Saturday, April 23, 2011

What the Hell was I thinking?! Climbing Mt. Chokai

I basically felt like a kid on a school trip as I sat on the back seat munching on the packs of jelly candies Ninon bought from the supermarket. Having hiked up and down several mountains and volcanoes in Japan during my one year of study there years ago, I was feeling fairly confident that this climb would be a piece of cake.

View driving up to Hokodate

Sophie was riffling through the Lonely Planet: Hiking in Japan guide, mumbling in French while Ninon drove us to the trailhead of the hike at Hokodate. Hokodate is basically this mini-complex with a Tourist Information center, restrooms, beverage vending machines, a hostel and two or three parking lots.

The Hokodate Trail head Complex

We parked our car and started getting ready for the hike. Ninon told me that we would be staying at this little inn/shrine at the top of the mountain and we’ll be making our way back down the next day. I had no bloody idea what this inn looked like so I just packed my backpack to bursting with a change of clothes, toiletries, bath towel and a LOT of food. I had only a personal sized bottle of water with me and I figured I’d be able to get water at the inn at the top.

"Really, Di, you're bringing all THAT?"

Ninon eyed my huge backpack doubtfully, but she just shrugged and pushed me up to the trailhead anyway. We went to the tourist office and asked for a map and a few pointers about the climb. We were told to just proceed to the base of the climb and follow the trail and then the "signs".

Mt. Chokai (Chokai-san in Japanese) is in the Chokai Quasi-National Park, a series of mountain ranges that straddle both the Yamagata and Akita prefectures. There is another, less popular trail on the Yamagata side. Chokai-san is often called the "Akita Fuji" because of it's sloping shape that can be somewhat compared to the original Fuji. Like most mountains in Japan, Chokai-san was developed through a series of volcanic eruptions, the last of which was in March 1974. For two years after that activity, Chokai-san was closed to hikers, but now welcomes hikers from all over. One of the most frequent hikers of Chokai-san are pilgrims of the Shugendo mountain ascetics.

Standing at the base of the trail, we watched groups of people sitting around, drinking from water bottles and wiping sweat from their faces. We chatted with them a bit and found out that they were hikers who stayed the night at the inn at the summit and started their climb down early that morning. It was around 11 in the morning and we were just about to get started. The other hikers were concerned that we were starting too late. We reassured them that we would be spending the night at the inn as well, so we still have plenty of time.

The base of the trail

Sophie, an avid mountain climber who just climbs everything like a bloody neanderthal (She has scaled the Pyrenees so many times, it was like going to the mall for her), had on this fantastic watch that measures the height above sea level of our current location, so we'll always know how high up we were. It also measures the number of footsteps we've taken, I don't know, just so we can brag about it later on. Sophie read from the Lonely Planet guide that it will take us about 4 to 6 hours to get to the top of Chokai-san. She looked at me wondering if I could take it. At this time, I was full of bravado and bragged that I hiked for one whole afternoon going up Mt. Aso before, 6 hours is nothing!

French people, ready to take on the mountain

With that, we started our hike.

The start of the trail was nothing spectacular, basically it was just a length of steps that goes up gradually. We saw several signs that says "Beware of Bears". I didn't know if they were kidding... probably not, in any case, we had small bells tied to our bags to ward off the bears (how this can happen, I have no idea)

Beware of Bears! Raawwrrr!!!!

I was starting to think this trek was gonna be a piece of cake, when the trail started to get steeper and the steps turned into rough slabs of stone piled together to form an incline.

Doesn't look very difficult from here, does it?

We saw a lot of alpine flowers, rolling mountain sides of grass and hedges of small bamboos. It was pretty relaxing, it was hot but there was an overcast and it made the weather pretty comfortable.

Pretty mountain flowers

We kept on meeting people going down the trail and I was surprised that most of them were old people and I mean, senior old. 65 to 70 year old men and women were making their way down with nothing but a stick to help them along. I started to doubt this climb. Lonely Planet listed it as the top 8 climb in all of Japan, and I've read somewhere that this is a mid-level mountain in terms of difficulty. But if senior people can do it then it probably couldn't be that difficult.

Blazing on!!!

