Day 8 - Scenic train, Akita and the mall to get lost in

Woke up pretty early to a rainy, little chilly, Aomori. We were in the northern most part of the main island, and that was more evident than ever with the June rainy season chill in the air. I was hungry for breakfast and refused to pay the outlandish price (I believe it was something like 2,600Y per person) for the hotel offerings, so I went for a walk by myself to find a konbini or really any place that could provide anything to eat. Walking to the left side of our hotel, there was a main shopping arcade (mostly with a covering over the walking area, which was nice in the rain), but sadly nothing was open there yet. After going down 5-6 blocks and only seeing the occasional jogger or person walking their dog, I decided to head back down and go the opposite direction from our hotel, facing the tourist center once again. I happened by a larger konbini (the kind that even had a parking lot) less that two blocks in this direction and was able to precure the "normal" of boiled eggs, muffin/bread items and a juice or two. This is just enough to hold us off until a larger meal, but always helped to supplement the absurd amount of water I had to drink before really heading out to start the day.

On this trip, I always took the time to breath in the fresh air and take a little deeper look around the area(s) we stayed in. The quieter moments are what I find myself treasuring the most out of the safe Japan streets. I could never walk around a main town in the US by myself with next to nobody around and feel like this. The random torii gates and shrines provide me with a certain sense of connection and appreciation as well.  After returning to the hotel, downing "breakfast" and demonstrating my perfected ability of repacking into two backpacks, off we were. By the time all of us made it outside to trek for the train station it was legitimately raining, what would turn out to be one of the heaviest downpours we'd get stuck in the entire trip. I'd be lying if I said it was "no big deal". I tried to hail a cab to get around the issue, but we had no luck and were in enough of a rush with confusion as to "exactly" what station we were starting the scenic train from that we just wanted to get on and be able to relax again. We were all pretty much soaked through by the end of the 15 minute walk with fully packed bags on our back and it wasn't pretty. Throw into the fray that we were confused what station our scenic train started from as there were two "Aomori" stations and the signs in the station we were using seemed to say the scenic train ran from the one a stop away station "Aomori" and not "Shin-Aomori" from which we were staying near. We felt that the sign would have the correct information and headed over to that station (during rush hour, which was busy, but not Tokyo busy) only to not understand where it was an ask the station manager. He explained it started from multiple lines depending on the stop on your ticket and ours, was in fact, for the "Shin-Aomori" station we original went to and just came from. Oops! Back we went, as we were slowing naturally drying out, to the original station. Luckily, we still had about 15 minutes in our pocket, but it wasn't enough to truly feel comfortable to stop and eat or do anything leisurely. 

We were, in fact, now in the right place and the train pulled up exactly on time. In the back of my mind I was both relieved and worried. None of us had much more then a konbini snack and this was a "scenic train" we'd be on for about 5 1/2 hours, until 2PM or so, well past lunch time. I wasn't sure if there would be any stops or snack service on such a train and our snack bag didn't have too much left in it... The train itself was "old style", but very spacious and had a real charm to it. As everything was in Japan, even if it looked old, it was very clean. 

We timed this so there wouldn't be too high of demand (no fall foliage or cherry blossoms to see right now) during a weekday morning and got just that. There weren't more than 3 or 4 people in our back car at any given time during the ride and generally speaking we could use the larger observation seating (seen in the second picture) at any time. The train "turned" several times so our back would become the front, which made for optimal viewing. There were several artisan's that came on board for a few stops to sell wares, we got a cute hand carved lion for Terra, but sadly no handmade meals!

