In the morning it was really raining. We checked out and we found that we had a bill for the two Asahi beers, so I guess the abalone last night was just them being nice, and not because we didn’t order beer on the second night. I’m not quite sure. Sometimes things happen in Japan which are just inexplicable.
We had signed up for a shuttle to the station, but because it was just the two of us, the hotel paid for a taxi.
Back on the Sanriku line, I couldn’t help but notice how many cemeteries with relatively new looking gravestones we passed. There were also clusters of what looked like prefabricated houses. All signs of the 3.11 tsunami. We were soon in Kamaishi. The station was across the street from the huge Nippon Steel plant which continuously belched steam into the air. There was a building near the station called Sea Plaza Kamaishi that could have been an office space, but it was filled with stores and restaurants. I wondered if some of these were shops that had their original location destroyed by the tsunami. There was a used bookstore that had a big magazine display out front, with lots of craft magazines and some pretty old railroad magazines. Andrea bought a craft magazine, and I bought a railroad magazine from the ‘60s.
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| Sanriku Railway with a mascot headmark. Kiku-kun represents the government's Administrative Counseling service which listens (hence Kiku-kun's big ears) to citizens' grievances and opinions. |
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| One of the disaster recovery public housing projects along the Rias line. |
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| The Nippon Steel factory across from Kamaishi Station |
We had lunch at the Naniwa Cafe run by a really nice lady. The place was decorated with framed jigsaw puzzles, nik-naks, and the meal was served on mismatched floral patterned dishes. Not your typical Japanese restaurant. I’m kind of guessing that the owner had lost everything in the tsunami, relocated to the Sea Plaza, and then got plates and dishes and decorations from wherever she could. Naniwa, the name of the cafe, could be read as “difficult wave”. Could it be that it was a reference to the tsunami? When we left, the owner said “Okini” - which is “thank you” in the Osaka dialect. Naniwa is also a nickname for Osaka. Maybe that’s the more likely explanation, but it could be an intentional double meaning.
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| This shrimp tempura meal at Naniwa really hit the spot. |
We stashed our suitcases in a coin locker in the station, and caught a taxi to the Dai-Kanon Temple. It’s a huge statue of Kannon Bodhisattva looking out over the bay and holding a fish in her arms. I can imagine fishers returning from a long sea voyage, and the first thing they see is this statue, welcoming home. Inside there are many other Kannon statues, and statues of the seven lucky gods as you climb the winding staircases. From the top of the stairs you stand on the fish looking out over the bay. In an adjacent building, there was an exhibit of Buddhist art from south and southeast Asia, but we didn’t spend too much time there, partly because it was pretty hot inside for some reason. We went outside and tried to walk back down the road we came up in the taxi, we got a scolding because it had no shoulder and was dangerous. Instead there was a walkway out the back. We decided to walk to the Iron & Steel Museum. On the way, we descended a long stairway, then followed a trail which took us through a run-down shopping street that was mostly abandoned. It was like something out of Spirited Away. Google reviews say this place was once lively 33 years ago. We then followed a weed-grow path and up to another stairway to the main road and to the museum.
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| The 48.5 meter tall Kannon statue holding a fish and gazing out over Kamaishi bay. |
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| Looking out over Kamaishi bay and its restored breakwater. |
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| Sediment washed up from the tsunami is stored in mounds here. |
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| Some of the 33 statues of different forms of Kannon Bohisattva inside the Dai-Kannon statue. |
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| Fukurokuju, one of the Seven Lucky Gods. He is a god of longevity and happiness. |
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| Mostly Shuttered Kamaishi Daikannon Nakamise Shopping Street. |
Again we were the only ones in the museum. Unlike the abandoned shopping street, the museum was clean and modern. They loaned us headsets so we could see the introductory movie in English. My guess is that the museum is supported by Nippon Steel - the town’s big employer, and it hosts school field trips so the kids can learn about the factory where papa works. The history of the ironworks was interesting, but I would have liked to have seen more about how a modern steel mill works. There was an interesting display about how the breakwaters were rebuilt after the tsunami. Strangely, on the top floor there was a huge, and I mean huge replica of a prehistoric sea floor encrusted with fossil ammonites. Ammonites are like huge squids with curly shells. They are often found in iron-rich sedimentary rock, so maybe that’s the connection. After we were done we asked the staff to call a taxi for us. When they called the taxi company, they spelled our name letter by letter, with katakana phonemes, and adding 様, giving us a very polite honorific.
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| Various steel products. |
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| Wall of Ammonites |
A female driver picked us up. We asked if she could wait for us at the station while we picked up our luggage, and then take us to the Route Inn hotel. She said yes, and radioed in the change-of-plan to the dispatcher. He respond with りょかい - roger that - the second time I’d heard someone use that expression on our trip.
At the hotel we did our one and only wash night. The laundry room had an industrial gas dryer, and 300 yen for 30 minutes gets your clothes plenty dry. It wasn’t like some of those other driers in Japan where you have to keep feeding it 100 yen coins all night. We got our dinner from Lawson which included my favorite pancakes with margarine and maple syrup. I also finished off the Sansa Apples that I got at the Universe market in Kuji. On our walk to Lawson, we passed a building with a sign up three or four meters from the sidewalk marking the height of the 3.11 tsunami.
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| Walking back to our hotel from Lawson. |