Ninon, having lived in the Japanese countryside for so long, made it her business to greet every single person that came along. We would stop at 3 minute intervals on our climb to say "Konnichiwa!" to other hikers, and "Otsukaresama deshita!" ("You did a good job")to those making their way down to finish their climb. Of course, for the regular Japanese countryfolk, having a 5 feet 8 in (probably?)white woman with sun bleached brown hair talking to them in Japanese, was quite the treat. So they would stop us and ask where we were from, the usual questions, and Ninon would chat with them for a while, while Sophie and I would smile and wait for her to finish so we can resume our trek. Most of the time, these little chats would finish with the Japanese telling us to "Gambare!" (Do our best) and we would bow several times in gratitude. I was convinced that our climb took twice as long because of this show of congeniality. haha

It's the Climb~

After a while, it started to rain. It was the fox-type of rain, where it was really sunny but the drops of water just fell like pellets from the sky. We were all drenched but we didn't really mind since it cooled us off a lot.

Ninon, drenched from the Fox rain

Soon, we came to the Ohama-goya, a hut less than a third up into the climb where people can rest and buy water for the ridiculous amount of 500 (5.80USD) yen for a small bottle of water.

Sophie at the Ohama-goya. Those water bottles run for 500 yen each!

We stayed at the hut for a couple of minutes to catch our breath.

Still genki. Figures, we were just an hour into the climb

At the side of the hut, there was a small ridge overlooking a lake and patches of white that I thought looked suspiciously like snow, but I couldn't believe it coz it was about 29 degrees in there.

The Lake!

Is that snow?!

After a short rest and several photos, we went on our way. After half an hour, we came to a junction and we could choose to go left or right, as there are two paths going up to the summit. Sophie said the left one was the most direct path and we decided to go with that.
The climb from this point became more arduous than I expected. For starters, the stone steps started to disappear and what was left was a slightly muddy trail with huge boulders. There were parts where we had to use our hands to hoist ourselves up over the boulders and continue on our way. Around this time, I was starting to be amazed at the Japanese senior citizens... how the hell did they do this trek?!

Dirt and Stones

On the way, we met two pilgrims of the Shugendo branch of Shinto who were doing their annual climb of Chokai-san. They were dressed in the traditional white hakama-looking garb of their faith. They were the funniest thing because for some reason they found the three of us amusing and would talk to us in some Japanese dialect that I could not understand to save my soul. They had nothing on them but a change of clothes and several bottles of alchohol. As they hike up the mountain range, they would stop every so often to sit on a boulder or a stump, open their bottle and drink a few shots of something noxious. They would start singing and smiling and waving at people. It was like they were in their own mini matsuri and I thought they were hysterical.

They would yell at us "Oy! Ano san-nin!" (Hey! You three!) and would invite us for a shot or two. I practically had zero water left in my bottle at this point, and there was no way I was gonna drink alchohol and require even more hydration. We told them we'll be staying at the inn and they said they were going to do the same and we'll just get pissed when we get there. Ninon was smiling and laughing, I was laughing too but man, there was no bloody way.

The thing with climbing mountain ranges, you go up then down, then up again. Phew!

It was almost 1:30 when we decided to stop for lunch. We came upon a small field with ankle-deep grass and several mountain flowers. We munched on cherry tomatoes, sandwiches and carrots before I started running around feeling like Fraulein Maria in the Sound of Music.

The Hills are Aliiivveee~ With the Sound of Muuussiiiccccc~~~

Ninon dutifully took photos of me and we were even able to coax fellow hikers to take photos of all 3 of us (well, actually, one of them felt bad for us while watching me trying to balance the self-timed camera on a rock)

The Climbers and the Flowers

When we continued the climb, I was starting to get scared. We left the comfort of the steps and boulders and now had to go vertically up stone faces, walk on trails precariously close to the cliff with nothing below to catch one's fall, we had to climb up and down steel ladders that sway in the wind. I was going a bit crazy. I started asking myself what the hell did I get myself into. Ninon was just smiling at me and telling me I can do it. I was this close to asking her "Have you gone completely bonkers?!"

No rope and nothing to hold on to. Major Fear Fest

Soon we got down to a valley completely covered in Summer Snow. The entire climb felt like nothing when I saw that. It was like being in bloody Middle Earth.

Is this?! New Zealand?!

The white against the green of the mountains against the blue of the sky was breath-taking. I started hopping around, taking pictures here and there, I was raising a blasted riot.

