Right now it’s not too late and there’s a fireworks show going on. The first one in Niigata in three years. This is at the same time that there are still a lot of ‘rona cases and, really, I don’t know where to go that wouldn’t be crowded so I’m avoiding it. I’m so boring. To be honest, I’m even more lazy than I am boring.

I had all these crazy travel plans and it turns out that it’s a lot easier to get places if you don’t use JR all the time. Having Niigata not be on the Tohoku pass actually sped things up. Aizu-Wakamatsu to Niigata was less than 2 hours and ¥2100 ($14.16US today). The bus driver was super nice and now I see why there are only two buses per day right now. I got my ticket for tomorrow’s trip to Morioka (which is really far away, actually) and rather than taking a direct trip up the coast to Akita to take the Akita Shinkansen, I’m basically going almost back to Tokyo (Omiya Station) and then going back up to Morioka and that saves me almost 2 hours at a cost of ¥5480 ($36.93US today). Tell me when you can buy 2 hours back for $37.

Anyway, I slept pretty well last night. I’m not sure what everyone else did in their rooms but I spent a bunch of time playing on my computer. Breakfast was pretty good too.

Then it was time to screw around on my computer even more. I decided to walk to the station. The bus station was across the parking lot. They were busy and the TVs were showing the news of the moment: North Korea decided to fire missiles over Japan to the Pacific Ocean. They even stopped some of the trains as a precaution. I heard they never made it that far and fell into the Sea of Japan.

After standing around outside for a bit I found a seat at the “cafe”. The cheapest way to sit there was to buy a cup of coffee. To drink it in the cafe cost an extra ¥30 for a total of ¥290. It was worth it. There was an older gentleman at the table and he argued about the seat for 20 minutes before he finally bought a coffee.

Yeah, that’s a tiny cup of coffee. When I finally decided to get back in line, I noticed there were 14 people in front of me! I was afraid that would be a bad thing but honestly most of the bus was empty. I think I fell asleep almost immediately.

I got to Niigata around noon and was met by two of the Kawasaki “kids” (we’re all around 60). The youngest Dr. Kawasaki got the ‘rona at work (he’s a pathologist) and missed the gathering. The eldest had her husband with her and we got some bakery goods and ate lunch on the banks of the river. It turned out to be a nice day with just a little rain around 5pm which let up before the fireworks in the evening (which I mentioned earlier). I might as well include this picture of Niigata.

Here’s a picture of the Japanese garden a rich businessman made back 150-ish years ago. Everyone else was taking pictures of the garden from the house; I decided to be a contrarian and took the picture in the opposite direction.

Mostly it was hanging out and catching up. I went to check into the hotel and it was crowded.

I suppose it was a holiday.

I should mention that I got my train tickets at a renewed Niigata station. The station was looking a little rough when I was here three years ago and it’s still under construction right now. I was told all the street-level trains are now on elevated tracks.

We dropped off the elder Dr. Kawasaki (he’s the middle one and an ENT) and went out to dinner. Sho and her husband Atsushi live in rural Niigata so they don’t know where to eat. They called their daughter and we found the store she suggested, a salmon restaurant. Here’s a picture of me looking a little tired.

It was actually not that expensive and very tasty. I think mine worked out to be about $13.50USD? I can’t even get a hamburger at a restaurant for that price any more.

And then it was back to my hotel. There’s a big bath in the basement but like I said it seemed crowded and I’m going to stick to the oddly small shower in my room.

Honestly, the Global View in Niigata is new and fairly nice but what hipster asshat designed this place? The hooks for the hangers are knobs randomly placed up and down the wall. The seat in the room is an uncomfortable bench. The table is round (an odd shape choice) and while there is an Ethernet port it’s across the room from the table. The TV is one of the smaller LCDs I’ve seen. Oh, and the bathroom is cheap and tiny. The worst part is that it sounds like someone is playing basketball in the floor above me. Or maybe the whine coming out of the AC. I had to turn it off.

Anyway, that’s about it. I have a bunch of email I should probably read. It’s mostly ads, but that pretty much describes the postal mail I receive as well. I’ll do that right after I hit POST on this.

AARGH. It helps if I hit the POST button.

Kind of a cranky day at first but what do you expect? I was trying to get across Japan when I’m used to taking the trains that go up and down. And it started out so well, with the breakfast at the hotel. The staff was unusually chatty and you didn’t have to do anything: they just asked you which of the four options you wanted and they just brought it to you. And like my first day, not that many people were there when the restaurant first opened.

But then I tried to schedule my next days of travel. Today was fine. But tomorrow sounded bad and the next day was even worse. I was also reminded that Niigata isn’t valid on my Tohoku rail pass because I should’ve gotten a JR East Tohoku pass if I wanted to do go there. Ugh. In any case I think my best option is to take a bus from where I am today, Aizu-Wakamatsu, to Niigata and then I have to find out if I can wrangle the five hour trip to Morioka the next day. Yeah, I did this to myself. And I’m still saving money on train fares because of the trip I’m taking on Sunday (I hope).

