Japan: Day 7
It took all this time, but I finally got snowed on. Sure, it has snowed on my train, and on my hotel while I slept, but this morning is the first time since I have been here that snow has fallen on me. Well, maybe not the first, in Nagano yesterday, when I went to get some lunch, I saw maybe half a dozen snowflakes falling in my total field of vision, and I cannot guarantee none actually fell on me - but today I got well and truly snowed on.
Today, also, is National Foundation Day, so happy 2671st birthday, Japan! This explains why it was so hard to get a train today, and why I’m on a later one than I might have planned. So the idea was a leisurely morning, another where I will make the most of the latest checkout time available. I was woken a little early, but that was all good, and so I pottered around a bit, had a shower, and on my way down to breakfast, looked out a window and saw it was snowing.
I ate breakfast facing a window, and watched the snowflakes change size, and the wind change, and with it the way the snowflakes were blowing about. Then, I went upstairs to grab my camera and put on my warm clothes and went out to go to the castle. Outside, it felt warmer even than the 2 degrees from yesterday, and with the snow falling on me, the walk of a bit over a kilometre was a pleasant once.
I noticed something interesting about the freshly fallen snow muffling my footsteps, but some was slippery. There must be something about the dryness of the snowy powder itself that makes all the difference. The alliteration used in the Simon and Garfunkel song I Am A Rock kind of rung out t me this morning “on a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow”, because everything was somehow quieter this morning. Some surfaces resisted the settling of snow, while other already had a covering a few cm thick. I could walk briskly in some places, but had to shuffle along in others.
When I got to castle, the grounds were nearly empty. There was a light dusting of snow on the ground, and a little on some of the castle’s bits and pieces. Of course I immediately started taking my photos. It really was a beautiful view, and so quiet and peaceful. Sated, I walked back to the hotel via a Lawson station and grabbed my lunch bento, because I don’t want any distractions at all at Nagoya, I wanted to be early in the unreserved carriage queue.
Snow continued to fall throughout the morning, and I watched from my hotel room window as the roads got whiter. It’s not often I have the time to sit and watch the snow fall, so I just did that, fiddling away at some Japanese vocabulary practice, and packing myself up for moving on. But the time came to leave the warmth within, and head down to the station in a silent hail of snow.
I stopped off for another hot chocolate after my snowy walk to the station, sat and read for a little while whilst I drank it. Eventually, I got antsy and headed down to the platform, which was quite cold. The train was late by Japanese standards (4 minutes), and because there was no electronic signage on the platform, I was left wondering which the correct spot for my carriage door was. They had static platform signage, but my train comes in various carriage-lengths, and I’d neglected to check how many there were in total, which influences where to stand. I took a stab and went for the middle marker, and when the announcement for the train as it was coming in told us what carriages were of what type, I knew I’d picked the winner.
There’s over half an hour of ho-hum near-city plains running before this journey turns into a beautiful one. There’s not much to do at that time but watch the towns slide by, and try to keep up your readings skills by totally failing to read signs as they pass. My eye is still drawn to the Roomaji and English, which doesn’t help. Eventually, though, the view turned to the beautiful, and I sat forward a little in my seat.
With the snow continuing to fall, visibility was limited distance-wise, but the close up views of the mountains and gorges rolling by, with their coating of snow was just gorgeous. The rail line loosely skirts a river, which is dammed along its length for hydro electricity, and this leads to start contrasts between slow winding stretches, the still catchments themselves, and rocky rapids. At times the trees lining the banks and climbing the hills and mounted had a white covering that almost seemed gauzy, and each new vista fleetingly passed by as the train rounded another bend, or tunnel.
It was just, once again, sad to be sitting alone and looking at it. The camera really didn’t do a great job through the grimy train window with the whited-out background of snow falling over the distance, so the experience of sharing was regrettably lost. These alpine parts of the country are definitely my favourites, and, there is a calming, relaxing effect to my just being here. T’s amazing, when I travel, the things I see are great, but things that remind me of home always tug at me and have the strongest effect, that is, apart from here in the Japan alps, where the whole feel of the place could hardly more different to home.
And yet, each time, I find myself breathing a little more slowly and deeply. Balling my hands up into loose fists as if holding on to something that’s only there as a feeling, and sighing for the sheer beauty of the place. It’s less prominent here, than it is in the mountains of Gifu and Toyama prefectures, but it’s definitely still there, and in its winter coat, at least from the warmth of the inside of my train, it is absolutely more beautiful than ever before.
