Tuesday, 30 October 2012
Kakunodate > Takanosu > Higashi-Noshiro > Aomori
If it seems Monday's effort was in direct contradiction to Hughesy's if you've got the rail pass you might as well use it principle, the next three days were going to deliver rail travel in abundance.
The schedule for the first of the three days, on the other hand, underlines the variety side of things, starting with a morning ride on an ancient rail motor on what Madam had christened the Endangered Railroad up to Takanosu, where we'd be stopping for lunch at a French restaurant, followed by a leg on a JR local line down to the coast and a main line service looping around the northwestern coast of Honshu to Aomori.
If you’re looking for details regarding the Endangered Railroad, the official moniker is the Akita Nairiku Jūkan Railway. It’s what’s termed a third sector company (the Japan Rail consortium being the first sector and the major private lines the second) that took over two former JR lines in 1986, and added a new line to link the two in 1989. Since the line runs across a sparsely populated region, it’s never going to be a big money spinner, and since it faces what you might term severe business challenges you don’t need to be Einstein to figure out where the Endangered bit springs from.
Seats on the Endangered Rail are on a first come, first served basis, and we weren't sure whether the carriage would have room to stow the Black Monster, so we were into breakfast at the hotel just after seven, packed and booked out around eight and second inline for tickets in the booking office. So far so good.
We were second onto the train as well, which gave us plenty of time to scope out possible luggage space. As it turned out there were a couple of bench style seats towards what we presumed must be the front of the rail motor, where there was a handy space for the Monster and the prospect of a view to the front on what promised to be an ultra-scenic route.
The cabin wasn't quite full when we started off, though there wasn't an abundance of spare seats either, and there was no way of knowing how many of the passengers were there for the long haul to Takanosu and how many were destined for a stop somewhere along the way.
As soon as we started someone plonked themselves right in front of where I was sitting, blocking the view through the front of the rail motor, which was, of course, why I'd plonked myself there in the first place. We were actually looking for a space for Mr Monster, found one at the end of a bench seat right beside the driver's cabin and realized this was likely to deliver a panoramic view of the upcoming countryside.
We started off across farmland, with stops at Ugo-o-ota and Saimyoji, which lead one to suspect there was likely to be a certain amount of picking up and dropping off. I wasn’t clued in to the back story, and wasn’t sure whether we were talking a tourist operation or a genuine local service. As time went on it was obvious local traffic was the major raison d’etre for the line but tourists in the spring and autumn allows the business to keep its nose above water.
There was a lengthy delay at the third stop (Yatsu), where the station platform sat beside a siding, which allowed another motor headed in the opposite direction to pass, and we were off again at 9:18 with the prospect of a winding path through mountain valleys ahead.
Subsequent research revealed the existence of a nearby chestnut park where Japan’s largest (Saimyoji) chestnuts are grown and a vast katakuri-violet field, said to be the largest in Japan provides another attraction to encourage tourists to step off the train for a bit. Next time, maybe we will.
After Yatsu the route threads its way through mountains, ravines, and forests and the mountain leg began with a rapid fire sequence of three or four tunnels, before opening onto flat farmland again. Heading upwards through a landscape where the leaves were well and truly on the turn, particularly on the slopes, passing Matsuba, the original terminus for the Kakunodate line on the national railway system. From there you can head across to Japan’s deepest lake, Lake Tazawa, or relax at one of the area’s hot spring onsen resorts.
By Ugonakazato we were at the point where whole slopes had gone multicolour and a thirteen minute delay at Kamihinokinai to allow another train to pass gave people the chance to stretch the legs and grab the odd photo opportunity. It also gave me the chance to ascertain that I was, once again, the only foreigner in the vicinity.
The delay was to allow the express service to pass in the opposite direction, and because we would shortly be passing through a long tunnel that would take us into bear country. With the express service, a rail motor of roughly equivalent age, passed, it was off again at 9:56. We hit the tunnel at Tozawa at 10:03 and left it less than a minute later, obviously a false alarm, followed by another a minute later , and a third and a fourth in the space of two minutes, a fifth at 10:05 but a minute later we were in for the long dark haul, apparently moving steadily higher, and emerging five minutes later.
We only just emerged from the tunnel when I sighted one of the numerous station platforms along the route, but there was a substantial difference this time around. The platform was lined with a massed tour party busily clicking away as the train approached, and clambering aboard once we'd ground to a halt. They were obviously aboard for the most scenic section of the route, which took the train slowly across a couple of bridges.
They were gone again a few stops further down the track, and there were a couple of instances where the train stopped to set down the odd passenger one assumes came aboard at Kakunodate.
Along the way we passed Ani-Matagi, one of the top hundred stations in Tohoku, where there’s a bear pasture, Utto Onsen Matagi no Yu resort, Yasu-no-taki Falls, reputed to be the second most beautiful waterfall in Japan, and the Matagi Museum, detailing the history of the bear hunters of north Japan.
