Lost without 'er

Alas, I'm not (this time, at least) lamenting about the lack of beautiful women in northern Akita...nay, this post is more me reminiscing on how fucked I'd be without my car. See, I got to experience this for the last couple days, and it was exciting, to say the least.

It started with me returning from Tokyo, a long and arduous journey of about 5-6 hours by train and sometimes bus. To make a long story slightly shorter, I had taken a different route than I usually do to get to Tokyo, and so while I was able to get back home just fine, my car was parked at my friend's house in Aikawa, about an hour's drive away. My plan was to pick it up the following day.
Now, in most of Japan, the solution to this would be simple - take a train to Aikawa and drive my car back to Kosaka. Kosaka is so close to the ass-end of nowhere, though, that it doesn't have trains. Until just a few months ago we had a freight train that made a few stops here a day, and trust me, I would have seriously considered stealthily hitching a ride on it had it not already gone the way of the dodo. As it stood, though, my only apparent option was the (ludicrously overpriced ~$8 to a city 25km away!) bus.
It was evening, but the buses - *cough* according to the schedule, anyway - run to Odate (I was going to meet some friends there and hitch a ride back to Aikawa) as late as 7:something. I got on the last bus and rode along happily for maybe 20 or 30 minutes, content that the evening was going well so far. Aaaaaaaaand then the feces hit the fan. I was the only person on the bus as it pulled over at one of its stops, an onsen (hot spring) in between Kosaka and Odate.

Bus Driver: Yukisawa Onsen, final stop!
Me: *WTF* Erm, final stop?
BD: That's correct.
Me: Um, according to the schedule in Kosaka, this bus goes to Odate station.
BD: No sir, this bus goes back to Kosaka now.
Me: Okaaaay, ah, I don't have a car and I was going to meet some people in Odate this evening...
BD: Not to worry, Odate's not far. Just walk down this road (he points to the road the bus normally travels on) and you'll be there in no more than an hour.
Me: An hour.
BD: Yup.
Me: And you can't go as far as Odate, even the edge of the city.
BD: No, my route goes back to Kosaka now.
Me, thinking: What fucking route? There's no one riding, and it's the end of the night, AND the schedule in Kosaka lists this bus as going to Odate, just like every other one does!
Me: ...
Me, finally speaking: I see. An hour. Understood. I'll be off then.

I glared daggers at him, and a string of expletives that would have made Chevy Chase blush ran through my head...but "negotiating" with Japanese people who think they are just following the rules is less effective than trying to burn ice. I set out on my cross-country trek, hoping but not really believing I'd be in central Odate within the hour.

If this had been a wide city road with stoplights, sidewalks, and the like, this whole task would have been a cinch. The "if" at the beginning of that last sentence probably clued you in, though, that this was not the case. Nay, the Jukai Line between Kosaka and Odate is a winding 1-lane nightmare on which people of questionable driving skills (and sometimes, sobriety) travel at speeds that would make an SR-71 Blackbird green with envy. Oh, and it was night.
I tried to walk along the side of the road at first, but after being passed (and possibly almost killed) by a few vehicles, I decided against this method of travel and detoured to the now defunct railroad, along which my journey continued. The railroad more or less traveled alongside the car road, generally staying within 50 meters or so of it, so even if it went to a different ultimate destination I was confident that it would get me where I needed to be. Eventually. With the flashlight on my cell phone I was able to make steady progress. Technically this was illegal, walking along the railway, but there are really no cops around here and I wasn't so much in the mood for dying on someone's hood, so it seemed like a fine option.
It was, for the most part, except that surrounded by darkness and forest as I was, I did not realize that I was going up a slight but steady incline, until...
What you're seeing here is a sign that reads "Do Not Enter." It was affixed to a small barrier in the railroad which I could easily step over, and then...a rail bridge. Yes, the narrow kind that has no railings on either side and spans a gap. I really wish I could have gotten a good picture of this, but my camera-phone-thing is just not quite that awesome. Due to the darkness I couldn't ascertain the exact depth of said gap, but based on the treetops I saw below me, I gathered that falling off would be kind of lethal-ish. The other side was probably about 15 or 20 meters away. This left me with an interesting choice to make. Admit defeat, turn back, and walk all the way back to Kosaka? Or risk life and limb to accomplish a near-pointless goal that could easily be stalled one day and attempted again in a far safer fashion? The correct choice was obvious.
Mercifully, the bridge had an iron grate running over the wooden beams that criss-crossed the rails. I considered for a moment that until recently it had supported the weight of an entire diesel train engine on a daily basis. Yeah, it could probably handle my 80kg. Flashlight up, I proceeded into the gloom.
As I am not publishing this blog from the afterlife (or a hospital bed, for that matter), you can probably guess how it went. Just put one foot in front of the other foot, then put your foot down, down, down...
That was the last really exciting part of my journey. The rest involved walking, more walking, and some walking, too. I actually left the tracks when I arrived at a small village on the outskirts of Odate and used the roads there for a bit. 9pm, my scheduled time to meet with my peeps in Odate, was swiftly approaching, though, and I knew that I still had a ways to go. Crap. I honestly didn't expect my cell phone to get a signal out there, but miraculously it came through for me. I had paused at a rest stop - well, really just a parking lot with an outhouse and a few of Japan's ubiquitous vending machines - to get some refreshing and refueling
and was in the middle of a conversation with my friends, asking if they could come and pick me up, when a some random old guy appeared, practically out of nowhere (really, I think he may have just materialized from the mists lingering over the rice fields), and hesitantly asked me if I was having some trouble. We quickly established that I speak Japanese, and I gave him the short version of my evening's adventures. "Odate?" he asked. "That's no more than 10 minutes away. My car's right over here; let me give you a ride."
Turns out he saw me from his home at the edge of the aforementioned outskirt village and walked the block or so to the rest stop to see if I was lost. He didn't realize from a distance that I was a foreigner, and admitted that he was quite surprised when he got closer and realized that I was like four meters taller than him. He was kind enough to drop me off at a strip mall in Odate, and earned major Brownie Points (and a spare Minnesota post card I had in my bag) for his troubles.
...You know, I think I kind of like countries where people trust random strangers they meet at night not to knife them and steal everything they own.