We got to Nagoya, and I rushed straight down to see if I could find where my train was leaving from. After wandering around a bit and coming up empty handed (but I could have found out where a dozen different shinkansen where laving from, and when and where they were going), I wandered down the under-platform walkway again, and saw the signage on the platform I’d just come from say my train was going to be there, on that same platform.
So, I wandered back up, saw the display but all I could read were the characters for “train”, there was some other stuff, and an arrow. I thought that meant the train was coming n from that direction, so I stood and waited, then went and got a hot coffee in a can, because it was snowing, and it was therefore cold, and hot coffee in a can at that stage I invariably a good thing, even if the coffee itself is not particularly good. You’ll just have to take my word on this. Remembering that I bought and drank a coffee after having had a coke zero on the previous train is integral to the story!
About 10 minutes had passed and no train had arrived so I wandered down in the direction the arrow was pointing, and saw a massive queue. It was a short train I’d be getting on; the arrow, and the words on the electronic sign obviously meant “down this way, idiot”, or maybe I’m reading too much into it. I checked, and there was only one carriage of non-reserved seating on the 3-car train, and the long queue was for this carriage. I jumped on the end, and saw I was close to position 40 in the line. As the train pulled in I checked the carriage interior and saw there were only 50 seats in the carriage - the queue had built up in the 15 minutes I was in it, and snaked further down the platform.
I managed to get a seat, thankfully, bit people just kept getting on the train. There must have been over 100 people on that carriage, and people standing were crammed in together. I was sitting in a single seat, a “priority seat” that would have been turned into a wheelchair point had there been any such folk on the train. It meant I was close to a window, but that standing people next to me were crowded over me. I leaned into the window, whether to give them space, or to give me space, I wasn’t sure.
Now, getting into the train I started to become aware that I had drunk a lot of caffeinated beverages in the last little while, and taking my seat I thought it might have been a good idea if I could get to a toilet. But as that carriage filled up, firstly I knew I’d lose my seat, and secondly, I became aware that I was trapped. People were just crammed in there. Sure, I could use the magic “sumimasen” word, and the people would part like the biblical red sea for uncle Moe, only given they were now all being jostled about and trying to maintain their balance, I didn’t want to be rude. I instead looked out the window and tried to think about something else.
The train travels backwards for 20 minutes to Gifu, giving those standing reason for at least some joy, because they could turn and face the right way, as some of the did. Thereafter it was forwards to Mino-Ota, which is where I would have been joining the train had I followed the initial advice of the JR girl in Kushiro when she tried to book me seats on this full train. I was glad I’d rethought the idea myself, because barely 5 people had gotten off by this stage. I‘d have been crammed in the hallway for the trip, with no window in sight for this most beautiful train journey.
This train route runs along some of the most beautiful river-scapes have ever seen. I never tire of it. There’re hills that become mountains, and winding rivers that become rocky rapids, and beautiful bridges painted red, because that’s what they seem to like here, and old suspension bridges, and little villages nestled into the sides of mountains. It seems that despite the terrain you don’t spend too much time in tunnels on the first half of the journey. Today I was only doing the first half, through to Takayama, the second half down to Toyama is for tomorrow.
It’s a long, twisting, winding ride with the river always close at hand. It’ gently rocks the train, and there’s that constant humming of the diesel engine, and the clicking of the train, and all that water, and did I mention I kind of needed a toilet?
Part of my curling up against a window meant I was trying to let people around me have as much room as possible. A Japanese girl standing almost directly in front of me slowly and timidly took up more of the space between my seat and the wall In front of me. The girl right next to me was not nearly as shy, holding onto the luggage rack above my head, she was stretched out, and as the train swayed kept putting her asset where my head would have been, had I sat up straight in my chair. The guy standing between these two girls eventually started speaking, and although he was Asian, he spoke English, the accent sounded kind of American, and kid of Australia. Then assets-girl spoke, and she definitely had an Australian accent. But having ignored them for so long, and knowing I’d have to look at her from an awkward angle, I didn’t try to engage them - yet. (and in the absolutely remote chance she ever does stumble onto this in a Google search or something, I meant nothing offensive whatsoever about the assets in my space, I just happened to very much notice it at the time - sorry)
Eventually, an hour and a half into our journey we arrived at Gero, the hugely popular onsen town. The Japanese are big on 3-most-famous things, and Gero onsen is one of the three most famous onsens in all of Japan. I knew the carriage would largely clear out here, and it did. The Australians beside me sighed their relief and started to look as a few seats opened up. I looked to them and said I had to “use the loo” and they were welcome to take my seat, and I went and joined a queue for that, thinking hard about holding on.
