Tohoku / Niigata train observations from Tokyo eyes

Some casual observations about the trains.

- Tohoku people tend not to sleep on trains.  I assumed it means Tohoku people get more sleep than people in greater Tokyo.  Hiro thinks it may be as much to do with the fact that if you oversleep your stop, you'll likely have a long wait till the next train back.

- Many stations are unattended - unsurprising when there are only a couple of trains a day. At these stations though the driver / guard double as ticket collectors.  The guard also sells tickets to people getting on.
- Tohoku school girls wear stockings rather than socks - logical considering the temperature - but their skirts are shorter. 
- Tokyo people make a beeline for the corner seats on a train - mostly so they can snuggle into the corner and grab a few more minutes of sleep.    Tohoku people in contrast, presumably mindful of the cold blasts of air when the doors open, opt for the seats in the middle for preference.
- Doors don't automatically open.  There is an open shut button.  (see picture) People are careful to press the shut button behind them as they step out the door.  It's very considerate to passengers who don't appreciate cold blasts of air for sustained periods.  Very eco too.   (Some of the long distance commuter trains to Tokyo have them, but they often seem to be over-ridden by a central operator.)
-Stations have warm waiting rooms - in consideration of the cold and the infrequency of services.  In Odate the waiting room chairs all had hand made patchwork cushions. 

Odate station waiting room

Oetsu line waiting room

Travelling north

From Niigata I headed north, through towns and villages. I was sad to see piles of daikon and cabbage rotting in vegetable patches... presumably a glut on the market meant it was not possible or not feasible to sell them.

The first change was in Murakami with a 40 minute wait between trains.  I had been keen to look around there - it's an historical town, and is also famed for salmon. Lily's friend Kazuo-san had given me some salmon from there before and it was delicious.   But it was cold and wet.  The rain was of the cold, hard sharp variety that feels like needles jabbing into the skin; since splitting my forehead a couple of years ago I'm quite sensitive to it, so didn't venture far.   I was thankful for the bento that Lily had packed and Tomoya's accompanying note to enjoy eating it  and to please come again made it taste all the better:).

The train from Murakami was a two carriage train to Sakata, on a line that traces the Japan Sea Coast.  On a cold and wet day it was pretty.  On a day with better weather it would be stunning.  Such a peaceful way to travel - a two carriage train trundling along,  the Japan Sea on the west, mountains rising behind a narrow coastal strip in the east....

Niigata

I had a lovely 2 days in Niigata. Lily and the boys met me at the station and it was action from thereon in. They are off to Cairns at the end of  April and as part of the build up to going have been painting rocks in dot style of desert Aboriginies and avidly reading up on the flora and fauna... I am not sure if I knew that the Tawny Frogmouth is not an owl... Tomoya is particularly taken with the sound of the digeridoo and the idea of a kookaburra in a gum tree. (Inspired in part by the Australian 12 days of Christmas).  
Lily has easels set up in the lounge room for Tomoya and Reo and they take much more more interest in it than the TV - quite an achievement.  I had fun with Tomoya playing hide and seek - Japanese bathtbubs are the right size to hide in!  He has a remarkable ability to laugh so every fibre in his body is laughing. And you can't but help laugh back. Reo has become increasingly chatty, particularly in English.  It still surprises me that children are able to absorb different langauges at the same time and still have a clear sense of which words belong to which language.

On Wed. Lily's friend Kazuo san, came over.  He is a native Niigata-ite and has extensive knowledge about the area.  We went on a walk  across Bandai Bridge - the symbol of the city - and through the old parts of town.  Niigata, as I perhaps mentioned in an earlier post, was one of the first cities opened to trade in the modern era.  Unlike the other cities - Hakkodate, Kobe, Yokahama and Nagasaki - Niigata has few old western style buildings.  According to Kazuo-san the port was too shallow to facilitate the docking of big ships, and it therefore saw less trade.    We climbed (actually took a lift) to the top of the city's second highest building from where we could see Sado Island clearly.  When the weather is warmer, it would make for an interesting trip - it used to have a gold mine and was a place to which political prisoners were exiled.  Winter on Sado, before the advent of electricity, would have been a very tough place to have been....

To my regret, I didn't take photos of the city... I must have been talking to much....

I took the train on the Thursday to Odate.  The train that left at 10.02 arrived in Odate at the same time as the train that left at 11.40.  I was having fun where I was and that, combined with the inclement weather made the 11.40 train a more attractive option. 

And so I continued north.

Yukiguni

Yukiguni,  one of Japan's most famous novels, was written by Yasunari Kawabata in the part of Niigata that I was travelling through.  It is not hard to see where he got his inspiration.  There is a dividing range down the centre of Honshu island,  separating the the main island into two distinct climate zones - Japan Sea side from the Pacific side.  On the Japan Sea side winters are cold and wet -  grey overcast skies, snow, snow and more snow again.  By the time the Siberian winds reach the Pacific side the moisture has been deposited as snow, leaving Tokyo and the rest of the Pacific side with cold dry weather and clear blue skies. 

This year Niigata has had the most snow for 20 years.  To my eyes it looked like the middle of winter, not the beginning of spring.

In addition to the snow, a highlight of this part of the trip was finding that just out of Minakami two stations that were built in a tunnel.  Presumably they are well known as several people jumped off the train to quickly take photos while the train was stopped at the station.

                          A station in a tunnel - Doai - two stops towards Niigata from Minakami