Our phone has chickens

I kid you not. One of the phones in the teachers' office here occasionally cries out (or crows? caws? Cock-a-doodle-dos? I'm not really sure how to describe it) with a variety of animalistic noises that amount to one of the funniest mechanical failures I have seen in years. I've heard everything from a dull purr to a flat out rooster call, and I honestly wouldn't be shocked at this point if it teaches itself to roar like a lion.

Things have been...well, not dull around here recently, not exactly. I think “scattered” might be a word for it. I've had a number of small events and occurrences that strike me as worthy of mention at the time, but I have the short-term memory of a goldfish, so often I...hey, a keyboard! Where'd that come from...?

I've been terrible about updating this thing recently, and I know it. Every time I sit down and try to write, something somewhere somehow happens. It also doesn't help that this site is no longer accessible from work, thank you new site blocker. Sure, I can write entries in a word doc and post them from home later, but generating ideas is only made more difficult when I can't see what I've previously written.

So, what has happened in my life recently that matters? I last wrote about graduation, and I'm sad to see my sannensei gone, particularly since all the smart ones are now going to high school in neighboring cities, so pretty much no chance of me running into them. After graduation came spring break, and my first visit from home. Melissa and I bummed around this area for a bit, went to a lot of hot springs (this area is known for them) and then traveled south, passing through one of the more beautiful areas of Japan I've been to so far. Yes, here comes the photo album:

Here you are seeing Dewa Sanzan, three mountains sacred to Japan's Shinto faith. Well, you're not so much seeing the mountains per se, since the amount of snow remaining on the ground made two of them inaccessible, but the third one is a bit more tame, involving a walk through the forest and then a mere 2,446 steps to the summit. We completed that hike in a lazy, meandering two or three hours, though it supposedly only takes an hour if you don't dawdle. But why ever would we want to do that?

Damn hippie liberals...

I, too, long for the day when I might smoke a clean and tender heart. Wait, what??!

The blooming of sakura (cherry blossoms) in Japan has moved way beyond national pastime to something more like "frenzied obsession." Every year their blooming is calculated to the day in each region, and Japanese crowd the parks in hordes to stare, marvel, socialize, and often times drink themselves into hopeless oblivion. It's all in the name of living in harmony with nature, though, so who's to complain?

Now, don't get me wrong, they are pretty and all...but to me (and, I suspect, the majority of foreign guys here) it's really just an excuse to get stark raving drunk and flirt with Japanese women.

And back up north, where there is still tons of snow on the ground. On a little nature sojourn near the School in the Sky, a few of my elementary students discovered vines hanging from some of the trees. The vines were rather dead, but still strong enough to support them...your mileage may vary if you are not a 60 lb. Japanese child, though (see below).

Having experienced the beginning of a new school year, I now actually have quite a bit more to write about, but I'm going to leave that to the next post (which won't take a month to get written, I promise!). More important to get this one out there for now, so people stop bugging me about it.