When I got back to the seat, still no one had sat in it, and the two were joined by another guy. I tried to offer them the seat, but again they declined, so I stood too, and asked where they were from. They were from Brisbane, and the late guy to join said that he thinks he saw me on the flight in the Gold Coast, even though I said I was from Sydney. So there’s one for the Small World files, when after a week in the country, people on the same flight from Australia should run into one another on one little train going to the small and out of the way town of Takayama.
We talked about our trips, and the coincidences continued - they too had gone straight up to Hokkaido, but they’d flown. They spent their time in Sapporo, which I’d never made it to. After a week of only the briefest of conversations it was odd to just be talking again, without having to search for words, and without lacking the language to continue.
Eventually, though, we reached a lull in the conversation, and we all went to looking out the windows at the amazing view. We got to Takayama about 45 minutes after leaving Gero, and after bidding the Aussies farewell, I walked down and checked in to my hotel, dumped my bags, and went into the tourist areas.
I climbed to a temple I’d been to before, the first time with my parents when they visited, and photographed it draped in snow, then walked to the Higashiyama temple walking route and snapped some more photos. From there, I walked to that part of town I still haven’t found a name for, but just love the residences along the canal. I slowly meandered, took some more photos, and nodded at passersby.
The canal brought me back to the river, which I walked along and back to the Sanmachi old residences district. The place was not crammed like it had been when I walked past an hour or so before, but there were still plenty of people around. Some lights had been turned on and many of the little tourist shops were still open, though some had already closed for the day. Before I was done in Sanmachi, darkness had fallen, and so without the ability to hold the camera perfectly still anymore, my photography day was over.
I got to thinking about beef, because a few of the closed stores advertised “famous” Hida district beef. So as I thought about dinner, I knew I wanted some beef. Back on my hotel’s side of the river I walked down the regular shipping district, past stores that sold shoes, and fruit and veg, and homewares, and all that sort of stuff. I got to one of the restaurant alleyways, and started to pay attention with a mind for dinner.
It was really ramen weather, but I wanted beef, so when I came across a place that did a set which was a bowl of ramen, and a little bowl of rice, with grilled beef and onions, I was sold. I went in and sat down , ordered my dinner and sat in the warmth to wait. I ate my meal in the quiet, there were three other couples in the place, and they all talked in hushed tones keeping the place quiet. When I was done I walked back to my hotel and settled in for the night.
Today, also, is National Foundation Day, so happy 2671st birthday, Japan! This explains why it was so hard to get a train today, and why I’m on a later one than I might have planned. So the idea was a leisurely morning, another where I will make the most of the latest checkout time available. I was woken a little early, but that was all good, and so I pottered around a bit, had a shower, and on my way down to breakfast, looked out a window and saw it was snowing.
I ate breakfast facing a window, and watched the snowflakes change size, and the wind change, and with it the way the snowflakes were blowing about. Then, I went upstairs to grab my camera and put on my warm clothes and went out to go to the castle. Outside, it felt warmer even than the 2 degrees from yesterday, and with the snow falling on me, the walk of a bit over a kilometre was a pleasant once.
I noticed something interesting about the freshly fallen snow muffling my footsteps, but some was slippery. There must be something about the dryness of the snowy powder itself that makes all the difference. The alliteration used in the Simon and Garfunkel song I Am A Rock kind of rung out t me this morning “on a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow”, because everything was somehow quieter this morning. Some surfaces resisted the settling of snow, while other already had a covering a few cm thick. I could walk briskly in some places, but had to shuffle along in others.
When I got to castle, the grounds were nearly empty. There was a light dusting of snow on the ground, and a little on some of the castle’s bits and pieces. Of course I immediately started taking my photos. It really was a beautiful view, and so quiet and peaceful. Sated, I walked back to the hotel via a Lawson station and grabbed my lunch bento, because I don’t want any distractions at all at Nagoya, I wanted to be early in the unreserved carriage queue.
Snow continued to fall throughout the morning, and I watched from my hotel room window as the roads got whiter. It’s not often I have the time to sit and watch the snow fall, so I just did that, fiddling away at some Japanese vocabulary practice, and packing myself up for moving on. But the time came to leave the warmth within, and head down to the station in a silent hail of snow.