Summer Snow!!!

I was just floored

Of course, we had to continue on with the climb, it wasn't so bad the rest of the way, just steeper inclines and the growing impatience of wanting to reach the top. After a while, we heard the drunken monks singing out loud "Gambare! Gambare!" they were walking in th bottom of the valley, along the snow, while we were trekking on the mountain side. They were so funny but I wondered if they would be ok, climbing the mountain pissed and all, but I figured they were probably used to it.

The path eases up

Finally, at around 3 in the afternoon, we reached the summit and the inn at the top. We started to inquire about availability. There were available slots for us they said, but unfortunately, the 4,000 plus yen (45USD) that each of us would have to pay to spend the night did not include water. No drinking or bathing water. No bed too, basically, we would be paying for the space to stay there, that's all.

At the top

All of our water bottles were practically empty and we knew it would be impossible to spend the night there without paying a fortune on water. We counted the hours till sundown and made a decision. We had 3 1/2 hours. We had to get down the mountain.

Short-lived success

We took the other path, which was the more indirect route but it was going along the ridge of the mountain so the trail was easier.

But from the inn, we had no idea how to get to the trail. Sophie saw that a face of the mountain led to a trail. But that face was a vertical wall with huge stones piled on each other and we had to scale the wall horizontally to get to the trail. I had no idea if the rocks were stable and I was pretty sure one wrong step and we would be dead. But Sophiie and Ninon seemed to think nothing of it, so I followed. But I was scared out of my wits! I would step with all my weight on each rock before getting on it. We didn't even have any rope with us. Ninon kept yelling at me not to look down, but of course that made me look down and what I saw was instant death and I started to mumble

"Oohh... if my mother knew what I was doing right now, she would kill me!"

Ninon took my backpack from me so I could scale the stone face easier. When I got to the trail where Ninon and Sophie were waiting, I was almost in tears. Ninon beamed at me and said

"I always make you do things you don't want to do, huh?"

I stared at her and yelled "You think?!"

The inn at the top. See the rocks at the right of the inn, we scaled that shit.

Apparently, there was a safer route from the inn to the trail, we just didn't see it. The ridge trail was nicer and safer, no cliffs and no ridiculous boulders, but because we were on a race against the sun, we had to walk very fast.

Ridge Way

Of course, being the klutz that I am, I slipped on a sandy part of the trail and sprained my bloody ankle. Right! I climbed over boulders bigger then me, scaled rough stone faces and I end up spraining my ankle on a patch of sand?! Really? How pathetic is THAT?! It was like Hiroshima all over again, only, nobody threw bread on my chest and told me to "Get up! Get!"

I sprained my ankle pretty bad and soon a lump, the size of an egg blossomed on my ankle. But I had no choice, we had to get to the bottom before sun down, otherwise, we would be in deeper shit. I found a way to walk comfortably and we zoomed all the way down.

Views from the Ridge

We got to the Ohama hut at around 6 and we could see the sun starting to set. We jumped from one boulder to another with Ninon teaching Sophie how to count in Japanese to pass the time.

Rolling hills of green

About 20 minutes before we reached the base of Hokodate, night fell and it was dark. Luckily for us, there was another hiker going down the mountain a few meters ahead of us. He probably heard us talking and waited for us so we can share in his flash light.

Race the Sun

Finally we reached the Hokodate trailhead complex and I was so happy and tired, I felt like fainting. We just hiked up and down a bloody mountain range for 8 freaking hours! I ran to the vending machine, bought a can of coke and downed it in one gulp.

We went back to the car and I cursed myself for bringing so much stuff that I didn't need in my backpack and made my climb twice as difficult as it should have been. Ninon told me the same thing many times, but oh well, what's done is done.

We pulled out of the parking lot and went back to the camping ground. Because we got there at around 8 pm, we saw several young people on the beach setting off fireworks and eating watermelon. We watched them and chatted a bit, and I felt sooo happy, like I was 22 years old again and I didn't have any problems. For one day, merged with my body aches and the throbbing pain in my ankle, I got a bit of my youth back. And at that moment, I thought, yeah, this is what people live for.

And that, dear friends, is how I climbed Mt. Chokai.

