We got up early to go to Zojoji. This temple was the home temple of the Tokugawa Clan during the Edo period. It was walking distance from our hotel and near Tokyo Tower. There were lots of runners out on this Saturday morning. We walked through the massive gate which was covered up with scaffolding for refurbishment. Tokyo Tower loomed over the temple itself. A service was going on in the main hall. We sat and watched for a while. The chanting was beautiful. At times it sounded like a fast paced “Namu Amida Butsu” - the Pure Land sect’s name for the Buddha. We stopped to look at the Jizo statues lined up in the garden beside the temple. They all had new bibs and pinwheels. Some had other toys. Most had fresh flowers. These are memorials to children who had died or were stillborn.
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| Zojoji with Tokyo Tower in the background. |
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| Jizo statues at Zojoji. |
After returning to the Super Hotel to check out, we called a GO taxi, and using the app, we were able to direct the driver to our side of the street. The ride to Tokyo Station's Yaesu exit took us on a road that dove underneath the city streets in many places. It cost about 2500 yen. We had our shinkansen reservation tickets, but we didn’t have our basic fare. I was kind of panicking because there was a huge line at the Midori no Madoguchi. But at one of the ticket vending machines there was an assistant. We told her what we wanted to do, and she said we might be able to buy JR East basic fare tickets from that machine. She walked us through the process and it worked! We were able to pay with our credit card. We went through the crowds, in through the wicket, and up to the platform. ChatGPT said we should be able to buy our bentos on the platform, and sure enough we were. We got got a sushi bento and a Tohoku bento with sample dishes from each of the 6 prefectures in the region.
Riding the metallic green E5 Shinkansen was a dream. I think this was the first time I rode one. Extremely fast, comfortable, a power outlet for each pair of seats, and it had a much better view than the lower deck of the old double-decker E4-Max. And, unlike the Tokaido Shinkansen, the Tohoku Shinkansen has a luggage rack at the restroom end of the car and it also still has a snack cart. One funny thing about riding a bullet train these days is my iphone keeps wanting to verify that I’m not driving. At 200 mph? Are you kidding? One other thing I noticed about getting on the internet on the JR East Shinkansen was that the WiFi isn’t very good. Using Ubigi data was faster and more reliable.
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| Tohoku bento wrapper. |
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| Tohoku bento. |
On arrival at Hachinohe station, we talked to the agent at the Tourist Information Center. We told her what we wanted to see and she used a highlighter on a simplified timetable to show us how to get there. Next we had to take a local train for Hon-Hachinohe, and it wasn’t leaving for a while so we spent some time in a little media lending library on the ground floor of the station. We spent some time leafing through some magazines - Most of it was too hard to read so I just looked at the pictures.
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| Hachinohe Media Lending Library. |
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| KiHa E131 Diesel Multiple Unit at Hachinohe Station. |
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| KiHa E132 Diesel Multiple Unit at Hachinohe Station as seen from the Route Inn Hotel |
We rode the twin KiHa 131 diesel rail cars to the Hon-Hachinohe station and checked in to the Route Inn Hotel. From there it was a short walk to an izakaya called “Hakkoda” - the name of a famous mountain in the region. It was run by an older couple. “Master” prepared meals in between smoking cigarettes. He was a big, friendly guy and he kind of loomed over you while you ate - I guess making sure you liked it. We asked for a fish-only “Osusume” (chef’s choice) meal. He asked if we wanted cooked or raw, and we said raw is fine. He made an excellent sashimi plate with some good side dishes that I think his wife made. It was only about $9. Got an introduction to Myoga. What an excellent new flavor. We recognized it later at the farmers’ market. At one point I asked the chef for something and he replied “ryokai” (roger that!). There were some cool airshow posters around the place and a marine SDF calendar on the wall, so I wonder if he had some kind of military connection.
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| Menu at Hakkoda |
