Japan - Day Five and Six (Morioka and Ninohe)

A slow 2 days so far. Waking up early (jet lag? sleeping in a strange bed?), I've been reading Quicksilver by Neil Stephenson. It's an entertaining book so far, a historical fictional account of Newton, Leibniz, and others. I love reading on vacation and offer that there may be no better way to spend my time. So this has been nice. We take our time with breakfast and our shower.

more...

We rode the train into Morioka the other day. Morioka is an old castle town, large (they have a few Starbucks which I guess is a measure of any city's size in this country), with a few things to do, but not much of note for toursits other than a grand view of Mt. Iwate, a volcano that bears an uncanny resemblence to Mt. Fuji. Some shopping, a good haircut for my wife, good food, and we returned. The trip was nothing more than an excuse to get away for a day and use up our free one-week train pass. This was Wednesday.

Thursday was spent at my mother-in-law's kindergarden class enjoying some play time with some learning disabled children. We made cotton candy, I taught them some english (Fish, Tea, Candy), they pushed and pulled me in all sorts of ways, and generally had a good time. The Japanese hold cuteness as an ideal above all else. I also was able to see some wonderful harvest views from the surrounding rice fields.

One other nice thing of note was my first trip back to the town I once lived, Ninohe. I'm staying at my wife's place in the village adjacent to Ninohe, but since we are without a car, it has been challenging to get around. We did walk through the center of town and I was able to get a chance to run into some old friends. I thoroughly enjoyed that moment of shock when they realized that I was I and that brief moment of confusion in their faces (as if the past 6 years vanished). the subsequent bowing, hand shaking, and smiles warmed me a great deal and while it was a brief visit, promises were made to see them again in the upcoming days.

My nights these past two days ended with some alcohol (Chikako's father is a fan of the magical elixir beer) and a visit last night to the local foreigners living here (they were shocked to open their door to see another non-japanese). My tolerance for beer and sake is not too strong so I fell asleep early.

A word about Ichinohe. It's a very small town. One or two convenience stores. A few schools. A Sports Center. Not much in the way of "things-to-do" which is why alot of young people leave town after highschool and head to Tokyo. This is common in America also, but sadly the government has recently built a Shinkansen (bullet-train) station in Ninohe, thereby bypassing Ichinohe as a stop for visitors. The town is seeing an increase in store closings and while a junior high student is still safe to walk through the streets late at night alone, the lack of commerical areas make is a dark and quiet place. The best thing we foreigners would think about the area is that it is still expansive compared to most of the country. Iwate (the prefecture Ichinohe is in) is the largest and most unpopulated prefecture on the main island of Japan. It's very rural and that lends itself to an interesting quality of being totally opposite of the insane Tokyo lifestyle. Ichinohe has recently uncovered a Jomon architectural find (more on that later when I visit it). and also, we are quite close to some excellent ski resorts and hot springs. This makes the winter very bearable, but alas, not for me as I seem to have never really gotten off the bunny slopes.