Have you been studying Japanese? Are you ready to try to tour Japan independently? Here's how we travel. Maybe you can learn from our mistakes and little victories.
Iwate and Sendai Travel Journal: Thursday, September 19th
In the morning we got onto the JR Kamaishi line which first traveled through canyons, then through yellow fields of ripening rice to Shin Hanamaki. I can’t believe that I missed the horseshoe curve with the view of Rikuchu bridge. Maybe I didn’t notice because we caught an express that didn't stop there. Next time I’ll be checking my GPS.
Golden Ripening Rice Fields
Interior of the KiHa 100 series diesel rail car.
Twin KiHa 110 series diesel railcars at Hanamaki station.
When we arrived at Shin Hanamaki, everything was decorated with stars and galaxies. Then I remembered that this was where SL Ginga ran until 2021. Too bad I missed it. Then I saw references to “Night on the Galactic Railroad” and thought that maybe it was the same thing as “Galaxy Express 999”. But it turned out to be a different author. I heard that Nobita of the Doraemon comics once made the same mistake - not that it’s good to be compared to Nobita. “Night on the Galactic Railroad” was written by Kenji Miyazawa, who was, among other things, a devout Buddhist, and lived in Hanamaki. I thought I didn’t know his work, but then I found out that he wrote “Restaurant of Many Orders. We had read this book in Japanese, albeit the JLPT N4 version of it in a graded reader. It’s a story about hunters who almost become dinner for wildcats. Now this story made sense to me in the context of Buddhism, in that the hunters learned what it might be like to be hunted and eaten. Maybe they became vegetarians after that!
There was a nearby Kenji Miyazawa museum but we thought we might not have enough time to see it before our Shinkansen to Sendai. Besides museums about authors may not be as good as the books by these authors. Across the parking lot from the station was a gift shop and a restaurant. In the gift shop they had copies of Miyazawa’s books, so we got Japanese and English translations of “Restaurant of Many Orders” and “Night on the Galactic Railroad”. Interestingly, the translations were done by the same guy who wrote the book on Tsukiji that we got many years ago. The restaurant above the gift shop was called “Wildcat House”; the same as in the “Restaurant of Many Orders”.
Shin Hanamaki Station Sign
Plaza commemorating Miyazawa's works.
Restaurant of Many Orders
At the station, we used our QR code to pick up our tickets that we purchased on-line at eki.net. Then we hung out on the platform taking videos of the bullet trains blasting through the station at 320 kph. Even in the station, under the tracks, the sudden sound and vibration is unsettling. Since Shin Hanamaki is a minor station, few trains stop. We eventually boarded and had a comfortable one hour ride to Sendai on an E5 Shinkansen running Yamabiko service.
You must have a cash or a credit card + PIN to purchase tickets here, but if you've purchased them in advance on eki.net, you can pick up you tickets with a QR code.
Shinkansen passing through Shin Hanamaki Station
Sendai Station
We had dinner that night in an Italian restaurant in the Sendai station basement; pizza and spaghetti.