Queue the picture dump here (maybe I'll make an album eventually). We were on this one train the entire time, it was a "train" day to say the least. Not my optimal cup of tea, but both Terra and Matt were really enjoying themselves and that was great. The amount of pictures taken were proof enough of that. It was a relaxing enough ride, I enjoyed being able to walk around the car and seeing the ocean for a good bit of the journey. We ended up stopping twice, once for a very brief picture chance (5 minutes or so) and another where we could swear he said "15 minutes", but I think it ended up being 30 or so? It was at a rocky beach area and there was small rest house I could swear there might even have been food at, but I was too chicken to stay away from the train that long. We stuck with the other passengers when it came to walking around the beach and taking pictures and then scuttled back as soon as we saw the first few people leave. In hindsight, I'm pretty sure it was 30 minutes and we could've gotten food, but who knows. Oh yeah, food? There basically was none, so there was that too. If you ever plan on a long train journey, I'm going to state it again, BRING FOOD. The bento boxes are at the stations for a reason! They did luckily have a small food/snack stand that was self serve, so we had some cookies, chips and chocolates, but actual lunch would have been much tastier. Oh, and these little apple pie things, local for Aomori. I was thankful for those and they were really good!

At the end of this scenic journey was Akita. Oddly enough, though they advertise it EVERYWHERE and it's the first thing you see when you walk off the train, it's not that easy to meet an Akita Inu (dog) here! There is a small section of the station (like, gated?) where they bring one to great people one weekday and one Saturday a week for a few hours and then a side station, about 20 minutes from this main station where you can meet them via a window greeting and buy merchandise a few times a week for limited hours and that's it. The main "area" of Akita PREFECTURE (there is both a city and prefecture at play here) that centers around the dogs is called Odate, and actually 2-3 hours away from the city of Akita. Once I found this out while planning the scenic train portion of this trip, we knew there was no way we could get Odate to work, so here we were, working with what we had. Which really wasn't too bad!

The hotel we were at for the night only needed to be two things (1)- close to the stations and (2)-have laundry facilities. Hotel Metropolitan Akita turns out to be one of the swanky places I still couldn't believe was under $100USD/night. To stay at a place half as nice as this in the US would cost 3x or more, especially given that is was attached to both a large mall and train station. The service here was the first time we dealt with what felt like true English speaking staff and they obliged to every request with a smile. I almost felt bad as they were so willing to help and you simply don't tip in Japan! We were able to drop our bags off with them since we arrived early and then immediately head out to get some real food to eat. 

Being overly hungry and in a complex of malls (Fonte and OPA) surrounding Akita station turned out to be my least favorite stop of the trip. It was confusing, easy to get lost and crowded. Due to these facts we were all a bit cranky and ended up at a MOS burger, which was below ideal. The burgers here were small and greasy, the fries barely passable, but it was food. I didn't "dislike" Akita, we barely made it out of this city center in the 20 hours we stayed to be fair, but it simply wasn't my favorite. It still had some residential, canals and Japan feels nearby. We were able to hit up our first Animate of the trip, stop by a handful of Gatcha machines and Terra decided to beg for Baskin Robbins ice cream after we had lunch. It had been a long day, which likely had something to do with the amount of times I circled the mall trying to get to/from our room, find food, do laundry and finally rest. I don't think I spent more than an hour awake in this hotel room before it was time to be done for the night. 

Before ending the day, I'd like to dive into the area just a bit more. The hotel only had 3 "all in one" laundry machines (they wash and dry), but they required coins and were all the way through the lobby and nearly out the door to the back alley. It would've been super sketchy for anywhere except Japan. The dryer (which is normal) took FOREVER to dry and did annoy me as I didn't have enough coins to get it going again at one point. Also turned out to be a vending machine wasteland (which meant we had to walk 2 blocks to find one and get coins instead of 10 feet, lol). While waiting for it to dry, I took Terra back into the connected mall where we purchased pork buns for dinner. I had been waiting for good "homestyle" steamed buns the entire trip and these were not a disappointment. Thought it was funny the salesman gave us samples and tried his best English to explain to us what they were, we knew and were already buying them when we came up to the counter! Ha!

Anyway, laundry, dinner in the room and crashing was all that was left for the night. Oh, and a discussion on how we were going to chicken out of the beach house for day 9. I'll start the next day with how that shakes out.