Posted by at 2 comments:
Labels: , , ,

Sex Talk, Camping Woes and Shocking Japanese Folks. Akita/Yamagata Day 2

I stared straight through a stream of cigarette smoke as Jean Baptiste, Ninon and Yoko argued about the next course of action. We spent about 20 minutes in that god-forsaken train station which reminds of a western set straight out of “The Good, the Bad and The Ugly”. They were jabbering on in French and I totally tuned out and just let the tension drain away from me. I was really glad to see Ninon, all tanned and gorgeous-looking in her gauzy maxi dress. Somehow, I got used to seeing her in spaghetti straps and hole-y pants that the sight of her all dolled-up in the Japanese country-side was pleasantly unnerving.

Finally, they clapped their hands and said, “Ok, let’s go!” And I was like, oh, yeah!

We crammed into the mini and started driving. What ensued was a conversation worthy of a nose-bleed. Jean Baptiste and Ninon speak English, French and Japanese, so I had no problem with them, Yoko could speak Japanese and French, Sophie could speak French and English and I could speak English and Japanese (and Tagalog of course), so it seemed, no matter which language we used, there is bound to be somebody left out of the loop (Except for Ninon and JB, lucky bastards). We started throwing ice-breakers at each other which didn’t really fly on account of all conversation had to be killed to address the fact that we were utterly lost and night was catching up on us fast.

Our goal was to find an onsen (hot spring resort) where we could bathe as everyone felt like filth (well, JB and Yoko just got down from climbing some bloody mountain, and they didn’t feel their freshest). We kept driving and Yoko kept calling people on the phone asking where the hell we can find this, where we can find that, until we found ourselves driving by a winding stream of water that was blowing steam into the wind.

We came up with different interpretations. JB swore it was hot-spring water flowing, so that means the onsen was nearby. Ninon said there was no bloody way. Yoko couldn’t quite make up her mind. Sophie was inclined to agree with JB. I told them they were all bloody idiots, that was obviously the fog effect for when the fairies come out to play in the stream.

Before we could come to an agreement, we miraculously found ourselves outside the door of the ryokan (inn) where JB and Yoko were supposed to check in for the night. JB, Ninon and Yoko talked to the innkeeper to convince her to let us all use the ofuro (bath house) while Sophie and I munched on Pokkis. The nice innkeeper agreed and we all bounded into the bath house like little children with Ninon yelling “Pour aux douche!”

After the shower, we all went to a nearby restaurant for a dinner of ramen and stir-fried vegetables since Sophie was almost a vegetarian (how anybody can almost be a vegetarian, I’ll never know). The entire dinner conversation revolved around sex.

Seriously, JB considers himself THE authority for all things sex since he’s 1. French, 2. Male, 3. Living in Japan and 4. A French male living in Japan. I bet Yoko was thanking her lucky stars that she couldn’t understand English a whole lot, since I don’t really think listening to her boyfriend talk about his sexual encounters in front of her was her idea of a riveting conversation. I could barely swallow down food for the kind of ridiculous and impossibly funny crap pouring out of JB’s mouth. I was pretty sure I was bound for indigestion but it was worth it. Somewhere between JB swearing that Japanese boys are every virgin girl’s dream and Ninon rolling on the floor laughing, the restaurant lady informed us that it was almost JB and Yoko’s inn’s curfew and we’d better go back. So the bill was paid and we went back to the inn, left Yoko and JB there with hugs, kisses, good nights and good byes and then drove off in search of some place to set camp.

Yoko, JB, Ninon and Me having dinner, Photographer: Sophie

The three of us apparently had our own reasons for being as thrifty as possible. Sophie missed her flight from Paris to Tokyo and the bloody ticket she bought from ANA was non-refundable and non-rebookable, so she had to buy a new one. The money she had saved for when she arrived in Japan was then used to purchase the new ticket, so she had to cut back on the major expenses (read: accommodations), y’all know about my plight, and Ninon was just going along with whatever Sophie and I needed to do.

So, we drove in the night, it was almost 11 pm by this time, we saw signs leading to a camping site and within minutes, we were there. Sophie brought her tent and 3 sleeping bags from France for this trip and we all went into the camping ground to set up our casa.