I stopped off for another hot chocolate after my snowy walk to the station, sat and read for a little while whilst I drank it. Eventually, I got antsy and headed down to the platform, which was quite cold. The train was late by Japanese standards (4 minutes), and because there was no electronic signage on the platform, I was left wondering which the correct spot for my carriage door was. They had static platform signage, but my train comes in various carriage-lengths, and I’d neglected to check how many there were in total, which influences where to stand. I took a stab and went for the middle marker, and when the announcement for the train as it was coming in told us what carriages were of what type, I knew I’d picked the winner.
There’s over half an hour of ho-hum near-city plains running before this journey turns into a beautiful one. There’s not much to do at that time but watch the towns slide by, and try to keep up your readings skills by totally failing to read signs as they pass. My eye is still drawn to the Roomaji and English, which doesn’t help. Eventually, though, the view turned to the beautiful, and I sat forward a little in my seat.
With the snow continuing to fall, visibility was limited distance-wise, but the close up views of the mountains and gorges rolling by, with their coating of snow was just gorgeous. The rail line loosely skirts a river, which is dammed along its length for hydro electricity, and this leads to start contrasts between slow winding stretches, the still catchments themselves, and rocky rapids. At times the trees lining the banks and climbing the hills and mounted had a white covering that almost seemed gauzy, and each new vista fleetingly passed by as the train rounded another bend, or tunnel.
It was just, once again, sad to be sitting alone and looking at it. The camera really didn’t do a great job through the grimy train window with the whited-out background of snow falling over the distance, so the experience of sharing was regrettably lost. These alpine parts of the country are definitely my favourites, and, there is a calming, relaxing effect to my just being here. T’s amazing, when I travel, the things I see are great, but things that remind me of home always tug at me and have the strongest effect, that is, apart from here in the Japan alps, where the whole feel of the place could hardly more different to home.
And yet, each time, I find myself breathing a little more slowly and deeply. Balling my hands up into loose fists as if holding on to something that’s only there as a feeling, and sighing for the sheer beauty of the place. It’s less prominent here, than it is in the mountains of Gifu and Toyama prefectures, but it’s definitely still there, and in its winter coat, at least from the warmth of the inside of my train, it is absolutely more beautiful than ever before.
We got to Nagoya, and I rushed straight down to see if I could find where my train was leaving from. After wandering around a bit and coming up empty handed (but I could have found out where a dozen different shinkansen where laving from, and when and where they were going), I wandered down the under-platform walkway again, and saw the signage on the platform I’d just come from say my train was going to be there, on that same platform.
So, I wandered back up, saw the display but all I could read were the characters for “train”, there was some other stuff, and an arrow. I thought that meant the train was coming n from that direction, so I stood and waited, then went and got a hot coffee in a can, because it was snowing, and it was therefore cold, and hot coffee in a can at that stage I invariably a good thing, even if the coffee itself is not particularly good. You’ll just have to take my word on this. Remembering that I bought and drank a coffee after having had a coke zero on the previous train is integral to the story!
About 10 minutes had passed and no train had arrived so I wandered down in the direction the arrow was pointing, and saw a massive queue. It was a short train I’d be getting on; the arrow, and the words on the electronic sign obviously meant “down this way, idiot”, or maybe I’m reading too much into it. I checked, and there was only one carriage of non-reserved seating on the 3-car train, and the long queue was for this carriage. I jumped on the end, and saw I was close to position 40 in the line. As the train pulled in I checked the carriage interior and saw there were only 50 seats in the carriage - the queue had built up in the 15 minutes I was in it, and snaked further down the platform.
I managed to get a seat, thankfully, bit people just kept getting on the train. There must have been over 100 people on that carriage, and people standing were crammed in together. I was sitting in a single seat, a “priority seat” that would have been turned into a wheelchair point had there been any such folk on the train. It meant I was close to a window, but that standing people next to me were crowded over me. I leaned into the window, whether to give them space, or to give me space, I wasn’t sure.
Now, getting into the train I started to become aware that I had drunk a lot of caffeinated beverages in the last little while, and taking my seat I thought it might have been a good idea if I could get to a toilet. But as that carriage filled up, firstly I knew I’d lose my seat, and secondly, I became aware that I was trapped. People were just crammed in there. Sure, I could use the magic “sumimasen” word, and the people would part like the biblical red sea for uncle Moe, only given they were now all being jostled about and trying to maintain their balance, I didn’t want to be rude. I instead looked out the window and tried to think about something else.
The train travels backwards for 20 minutes to Gifu, giving those standing reason for at least some joy, because they could turn and face the right way, as some of the did. Thereafter it was forwards to Mino-Ota, which is where I would have been joining the train had I followed the initial advice of the JR girl in Kushiro when she tried to book me seats on this full train. I was glad I’d rethought the idea myself, because barely 5 people had gotten off by this stage. I‘d have been crammed in the hallway for the trip, with no window in sight for this most beautiful train journey.