The population was thinned out considerably there and we seemed to be well into the uplands, following a broad river valley. Once the tour party and the onsen set were gone there was a noticeable change in the coloured leaves that I'm inclined to ascribe to a preponderance of evergreens rather than deciduous species, and the last leg into Takanosu took us across a broad expanse of upland paddy fields.
Overall it was another spectacular tick in the box or Madam's research skills, and comments from people she'd spoken to on the train suggested we'd managed to lob there on the very best day. Given my own lack of experience with seasonal leaves I'm inclined to take their word for it.
Once we disembarked in Takanosu there was a small matter of two and a half hours to kill, and the research skills kicked in once again. Three streets down from the station, a right hand turn takes you onto a quiet back street with a rather good French restaurant that operates under the moniker of Boire un coup.
Of course we were there for lunch, which doesn't marry well with full a la carte and an extensive wine list, but there were two plats du jour, a chicken confit and a tomato-based pasta marinara, both of which were quite delicious, and we managed to down a Chardonnay and a Cabernet, both from the Languedoc, and both good varietal examples of wine from varieties not usually associated with the region. I had the Chardonnay with the pasta, and thought it was pretty much in the same flavor profile as he new wave Australian takes on the variety, more than likely a Burgundy style (at this point we'd been told what was available, but not where it was from).
With lunch concluded we still had over an hour to kill, and an inquiry about origins of wine had the proprietor proudly hauling bottles out of the wine fridge. He had a right to be proud, because for a restaurant in a small provincial town in northern Japan it was a bloody good range.
That turned into a conversation about wine that could have gone on for a while, but when a couple of customers who'd eaten in the private room on the other side of the entrance turned up to pay their bill we took the advantage to escape. The rest of the waiting time passed in the waiting room at Takanosu station, a spell long enough to bring the narrative more or less up to date.
The next leg involved a connection on a local line that brought us down to Higashi-Noshiro, where we boarded the rather splendidly named Resort Train #5. Actually looking at the train itself you'd think there wasn't that much different or special about it.
Once you're aboard, however, two things become obvious. The first is that you've got legroom over and above what you'd reasonably expect. I suspect this has something to do with the Resort bit in the train's name, since you'd expect holidaymakers to be carrying a bit more baggage than the average traveller.
The second is the not quite ceiling to floor picture windows, which were the reason why we were here. Looping around the northwest corner of Honshu we'll be looking across the Sea of Japan towards the setting sun, and windows that stretch from just below he overhead luggage rack to below the arm rest are going to maximize the viewing options.
Unfortunately, that wasn't the way things panned out. The sun was shining, albeit rather reluctantly, when we left Higashi-Noshiro, but the cloud cover kicked in big time before we hit the coastline and although the fat old Sun was out there somewhere, he was lurking behind a bank of clouds that ruled out anything that resembled an actual sunset.
Although that was the case the views out across a strangely tranquil ocean that presented an interesting contrast to the obvious anti-erosion work taking place along the actual coastline. That was obvious because the railway line hugged the coast, sometimes with a road in between wheels and water, sometimes, quite literally, looking from picture window almost directly down onto the beach.
Twice, along particularly picturesque stretches of coast, the train slowed to a crawl to allow maximum enjoyment of photographic opportunities.
There were frequent stops along the way, as befits a train servicing a resort area, with frequent comings and goings as passengers moved from one venue to another, but after the Sun had slunk below the horizon there wan't much to see, and I settled back to rea, tossing up between the Neil Young autobiography andthe latest issue of Uncut, digitally downloaded in Kakunodate.
An announcement over the train's P.A. System brought an unexpected flurry of action at Kawabe since the Resort Special took itself forward one more station, then retraced its path en route to Aomori. The announcement advised the impatient aboard our train to switch to a local train at the next station, which would get us into Aomori some twenty minutes earlier than originally planned.
Needless to say a mad scramble ensued, first involving the hasty stowing of the iPad in the back pack, then a frantic hauling of the Black Monster up the station stairs, across the bridge to the neighboring platform and back down again in a situation where you'd have been reluctant to use the escalator even if one had been available.
The line into Aomori would seem, on the evidence available, to be a single line, given the lengthy delays in a number of stations to allow trains higher up the pecking order to travel,in the opposite direction.
The second last stop was ShinAomori, the Shinkansen stop, located well out of the city to allow easier construction of the next stage of the network, a new underwater connection to Hokkaido.
Back on the ground in Aomori there was a brief spell of confusion as to the actual location of the hotel, which was a bit further away from the station than we'd thought, and once the checking in was complete we checked out the laundry facilities on the way to dinner, which comprised a healthy in one sense but hardly likely to attract a tick from the Food Police serve of deep fried scallops, accompanied by the usual trimmings in the form of rice, miso soup and assorted garnishes.
You åçcouldn't have complained about the quantity or the quality, but after around a week of three hearty serves a day Hughesy wasn't keen on the bulk. I made as big a hole as I could in everything else, but was careful to ensure there wasn't a skerrick of scallop in evidence on the plate.
Next time I intend, as I pointed out to Madam, maxing out on the scallops with no accompaniments at all except, possibly, a beer to wash them down, and I'm not even sure about the beer.
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