The camping ground was pretty decent, there were several trees and strings of light bulbs strung over the branches and several people had their camps set up already. The tents there were huge, they looked like they came straight out of the Quidditch World Cup camping ground. They could fit a whole table and some chairs inside with a net enclosure and a separate area zipped around with opaque vinyl for the bedroom. I was thoroughly impressed.

I expected us to build our tent under the lights but Ninon and Sophie had other ideas, they wanted to move deeper into the camping ground, into the darkness, almost into the woods. I had no idea why they wanted to be that isolated, but I didn’t want to argue (besides, I’m new to camping, what did I know about ideal camping spots?). Thus, we assembled our tent on a patch of land with moist grass up to my ankles and prepared to sleep. Unfortunately, the tent was quite small, with the zipped-up door as the only opening, we had to close the net over the door so the mosquitoes won’t come in, but this made the tent unbearably hot. I was sweating in minutes and I couldn’t sleep.

Our tent in the light of day

Finally, I took my sleeping bag and told them I would just sleep outside. I figured it wasn’t such a big deal, the thought was kind of romantic, actually, sleeping right under the stars. But in reality, there was nothing romantic about it at all! If I lay to my right, I find myself staring into the woods, peering into tall blades of grass and thinking “Wild Animals”. If I stare straight up into the sky, I end up looking at the gnarled branches of the trees, hear the sounds of birds scuffing and flapping their wings and I think “Bird Poop”. If I lay to my other side, I end up looking at the tent again and I think “Heat.”

It was a dilemma of colossal proportions and I turned over and over until finally Ninon called out from inside the tent “Di! Do you want me to sleep over there with you?”

And I was like “Yeahh!!! Okkaasaaannn!!!(Mommy)”

Ninon went out and set her sleeping bag next to mine, leaving a sleeping Sophie inside the tent. We were pretty much doing ok, until horror upon horrors, the mosquitoes came, in HORDES! They started biting and we started slapping ourselves until sleep was starting to look like an impossibility. I finally threw in the towel and turned to Ninon.

“Ninon, I think we should sleep inside the tent.”

“Di! You are a pain in the ass!” Ninon roared.

We crammed ourselves in the tent and slept as well as we could.

The next day, I woke up fairly early, feeling sticky as a melted lolly and I wasn’t really cheery. All I wanted was a bleeding shower and my irritated movements woke Ninon up. We went out of the tent to roam the surrounding areas of the camping ground and we found a nice stretch of beach right next to where we parked the car. It was too dark the night before and we didn’t see the beach when we arrived. It was like an oasis! We went back to the tent, woke Sophie up, slapped on our swimsuits and ran into the ocean like mad women.

Sophie in the Oasis

After a couple of minutes, we were sufficiently refreshed and we were ready to start our day. We got out of the water and went in search for the shower room in the camping ground. As it turns out, the shower room was closed. We had no choice but to go to a gazebo in the middle of the camping ground, where a huge round sink with about 10 faucet heads sticking out in a circle, provided fresh, cold water to campers. The sink was obviously meant for washing the face and hands, food, utensils and to refill water bottles. It was definitely not meant for washing the hair or the body. The sink and the faucets were a good 3 feet above the floor, but we were desperate to wash the salt and sand off us, so Sophie and I climbed over the sink and started washing our bodies with the ice-cold water. Ninon was smarter, she filled water bottles up with water and poured it over herself as she showered away.

Shower on the Sink

Japanese campers stood in front of the other faucet heads, brushing their teeth and staring at us in disbelief. I turned my ridiculously long hair over the sink and actually shampooed it. I didn’t care about the gaping Japanese, I wasn’t about to go through the whole day with dirty hair. I finished my “shower” with this Japanese teenage boy washing a big watermelon under a faucet head beside mine, surreptitiously glancing at me, then shifting his eyes around like he was looking for a hidden camera or something that can remotely explain the unthinkable thing happening in front of his eyes.

Before I started washing my hair

After washing up, changing, folding up our tent and throwing all our stuff at the back of the mini (and laying out our delicates under the glass at the back of the car to dry), we drove off to the nearest Family Mart to get breakfast and drove off to the supermarket to buy supplies for our hike for the day (we waited about 20 minutes for it to open, we were THAT early). With all the stuff done and out of the way, we started driving to the base of our hike spot; one of Japan’s 100 Most Famous Mountains: Mt. Chokai.

