or stoic mind about long trips on a train.  Motivated by frugality alone, I think it would be difficult to endure. I like trains and I like the Japanese countryside so it works fine for me - it's worth having a good book though.

* Be prepared for noone to speak English. 

* unlike urban trains, they local trains in the countryside tend to have loos.
* And to restate the most important point - research and know your timetable - especially where there is more than one route option  and especially if the services are infrequent.

+  Not really a seishun 18 ticket tip, but it has lots of potential to combine it with bicycle riding.  In Japan, the powers that be benevolently allow bagged bikes to travel free. :)  But they must be bagged.  At  Yamadera the bike would have been a nuisance, but in Sakata, or Shinjo  & Akita, with a bit more time, having a bike to explore on could make for really fun travel.

If I think of others I will write them :)

If you search seishun 18 on this site, you'll come up with my seishun 18 2011 trip.