I was pretty much stoned out when I hopped on the train. Pretty crowded but comfortable as usual and I went in and out of consciousness. How I wished I was on a overnighter like the Baikal 007 and get some really good shut eye. The longest Shinkansen from Tokyo was a short 2:30 hr ride but the rest I got was worth every minute.

Arrived at Hachinohe on time and the motel we found is literally connected to the station. We were here at 10:30 and the check in does not start till 3 pm. What a bummer. But we being the good sport we are, decided to creatively while the time away. What do you do in japan wan you are stinking and got a couple of hours? Hit a Onsen. Heh…

It is unusual for me to be in a public bath let alone among dozens of buck naked men of all ages parading around and jumping in hot and cold pool. It was a, um relaxing experience. I probably had the longest bath ever and i didn’t realize a bath can be pretty relaxing. It was always a mundane chore that I would avoid if I could but I can now totally understand people obsessed with long baths heh… After a while one tends to forget all the naked people. Would have been a different affair if it was a mixed-sex bath I think

The good people at the motel let us check in early and also gave us pointers on what to do. The last time I was in this region, I took a scenic train ride around rice fields and the coast. It is not in the cards this time but I took a train to a coastal town called Tanesashi. This is a quaint little town with a brilliant coast line. The beach was very clean and I should say unique. It has a combination of sandy beach, really soft grass land and a rocky outcrop. Seems to be a pretty favorite hangout for family picnics. Luckily there was very little crowd and the weather was excellent. The train ride was very peaceful and the gentle wind and rocking waves were the perfect accompaniment. I cooed have spent many more hours but 2 was good enough to de-stress. We topped it with an excellent meal of rice and noodles prepared by local chef who accommodated the strange vegetarian request.

August is a time for parades and celebration in Aomori, and When I head into town, the revelry was starting. Large floats paraded the streets and seems like the entire town turned up to join in the fun. Japan is strange, it is a place where you find punks and traditionalists side by side and today was no different. Tons of girls in kimono’s and many more in mini skirts graced the streets and there are few better ways to spend an evening sipping coffee and watching people flock by… I guess a perfect day to top up the rather rough few days.

Tomorrow is a 4 hr train ride back to the airport, but now I am just about knocking off with some mindless entertainment on TV. Believe me, 100 Dalmatians is a lot more fun in Japanese

The super standard JR staff as usual were completely accommodating to all the variations and changes I asked of them… I have 4 cancelled tickets and they didn’t even flinch. I guess I pushed my luck with a difficult reservation. My return trip was posed as a complex decision problem that went thus…

Hachinohe – Omiya preferably starting mid morning

Stay in Omiya for at least 20 mins

Omiya – Tokyo

Tokyo – Narita reaching narita before 2 pm.

If you know about train schedules in japan, you will know that making complex reservations is a tedious task and when posed with such constraints, things get really hairy. The feller did not bat an eyelid and started his complex punching of the numbers and consulting his big schedule bible… The best he could do after a long while was to give me a 12 min stop over at Omiya. That was not ideal for me to use the lockers and we decided to ditch the plan and carry our bags anyway… So off went the complex schedule and he took it with a smile.

Got to push my luck further, I asked him to help me find a hotel in Hachinohe. JR is a train reservation office and they have no business entertaining anything else. But the feller jumped out of his seat and after 5 minutes got me number for hotels near the station. Wow. I requested him to check for room availability and he did that too. Amazing. And all this with me not speaking a bit of Japanese and he speaking very very little English. They are really setting the standards on service excellence. Respect.

So what are adventures made of? What about this… Quitting a perfectly saucy rock festival selling the last day tickets to a black market dealer at a under par price, hitching a ride to an unknown destination, stopping mid way at another unknown place, hunt around a dozen motels without success and spending the night roaming the streets with street walkers, bums and stoners.

Well that about sums up day 2.5 in japan. After a marathon day and night of rebelling at Fuji Rock and suffering at Omiya, at least, I am on a reserved seat to the farthest Shinkansen can take me, Hachinohe. The idea is to get a bit of shut eye on the train and if possible, seek out the peace and quiet I was so looking forward to.

We planned to get to the north end of the island yesterday, but a combination of Jenny, Natsuke and Jaime cullum delayed the proceedings a bit and later we learnt that the trains don’t run in the night and we were stuck stopping at an intermediate point, Sendai, at midnight. I brilliantly suggested that we should get off at the transfer point, Omiya, at a more godly hour of 2200. Well the idea was good but no cigar at the end. Every hotel in sight was booked to the full… We enlisted the help of helpful waiters and waitresses to call every hotel in the directory and the result was the same. More edamame consumed and more disappointment from the hotels.

We however spotted a 24 hr McDonald and after much deliberation decided to bunk there… I got a courtesy 100 jpy yogurt and as it turns out it is a literal bum hangout and the yogurt is the key for admission. Ah well, we spent hour after hour staring at each other, recalling silly seinfeld comedies and trying to see how some feller gets to sleep in the not so comfy chairs. The maintenance guy was a hoot as he made sure he woke up anyone sleeping and asked them not to spoil the business facade… People get up, take a courtesy sip of the yogurt and promptly dozed off. I was not particularly sleepy and just stayed up. The rub came at 0300 when the guy said that the place is closed. What a 24 hr joint closes? Doh…

Post mcD, we headed out for a walk into the town looking for the elusive Internet pub… It was, like I mentioned, 3 in the morning and the groggy walking around the dead streets led us no where… Well the station opened at 30 past 3 and we tired to look around across the station. The station was burning hot inside and we had to run out to the relative cool outside… We found another 24 hr mcD and that was shut down till 5. Not surprising anymore… But this side was lively with more human presence though they were primarily street walkers and pimps. Well an overall poor impression of omiya, I don’t want to diss the town but not a place I will choose to come in a pinch.