From Apr 23, 2011
Driving to the Ocean! Driving to the Beach! Aint no Mountain High Enough~
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , ,

Unplanned Japan - Spontaneity at its finest in Akita

Those who understand me well know why I had to go to Japan last August.

We are not talking about travel book Japan here, with skyscrapers, bullet trains and 711s and Family Marts at every corner or 50 meters apart from each other, whichever is closer. We’re talking about rural Japan, at the northern part of Honshu, a sneeze away from Hokkaido, where rice fields envelop the country side an emerald green and every high school has an agriculture club that literally grows tomatoes and zucchinis in the school yard and sells them to the teachers for a song.

We are talking about the Tohoku region, and to be more specific, Akita. Well, technically, the destination was supposed to be Hanamaki, Iwate, but twists of fate led the dart to land on the biggest city in Tohoku; Akita City.

The events leading to that trip went by so fast, it was a blur. My sole purpose in going to Japan was to visit Ninon, whom I haven’t seen in a year and whose emails arrive with as much frequency as a solar eclipse. It was summer vacation in Japan, and since Ninon was teaching there, I figured she wouldn’t mind a visit from the “Little Philippina”. So I sent her a mail asking when I could come visit. A couple of hours later, I received a reply:

“Tomorrow would be good.”

Damn! Luckily, I had my visa done and out of the way. I stalked our admin for my travel authority, re-scheduled my leave, got my tickets issued, emailed Karen if I could bunk with her in Tokyo on the day of my arrival and pulled my hair when I realized I had a measly amount of cash at my disposal. But what the heck, bahala na si Batman.

So, I said, “Cool, I’ll fly tomorrow.”

More mails were sent, miraculously replied to, sent again and the contents became this awful logistical mess that we couldn’t iron out, since a friend of hers, Sophie (the one from French Guyana, not the Parisian one) was coming to visit as well and they were not planning to stick it out in just one place. I had to join up with them somewhere along their transit from Tokyo (where Sophie’s flight was gonna come in) to Akita, and finding a common time to meet up was just hellish so I told them, I’ll just see them in Akita.

So that night, I packed faster than a Tazmanian devil, throwing whatever I had that was decently clean and wrinkle-proof , lamented the fact that I was going without a camera since I left it at my parents’, and shook my head at the absurdity of my poor attempts at preparation. Nevertheless, the next day, I flew to Tokyo, took 3 hours on the local trains from Narita to Yokohama (due to the fact that my budget was slimmer than Gandhi), met up with Karen, met her lovely family (I am in love with her daughter Leigh, she is the sweetest thing ever!) and had a nice dinner at the nearby kaiten sushi place. The next day, Karen took me to the YCAT (Yokohama Central Air Terminal) and I bussed to Haneda airport.

I got dropped off at the Southern Wing of Haneda airport. I went straight to the departure board to check the flight to Akita. I stared long and hard and panicked when I couldn’t find the flight.

What the hell!

The North Wing of Haneda Airport

After a couple of minutes of staring, I realized that all the destinations were in the south of Tokyo and the terminal was called SOUTHERN wing, so I headed to the northern wing, thinking that if Akita wasn’t flying from there I was gonna raise hell or something like it. Sure enough, the flight showed on the North Wing’s departure board. I checked in, got my boarding pass and flew out.

Flying to Akita Ken from Tokyo

Staring out the window, as the plane started to land, I thought about the watercolor palette I had when I was in high school. Back then, I couldn’t help but marvel at the immense amount of shades of green, I probably had six of them in my palette of 36. I had true green, forest green, apple green, moss green etc etc. I didn’t know what painters did with them, I figured you couldn’t use that much green in a single picture anyway. But at that moment, as I watched the rice fields marry with the forests of pine and evergreens, I realized I was wrong. That much green can exist in a single picture. I kept my eyes on the view below as the plane went lower and lower. I saw each shadow of each leaf throw out a shade barely discernible to the next, a range of color told apart from each other by a drop of black or a drop of white, mixed in.

Up to this day, when someone would ask me to describe Akita, I always say “Green.”

The Green surrounding Akita Airport

In Akita airport, I bought my ticket for the bus bound for Akita City train station, it cost me roughly 900 yen. I arrived in the train station and practically ran since I only had about 20 minutes to catch the train I was supposed to be on. I went to the Akita JR Lines corporate office by mistake, got shooed away and cursed myself for being a rambling idiot and finally got to the ticket office.

