Akita does have it’s fair share of nice days, or at least days that appear nice when you look out the window. I seek solice in my distrust of the weather, it is a gift bestowed upon me by the state of Oregon, where the state motto may someday be “Don’t judge the whether by it’s appearance”. When it looks sunny and warm out my window, and I step outside the door prepared for strong frigid wind and rain, and am met with a cold blast of air strong enough to rip the door from my hands, I’m filled with a sense of accomplishment. I am an Oregonian in Japan, the Gods here cannot shake me.
On these nicer days, I like to get out and about. In order to better absorb the culture of the people of Akita (called Tohoku Culture) I seek to immerse myself in it up to my eyeballs. With the campus being as isolated as it is, however, to pursue my interest, I’m forced to travel. To get to town, a ride on the Goshono bus line is in order, which will take me to Wada Station. Train stations in Japan seem to come in three distinct flavors: The Intense (Shibuya Station, Tokyo Station, Grand Central Station), the Moderate (Akita Station, Fujisawa Station, Disney’s monorail) and the Rural.
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| From Japan Pictures |
Wada Station falls firmly into that final category with a resounding thud. Wada Station is so small I’m hard-pressed to understand how they fit everything they need into it.
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| From Japan Pictures |
The sole reason for this stations existence seems to be that it houses the prefectures snow train, which I look foreword to seeing in action.
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| From Japan Pictures |
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| From Japan Pictures |
Boarding a train at Wada takes me to Akita Station, one of the Moderate stations that your more adventurist tourist is going to see a lot of. As a matter of fact I’ve run into tourists on a number of occasions waiting for trains at Akita Station. As the name implies, Akita Station is the central hub of domestic train activity for the area, as well as the only Shinkanzen stop in the city. So far, with only 1 month here under my belt, this, and the stops leading up to this, is as far as I’ve ventured. Being dropped right into the center of the city is very convenient for somebody looking for adventure though.
I have on a number of occasions walked around Akita City looking for the things I, or my companions, need. It is a relatively impressive city, much like downtown Portland, with malls, restaurants, and boutiques containing everything from the practical to the fashionable. Window shopping and people watching so far have been amusing pastimes. Only recently did I move foreword with my original plan of choosing a direction and walking till tired.
A few days ago, Ben Strickland and I found ourselves with nothing to do. I will from this point on never use the phrase "nothing to do" as lightly as I once did, because when you find yourself isolated from the world on a remote campus where, if you're in the habit of keeping up with your homework, you're left with only the option to sit in a chair and listen to the sounds of blood moving through your eardrums, you truly begin to respect the phrase. We decided, that in an attempt to retain what little sanity we have, we should go into town and do something crazy. Arriving at Akita Station an hour or so later, we chose a direction, and began to walk. Our motives were in perfect unison; the only limits we had were our endurance and our hunger. One does not have to walk to far before running into noteworthy spaces in time.
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| From Japan Pictures |
This cute little...thing...is a Namahage. You wouldn't know by looking at the cute little statue that this is the Akita equivalent of the boogie man. The tale of the Namahage is believed by some to be a warped account of farmers seeing Russians for the first time, exploring the vast forests around Akita. Every new years eve, the Namahage visit the houses of the people in Akita and ask if there are any misbehaving children in the house. There seem to be a lot of parallels between the Namahage and our own Santa Clause with a few exceptions: If you are good, Santa will bring you presents, but the Namahage will just drink your parents booze and eat snacks in the entrance to your house. If you're naughty, you get no presents from Santa, and the Namahage will peel your skin off with that giant knife he's holding. Okay, so maybe the Santa/Namahage comparison is a little off.
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| From Japan Pictures |
I honestly have no idea what this statue is a memorial to. I like to think its dedicated to the children lost in the deep snow, or perhaps it is like a ancient ninja wanted poster.
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| From Japan Pictures |
One of the great things about going off the beaten path is you get to see nifty little things others don't see, like the strange facade of this bank, for example. It was around the time that we passed this bank that we began to talk about having the experience of true immersion. Of course, no foreigner is ever going to feel truly immersed, it's just not feasible, but we were hell bent on trying. We chose the best way to set about this would be to first find a place to eat lunch where no foreigner would ever go. Of course this didn't limit us to run-down old shacks or the kind of places that give you a fried squid in a newspaper; we were just trying to find a genre and a location that was completely Japanese. One look down this ally, and we were pretty sure we would find what we were looking for.