This train route runs along some of the most beautiful river-scapes have ever seen. I never tire of it. There’re hills that become mountains, and winding rivers that become rocky rapids, and beautiful bridges painted red, because that’s what they seem to like here, and old suspension bridges, and little villages nestled into the sides of mountains. It seems that despite the terrain you don’t spend too much time in tunnels on the first half of the journey. Today I was only doing the first half, through to Takayama, the second half down to Toyama is for tomorrow.
It’s a long, twisting, winding ride with the river always close at hand. It’ gently rocks the train, and there’s that constant humming of the diesel engine, and the clicking of the train, and all that water, and did I mention I kind of needed a toilet?
Part of my curling up against a window meant I was trying to let people around me have as much room as possible. A Japanese girl standing almost directly in front of me slowly and timidly took up more of the space between my seat and the wall In front of me. The girl right next to me was not nearly as shy, holding onto the luggage rack above my head, she was stretched out, and as the train swayed kept putting her asset where my head would have been, had I sat up straight in my chair. The guy standing between these two girls eventually started speaking, and although he was Asian, he spoke English, the accent sounded kind of American, and kid of Australia. Then assets-girl spoke, and she definitely had an Australian accent. But having ignored them for so long, and knowing I’d have to look at her from an awkward angle, I didn’t try to engage them - yet. (and in the absolutely remote chance she ever does stumble onto this in a Google search or something, I meant nothing offensive whatsoever about the assets in my space, I just happened to very much notice it at the time - sorry)
Eventually, an hour and a half into our journey we arrived at Gero, the hugely popular onsen town. The Japanese are big on 3-most-famous things, and Gero onsen is one of the three most famous onsens in all of Japan. I knew the carriage would largely clear out here, and it did. The Australians beside me sighed their relief and started to look as a few seats opened up. I looked to them and said I had to “use the loo” and they were welcome to take my seat, and I went and joined a queue for that, thinking hard about holding on.
When I got back to the seat, still no one had sat in it, and the two were joined by another guy. I tried to offer them the seat, but again they declined, so I stood too, and asked where they were from. They were from Brisbane, and the late guy to join said that he thinks he saw me on the flight in the Gold Coast, even though I said I was from Sydney. So there’s one for the Small World files, when after a week in the country, people on the same flight from Australia should run into one another on one little train going to the small and out of the way town of Takayama.
We talked about our trips, and the coincidences continued - they too had gone straight up to Hokkaido, but they’d flown. They spent their time in Sapporo, which I’d never made it to. After a week of only the briefest of conversations it was odd to just be talking again, without having to search for words, and without lacking the language to continue.
Eventually, though, we reached a lull in the conversation, and we all went to looking out the windows at the amazing view. We got to Takayama about 45 minutes after leaving Gero, and after bidding the Aussies farewell, I walked down and checked in to my hotel, dumped my bags, and went into the tourist areas.
I climbed to a temple I’d been to before, the first time with my parents when they visited, and photographed it draped in snow, then walked to the Higashiyama temple walking route and snapped some more photos. From there, I walked to that part of town I still haven’t found a name for, but just love the residences along the canal. I slowly meandered, took some more photos, and nodded at passersby.
The canal brought me back to the river, which I walked along and back to the Sanmachi old residences district. The place was not crammed like it had been when I walked past an hour or so before, but there were still plenty of people around. Some lights had been turned on and many of the little tourist shops were still open, though some had already closed for the day. Before I was done in Sanmachi, darkness had fallen, and so without the ability to hold the camera perfectly still anymore, my photography day was over.
I got to thinking about beef, because a few of the closed stores advertised “famous” Hida district beef. So as I thought about dinner, I knew I wanted some beef. Back on my hotel’s side of the river I walked down the regular shipping district, past stores that sold shoes, and fruit and veg, and homewares, and all that sort of stuff. I got to one of the restaurant alleyways, and started to pay attention with a mind for dinner.
It was really ramen weather, but I wanted beef, so when I came across a place that did a set which was a bowl of ramen, and a little bowl of rice, with grilled beef and onions, I was sold. I went in and sat down , ordered my dinner and sat in the warmth to wait. I ate my meal in the quiet, there were three other couples in the place, and they all talked in hushed tones keeping the place quiet. When I was done I walked back to my hotel and settled in for the night.