The Vending Machine at Akita airport where you can purchase the tickets to the bus going to Akita City

Before flying to Akita, Ninon gave me the plan of the day. I was to fly to Akita, take the bus to the train station and get to Fukura station at 4:35 in the afternoon. It sounded pretty simple to me at the time, so while standing in front of the automated ticket machine, I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t find Fukura anywhere on the destination options. Time was quickly running out and I was starting to freak, so I called on one of the JR people standing around to help me. The nice guy went to the machine, purchased my ticket for me (I paid of course) and told me to make a run for my platform. So, run I did.

I got into the train and went straight for the driver. I found him at the first car of the train, showed him my ticket and asked if the train was going to Fukura. He threw this slew of Japanese at me, the only words of which I got was “Ni, mae (two, front)”. I all but grabbed his sleeve and yelled “My good man! I cannot understand a word out of your bloody mouth!”

Finally, he nodded “Hai, hai”, went out behind the wheel and walked with me towards the back of the train, we walked through 2 cars before he pointed on the floor and said “Koko” (here). I thanked him, looked at the people sitting, shrugged, and sat me and my big backpack down. What? Did they have a caste system with the trains here? You foreigners and people with uneven side burns sit at the back, or something?

Anyway, I was too tired and couldn’t care less. So I settled down, jammed my head phones on and stared unseeing out the window. A couple of hours and countless stops later, we stopped in one station and an announcement reverberated through the train, I had no idea what it was so I didn’t listen. A few minutes later, this team of JR Lines employees arrived and started dismantling the train. They pulled, screwed and tore away the first 2 cars from the one I was in. Outside, several high school students were recording the whole thing on their digicams, with an intensity that can rival a National Geographic videographer. When the two cars were properly severed, they closed the door, locked everything, stepped out of the train, formed a line along the platform and gave a low bow. They remained that way, propped at a right angle, until our train pulled away.

Finally, it all made sense to me.

The train was a bloody “Wanman”, taken from the English “One man”, literally because only one man operated the whole thing. We were going into the rural parts of the prefecture where only one to five passengers embark and disembark at any one station, thus minimum manpower was highly advised. The driver served as the driver, the conductor, the ticket seller, the PA system, and probably in Christmas time, the Santa Claus mascot.

A typical One-man (Wanman) Train

I started feeling trepidation about this station Ninon and I were meeting in. Mingled with the trepidation was the excitement of arriving in my destination and meeting Ninon. I imagined she and Sophie would be waiting for me and when I arrive, I’ll be greeted with hugs and kisses and we’ll just start talking and chatting like crazy.

Finally, the train pulled into Fukura station in Yamagata Prefecture, the driver went out and motioned for me to get out, he took my ticket, thanked me, walked back into the train and pulled away. I stared at the station building. It was a hut. There was nobody in the station, no ticket machine and not a soul in sight. I walked out of the station into the “driveway” and looked around. No car, no Ninon.

I was getting confused, I checked my watch, it said 4:36, exactly the time I was supposed to be there, I checked the station name, “Fukura” it said, but no friends. I figured they were gonna be a few minutes late, so caput went the plans for the grand entrance, I sat down at the nearby bench and waited.

Fukura Station. The blue bench was where I spent much of my time biting my nails down to stumps

30 minutes passed and still no Ninon, I would walk down to the main road once in a while and look at the passing cars, wondering where the hell Ninon was. She didn’t have a celphone and there was no way for me to contact her. When an hour passed and still no sign of her, I started to panic. I looked at the schedule of the train going back to Akita, there was one at 6 pm and I figured if Ninon doesn’t show up by then, I would go back to Akita city, stay in a hostel and go back to Tokyo the next day. I didn’t know why Ninon wasn’t picking me up. She wasn’t pissed at me, and even if she were, she wouldn’t leave me in the middle of bloody nowhere. The only possibilities in my mind were A. She and Sophie fell asleep on the beach and forgot to pick me up, B. They got into an accident on the freeway and C. They got eaten by sharks.

Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore, our only mode of communication was e-mail and I figured if she had anything to say to me, she would mail me about it. So at 5:30, I walked down to the main road and looked at all the buildings. It was the countryside, I knew there wouldn’t be any internet or manga café around, but I figured it was Japan, the houses would at least have an internet connection, and if they would just let me in to check my mail, it would help me a lot.

I went inside a soba restaurant next to the station. It was a family enterprise, considering it was annexed to a house. Like the entire town, the restaurant was deserted. I called out “Sumimasen!” and a nice old lady answered me and went down to the restaurant from the kitchen or somewhere and asked me what she could do for me. I asked her if there was an internet café around (I had to segue from somewhere, I couldn’t immediately ask out if I could use their internet), sure enough, she said no. I started to tell her my story, how I flew from the Philippines the day before, how I just arrived from Tokyo, how my friend was supposed to be there, how she wasn’t there, how she didn’t have a phone and how the internet was my only redemption.

She told me she wasn’t connected, her son was, but he’s at work and he’ll be back around 6. I imagine I looked really pitiful, because she looked so troubled and stepped out of the restaurant, called out to her neighbors and asked if they had internet on their computers. The neighbors walked out and started asking what was wrong, and the lady told them my predicament, and I was standing there, in an orange sundress with a huge back pack on, shuffling my feet, and wondering what the hell I was gonna do. The lady was so nice, when she didn’t meet success with her neighbors, she started flagging cars down, asking the people in if they had internet connection in their homes. I was so amazed, I didn’t even feel embarrassed. Man, I think I hit the jackpot with that lady, she was probably the mayor or something, seeing as she knew the whole town.

I felt like a sensation. I was pretty sure I would be in the township’s newsletter the next day. They would probably hold a town meeting for my case: “Foreign travelers stranded in town and what to do with them”, would probably be the topic of the meeting.

The practically deserted "main road" of Fukura in Yamagata Ken

Unfortunately, none of them had any internet connection and I was considering my options, in 20 minutes the train bound for Akita will come and I didn’t know what to do. Suddenly, the lady’s daughter in law and grandchildren arrived. She told them about me and they held a caucus on how to help me. The daughter-in-law told me her husband will be home by 6 and I can use their internet then, but I told her, by that time the train to Akita will come and I have to leave. She mulled over what to do while her two children stared at me and complimented my watch, my earrings and marveled at my general presence. Finally, she made a phone call, and told me her husband agreed to let me use their computer.

I was practically in tears. I went into their room, logged onto my mail, and sure enough there was a mail from Ninon, which said succinctly “We’ll be late 1 ½ hours, call JB (JB’s number)”. I almost imploded on myself.

There’s a phone number?! Why the bloody hell wasn’t I told this earlier?

The nice family lent me their phone, I called JB (whoever he was), left a message on his voicemail to the effect that I just got their mail, I’ve been waiting for more than 1 hour and I was contemplating heading back to Akita city, but since I got word from them, I’ll wait for a bit more.

I thanked the family profusely and almost broke my back bowing in gratitude.

I went back to the station and waited. 10 minutes later, a red minicar, reminiscent of Marissa Tomei’s Italian mini in the movie “Only You”, pulled up into the station driveway. Through the windshield, I could see Ninon’s wicked grin on the drivers side, a white boy sitting on the passenger side and at the back I could make out one white girl and a Japanese girl cramped with several backpacks.

I shook my head and laughed at the absurdity of it all. I yelled out at Ninon and said “You’re late!”

The bloody woman laughed at me, asked if I waited long and I said, Yuh! And as punishment for her heinous crime, I took one pack of the dried mangoes meant for her, marched towards the house of the nice family, gave it to them, told them my friends arrived and commenced with the bowing again.

It was a pretty fun experience. We spent a couple of minutes in front of the station, I was introduced to the inhabitants of the red mini; Sophie (from French Guyana) was the white girl at the back, the white boy in the front was JB (or Jean Baptiste as it turned out) based in Tokyo and the Japanese girl was Yoko, his girl friend who spoke French in bullets. We said our hellos, I told them my ridiculous story and we smoked while Jean Baptiste, Ninon and Yoko figured out where we were gonna sleep for that night.

Unplanned vacations, seriously, you gotta love them.

P.S. Because I didn't have a camera on me at this time, all the pictures on this post were taken from different public websites on the internet. Thank you very much.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , ,
Subscribe to: Comments (Atom)