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| From Japan Pictures |
Neither of us were able to figure out the name of the street, if you would be so inclined to call it that. I proposed the name "Awesome Ave." to little applause. There was something about this side street that radiated the Japan of decades past that I've read in so many Murakami books with such intensity that it drew me in immediately. No wider then a car length, both sides of the streets were lined with everything from full sized Japanese style bars with paper doors, to a run down jazz bar with it's shutters down revealing a shotty painting of a mermaid wearing an American flag bikini.
It was at the end of this avenue, tucked between a coke machine and a cigarette vendor that we found what we were looking for:
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| From Japan Pictures |
A corner ramen shop in a neighborhood where we didn't belong, in part of the city foreigners had no reason to visit. It was the experience we were looking for. The lunch went off without a hitch, and while the ramen was not remarkable, the ramen itself was just an ingredient in our overall experience. We both finished our food, paid, and stepped back into the afternoon sunlight to bath in a sense of accomplishment. Unfortunately for us, we focused so much on what we had just experienced that niether of us payed any attention to where we were headed.
2 hours later, you can imagine how lost we were. After all, we had been walking and talking for quite some time, never stopping, and only turning when we came to a T-intersection and had no other choice. We found ourselves wandering around a residential neighborhood, the kind of place you dont take pictures, because thats what stalkers or peeping toms do. We walked for what seemed like miles before finally finding something other then grey apartment complexes, a kindergarden.
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| From Japan Pictures |
And as if the fates had wanted this to not only be a landmark, but a punctuation of our trip, the playground held the only blooming Sakura trees we had seen in all of Akita.
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| From Japan Pictures |
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| From Japan Pictures |
In larger cities like Tokyo and Osaka, if you find yourself lost, you can look for a small building with a badge on it, called Koban, or Police Boxes. Due to the expansive nature of most big cities they are scattered about, about as small as a public restroom, and housing 2 or 3 police officers who will respond to emergencies, but also help any citizen or tourist in a pinch. Unfortunately for Ben and I, we were in little ol' Akita City, so we figured the chances were slim of finding our way out with the help of the local police. We turned out to be wrong however, as 2 blocks down from the kindergarten was the only police box I've seen in all of Akita. The building was in the same style as a convenience store, built squat and covered in sand colored tile, a bright golden badge above the door. The 3 officers inside all seemed quite friendly, probably assigned to this box especially for being good with kids (and child like people such as myself). The senior officer drew us a detailed map on how to get back to the station, even going so far as to draw in landmarks and write the number of lights we would pass, since he assumed we wouldn't be able to read the street signs.
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| From Japan Pictures |
Dead center of this picture you will see a dark grey, almost black building rising above the others. That is the Alive Mall, a shopping center and hotel attached to Akita Station. I took this picture in hopes of relating the sense of exhaustion both Ben and I felt at this time, seeing our final destination, and knowing how long it was going to take to reach it. That hotel is 12 stories tall, and from where we were it looked the size of a matchbox. We both knew we had a long walk ahead of us, so with our landmark plainly in sight, we decided to tuck the map away, and just try our best to make a b-line for the station.
We were to have one more stroke of luck before making it back to the station, and it was all thanks to our decision to disregard the map we'd been given. While walking around aimlessly, I had spoken about wanting to buy some Akita Sake for Sakie's parents. The people of Akita boast about 3 things, having good rice, good water, and because of those, having the best Sake. Because of this, we had both kept our eyes peeled for liquor stores during our walk. Just blocks before reaching the station we stumbled upon a nameless shop on the corner of a T-intersection. Having only noticed the place by a few bottles of something or another sitting in the window, we decided it was worth a shot, slid the woodpane doors aside, and stepped in.
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| From Japan Pictures |
An honest to God liquor shop, specializing in Akita Sake. We couldn't have found a more suitible place if we had built it ourselves. On top of that, the owner spoke only the thick Akita dialect, but was gracious enough to slow down for us. We learned that every Sake he carried was made with the local ingredients that were so famous around Japan. To top it off, he himself made his own Sake, and was proud enough of it's quality to put his own hanko stamp on it. I decided on the small group size bottle of one of his sakes, as well as a smaller bottle of sparkling wine to present as gifts to Sakie's family, while Ben bought a bottle of another type of sake for himself. While the shop owner wrapped my sake (he understood me when I said it would be a gift, points for me) his wife came out of the back, apologized for her husbands difficult to understand Japanese, and offered us tea.
Sharing tea with the owners of a small sake shop in the middle of Akita City, Japan. Just being able to write that affirms my entire trip.
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