Oh, and the view from my hotel room isn’t quite as good, but it’s fine.

I’m sure I’ll have an example of a horrible view soon enough.

I got a reserved seat on the Shinkansen but I hopped on an earlier train. I forgot to check to make sure the one I got on arrived sooner than the one I was supposed to be on and fortunately I was fine. Then I got on a local train that was full of elderly people. By elderly I mean older than me. And I was taking a chance on my accommodations tonight. More on that later.

Aizu-Wakamatsu station was pretty darn small and I knew my accommodations were not as full-service as a hotel. I had to stash my bag in a coin locker and kill time until the 4PM check-in time. I got an all-day bus pass which worked out if I made 3 or more bus trips and with three stops I made four. The tourist bureau told me to go to the Japanese gardens because the leaves were changing in the area, but I headed straight for the castle. Sure enough, the leaves were changing.

The castle looked like another reproduction, so while I did walk around for a bit, I never went in.

I did get really hungry on the bus and the map mentioned “sauce katsudon” and I noticed one of the tourist-trap-ish restaurants at the entrance to the castle had it so I went in and tried it. I’ve found those restaurants are usually pretty good, even if you’re just grabbing soft ice cream to go.

The sauce was a bit much but it was all pretty good. Then it was time to decide whether I was going to the garden. I went not expecting much. It turned out to be a smaller garden with an attached medicinal herb garden and the fall colors were even better there.

I missed my next bus (they only came once every 30 minutes) because I was eating and drinking this

While looking at this

It was worth it. The next stop was to see something I saw on YouTube before, a Buddhist tower designed as a double-helix so you can go up and come down without ever passing anyone else. But first you had to climb the stairs or take the escalator:

It’s ¥250 for the escalator. You can get on partway up for ¥100. Like a bug dummy, I took the stairs. It was brutal. Then I kept going up and it was where the Byakkotai committed ritual suicide with monuments celebrating their loyalty from Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. I just kept going.

I finally found the Sazaedo DOWN the hill a ways and paid to go in. It was a bit of a disappointment, only 1 ½ turns so you were in and out in no time and I spent most of my time trying to stay out of the way of some dude filming it on his GoPro. I was pretty done with the whole area and I’ve give it a pass. It is a unique feat of geometry but even the woman selling tickets seemed to be over it.

I took the bus back to the station and then took a taxi to the inn. I was 40 minute early and stood around for a while.

The facilities were (are) underwhelming. The building is old, I can currently hear the staff running around and doors slamming. I was hoping it was an onsen of sorts (I did minimal research). The whole building needs to be redone. I got one of the rooms that includes an in-room bathroom (and I don’t think there are many). The staff also seemed to be a little harried and wanted me to eat at the earliest time slot (6PM) and the same for breakfast (I can’t remember if that was 6AM or 7AM). Oh, and they wanted me to take a bath right away as well. It’s a giant tub and looks like it was made for three people at a time but you get to use it all on your own. I ended up taking a bath at 4:15PM.

Well the real reason you stay here isn’t for any of those reasons. The real reason is the food. It was all spectacular. We started out with raw horse, reconstituted dried sea fish (which is much better than you’d think), corn tofu, and lots of other things from the local area. The bones of the fish were all edible and the corn tofu tasted like cake.

I also had a sake sampler from the area.

There was also a salted grilled fish. They had you pull off the dorsal and ventral fins, set it “right” and then press down until the skin split. You then poured in mild vinegar and ate it whole.

Next course was tempura mostly of local ingredients.

With more hiding underneath. The round mushroom-looking thing was actually a sweet manjyu (bean paste cake).

A roasted potato and cheese dengaku, covered in miso sauce. I’m not sure what it was but it was tasty.

I got a meat plate that the two boys next to me didn’t get.

Of all the courses, this looked the best but wasn’t. Oh and I wasn’t happy about being next to two guys in their early 20’s but they turned out to be hearing impaired and so no one was talking at all.

The food finished off with rice and miso soup with miso paste to put on the rice. The rice was from the recent harvest. So good.

And dessert was some fruit. The apples had been soaked in lemon juice.

And that’s about it. I’ve been listening to loud thumps all night (it’s only 9:20pm) and have to keep reminding myself that they’re most likely still serving dinner. Oh well. The things I do for food adventures.

At least this ticks off 45 prefectures. Two more and I’ll have all 47.

LATE ADDITION:

The room was fine after the staff quit rushing around so I got a nice peaceful night of sleep.

