Day 9 and 10: Niigata and Sadogashima

I would live in Niigata. Sitting just off the Sea of Japan, the city is beautiful and modern balancing well the dichotomy of old and new, nature and man-made. There's a river that intersects the town and splitting the Old Town from the newer side just off the JR Station. 

In the summer, the locals drink along the river and watch the sun set into the the distant mountains and sea. If not for the devastatingly cold winters, Noigata would be perfect. 

Sadogashima is Japan's second largest island outside of the Big Four. It's a two-hour ferry ride away from Niigata port. Back in the days of Shoguns and Samurais, people who fell outside of favor of the central government were often exiled to Sadogashima. Despite its tremendous beauty (azure blue skies, verdant mountains, rice fields like green seas) I wonder if the JETs there don't feel a bit exiled themselves from modern life. 

It was a beautiful place worth going to nonetheless. 

Day 8: Dead towns on way to Yamagata

Sometimes the Tohoku region can feel like the rust belt of the US. Maybe these cities and towns in their heyday -- in the early 80s and 90s, when the economy was booming and the population was still on an upward trajectory -- were thriving. Maybe couples strolled the shotengai hand in hand while gazing into shops full of customers and helpful store owners. 

But those days are decades in the past. 

The local citizenry has aged and the young folk continue to flock to the big cities at the first opportunity. There's a conspicuous dearth of people in their 20s and 30s, you know, people who can choose where they live. What's left are rusted shutters on main thoroughfares, the last vestige of a time before AEON malls.

Maybe these small towns were never great to begin with, but at least they weren't depressing.

At least the pear juice was sweet and the ramen had depth. 

It was Mountain Day, a fitting time to ride the rails through Yamagata. 

Day 7: Akita, Shimohama beach

Today was a relaxing day full of the beach and good food. 

Beaches in Shizuoka are of the rocky and trashy variety so it was good to see unspoiled sand and water and blue skies. 

The karaage-don I had was surprisingly crispy, the udon was chewy, the soup of Suehiro's ramen had remarkable depth, and the yakitori place for dinner was local, smoky, cheap: good. 

It was a good day full of the beach and good food. 

Day 5 and 6: Aomori, Akita

In the morning, we made our way up to Aomori, a place I've always wanted to see, one of those no-nothing towns I've always imagined as a cool destination with its own unique vibe. 

The Blue Forest is known for cold winters, apples, and being the northern most point of Honshuu. After spending a day there, unfortunately I can't think of much else to recommend it. Even the delicious milk curry ramen I had (the only place with any signs of life downtown) is made by a family with roots in Sapporo. 

The two apples I ate were powdery,but the apple cider was strong and rich in flavor. 

There's not much reason to stay in Aomori except to say that you dodged a bullet by putting it as your third preference in your JET application and not your second. 

We missed the much ballyhooed Nebuta Festival by a day. 

The next day we got the hell out of dodge and left for Akita, land of the Akita Bijin (beautiful women). 

Coming from Aomori, Akita City was a metropolis full of dreams and adventure and beautiful people. That's one of the things that has been sorely lacking since going north of Sendai: young people, specifically the ones in their mid-20s to 30s who could leave the area but choose to make a home of it in Tohoku. 

The Happinets basketball team. The B. League is the greatest. 

Day 3 and 4: Matsushima, Ishinomaki, Morioka

From Sendai we took a train to Ishinomaki with a quick stop in Matsushima to look at the small islands in the sea. The oysters at Matsushima were small, overpriced and under-flavored but the view was worth the detour. 

The main goal for the day was to see Ishinomaki, where my friend J lived and worked on the JET Programme and, of course, where the tsunami was at its most devastating. 

The town has bounced back resiliently in five years but you can still see the massive toll the wall of water took on the town. A concrete foundation naked to the sky where a house one stood; a single home that somehow remains standing despite the ruins of a neighborhood around but abandoned, the owners either long gone or long dead. 

While walking towards the Manga Museum -- still intact -- I saw a high school girl walking over the bridge towards her home. I couldn't help but wonder how many of her friends and family might have perished. How many people she once knew washed away by the angry sea. At one elementary school near the water's edge, something north of 70 students out of 100 total were pulled into the freezing waters that day.  

There are signs of new life in the town. On the island where the museum stands, a pop-up oyster stand sprang up and, unlike in Matsushima, the oysters were fresh and briny and plump and delicious. 

A five minute walk from there was a lot of food trucks called The Commons, started by a bunch of 20-somethings who came to Ishinomaki as volunteers after the earthquake and stayed to help sustain the local economy with good, low-frills food and a place for tourists and locals to mingle. The girl who runs the taco rice stand is named Nao. She was friendly and radiant with a great smile. I would have married her on the spot over my plate of rice had she been willing. 

The food truck community will only be open another year or so due to a muddled agreement with the landowner, so make sure to stop by soon if you get the chance. 

After the sobering reality of Ishinomaki, we jettisoned our way up to Morioka, but not before a stop in Ichinoseki where we saw another festival, making it four in three days. 

Morioka is a nice provincial town in Iwate Prefecture, a place that's known for its cold weather, tiny bowls of wanko udon and not much else. It's a vibrant enough town though with a fun-looking downtown. I imagine had the Jet Programme placed me there I would've been perfectly happy to live in the capital of the prefecture, cold and non-descript as it may be. 

The next day Brian and I boarded a train for Tazawako in neighboring Akita Prefecture. We rented bikes and rode the 20 kilometers around the clear blue lake, the deepest in Japan. 

We met a friendly girl from Malaysia who was traveling and camping alone in the woods of Tohoku, and other than the not-friendly bus driver and staff at the information center, I have only good things to say about the lake. 

While walking around Morioka after an exceedingly delicious meal of jia jia men, we ran into one more Tanabata Festival, my third of the year and the fifth matsuri overall in four days. 

Tomorrow we head to Aomori. A place I chose as my third preference for placement on JET.