I slept a little better but towards the end I felt like I was just lying there awake. I think I got up at 4:30AM? Then I spent wasted a bunch of time screwing around on my computer, which is also what I’m doing right now. I started out by paying bills which happens twice a month on paydays. And I made it down to breakfast when the restaurant opened, at 6:30am. Unlike the restaurant in Tokyo, people were there early. I’m guessing it’s partially a country thing, and its partially because there were older people (older than me!), and mostly because there were lots of people on business trips.

Like dinner, they sprayed my hands with alcohol when I went in and they gave me some clown gloves as an added measure that my filthy, filthy hands didn’t touch the food.

I grabbed just about one of everything from the buffet and I ate it all. I am not losing any weight not this trip. In my defense, it was all very good. As I expected, the natto was much better since it wasn’t frozen for a long time like the stuff we get in the US, but everything else was good as well.

I looked up the train schedule and I had several local trains to catch for a two hour trip to Utsunomiya but it didn’t leave until 10am. That meant more time to waste in my room.

And then I was off. Utsunomiya is a lot bigger than I expected and it looked like there was a lot going on in the train station. Several of the shops were ones I’ve seen in Tokyo and that left an interesting first impression. I took my bags to the hotel, which was several blocks from the station, and had the tourist information person confirm that I should go see the mines that initially made Utsunomiya so famous (or so says one of the travel pages). She told me the bus stop was behind and to go to stop #6. Well, turns out there are TWO stop #6 and she meant behind ME and not behind HER. I was on the wrong side of the station and missed the bus. Fortunately there was one a half-hour later, so I shoved a Lotteria shrimp burger set in my pie hole. It was the most popular burger according to the woman behind the counter and I have to admit it was pretty tasty.

Then it was a nervous trip out into the countryside where I could barely read the signs and the directions were given to me in Japanese, of course. I should’ve gotten out at the same stop that everyone else did but my instructions seemed to indicate that I needed to go one stop further. One stop further was the middle of nowhere, but it also wasn’t too far from the previous one. This was because several of the tourist attractions were close together and so were the stops.

I made my way to the quarry and a guy asked me if I was cold wearing just my t-shirt. Actually it felt pretty good coming from Oregon. I like it on the cooler side but it’s still warmer here than back home. I had to put on my jacket for the quarry though. I took a bunch of pictures but I’ll just post a couple. Keep in mind these aren’t natural formations, but quarries on the surface.

And down into one of the cave-like quarries which is the “museum”.

It was quite a way down and not only were the caverns huge but they went on and on.

I guess there are hundreds of sites in the area and some are still being used as natural refrigerators. I think this one is used for movies and art installations and they were setting something up. During WWII they used some of the caves to manufacture airplane parts.

The next attraction was a temple with a goddess carved into the mountain. It’s inside of the temple and you’re not supposed to take photographs. In the past the carving was covered with clay and gold but that all wore off.

Next to the temple were ancient relics and pottery shards and explanations all in difficult scholarly Japanese so I didn’t read those. And next to the display of treasures were something like a garden. I’m not quite sure, but it was peaceful and pretty.

Just outside of the temple and around the corner was a giant stone goddess of mercy.

If you look carefully you can see stairs that go up behind her and I did go up those stairs. I didn’t see all that much from up there but it was a nice view.

That’s about it for the afternoon. I headed to the bus stop and finally realized I hadn’t had nearly enough coffee the day before, so I stopped in the Rock Island Roastery. I was afraid I’d miss the bus because they were so careful in preparing my drink.

It was also quite good. I met a couple of Israelis at the bus stop and found out that Utsunomiya is only about 2 hours from Tokyo on the “regular” express train that currently costs less than $15. They were headed back right after their visit to the quarry.

On the other hand, I was staying overnight and I needed to get some dinner. I checked into the hotel (same chain as last night) and it’s a newer, nicer, and not-as-quiet hotel (the doors sound very thin). Utsunomiya is known for gyoza and the front desk just suggested I go to the new dining area of the building almost next door. I looked there and I looked in the station and the places I looked at the gyoza just looked like gyoza. So I got out the coin flipping app and decided to go to the fancier place. Turns out it’s a tapas bar so that ended up costing me a bit of money. I also got a “local” craft beer.

Don’t let the shape of the glass fool you: that’s maybe a 12oz bottle (maybe 10oz?) and that glass is just bigger than a juice glass.

The started boded well for the rest.

The crostini were tiny but excellent.

The bbq skewers were small and sold one at a time but good as well.

I was still hungry so I also ordered a guacamole burger (I think it said wacamole on the menu). They gave me cream cheese for the fries.

I also had a very small shot of Yamazaki whiskey for the road.

And then I knew I needed to stop at 7Eleven for some reason but I forgot what that reason was and only got some pumpkin pudding to take back to the hotel for dessert.

And that’s about it. It’s now 10pm and I’m not falling asleep at my computer. Hooray for the right amount of coffee!