Train Circuit

Excited for his journey on the resort train

Today was our last day, continuing our theme of having easy days not doing much, we decided to spend it on....trains.  We had spotted a local 'resort' train, Resort Shirakami, earlier in the week and Matt had booked us tickets.

Mr Kinura drove us to the nearest station where it stops.  It arrived on time and we got ourselves settled.  The train had huge big windows and the scenery was amazing.  We got a proper view of Mt Iwaki today - no clouds, but plenty of haze, but even so it was good to finally see it.  We travelled past loads of apple orchards, some apples were wrapped up in paper bags - I'm guessing to do with keeping the colour right etc.   Then we headed to the coast (Japan Sea coast) and we hugged the coast for a good 2 hours.  We were treated to a shamisen performance and sing-a-long (well if you knew the words!)  Here the train slowed down so we could take in the scenery.  It even stopped at one station to let us all off the train and wonder down to the shore.  This was the spot where a famous poet comes from - so there was a dedication to him which people were crowding round - obviously no interest for us, so we looked out to see and were hoping to see a shark or whale or something, not to be though.

The elusive Mt. Iwaki

The train then hooted 3 times and we all got back on again.  We trundled through the scenery, there were loads of rice fields which were attracting lots of birds.  The most common was a long necked white bird with a long beak, we aren't sure what they are, but they looked like storks / herons.  We also saw lots of birds of prey.  In fact we were all glued to the windows, watching the world go by ad enjoying the rural scenery and nature, a very pleasant way to spend 3 hours.

Our posh train at Senjōjiki station

At the end of the scenic part of the trip we hopped off the train and waited for the Tsugaru Limited Express to take us back to Hirosaki.  Once again the scenery was beautiful, as we went through a virgin beech forest (World Heritage site) looked down over vallies, enjoyed watching the wildlife in the rice fields etc.  At one point Matt yelled out sharply!  I thought he had forgotten his computer or something, but it turns out he saw a brown bear down by a river.  No-one else saw it, but we believe him, he was overjoyed and alarmed all at the same time (I wouldn't be surprised if the bear heard him shout!)

Hottest onsen of the trip

We got back to Hirosaki around 3, and then got the bus back to our house.  I then sent Matt and Tom out to play baseball whilst I packed the three suitcases.  This time trying to even out the load so they weigh the same (turned out I did good, 13.1kg, 13.3kg and 16.3kg - considering our suitcases vary greatly in size I was quite impressed!)

Mr Kimura took us to the onsen for 5pm.  This time we had booked a family bath as the boys were feeling sorry for me always having to go by myself.  The problem with doing a family bath is that you don’t get the range of baths you get when you have a regular onsen, but for me I have someone to share it with and talk to.  We had already been to the main onsen so we weren’t ‘missing out’ by having a family bath.

With the lovely Mr. and Mrs. Kimura

We got to our room and went in - the first room had sofas and a tv in it.  Good start, then a changing room, and then the shower and bath room.  We opened the room to the bath and wow, the heat hit us, this was going to be a hot one.  Tom got in first, he pulled a face as he lowered his body in.  He turned red pretty quickly.  Then Matt braved it - he confirmed that it was quite hot.  I was last and yes it was hot, hot, hot.  None of us could stand it for too long, so we spent the hour going in, coming out, dousing ourselves in cold water, having a sit on the sofa, and then going back in again.  An hour was more than enough and as you can see from the photo we all had comedy red faces by the end of it.

A bit of miso ramen for tea

Mr Kimura picked us up at the pre-arranged time and took us back home.  We then went out looking for tea.  We had decided on Ramen as there was a ramen shop quite close to the house and we all had floppy legs after the onsen, but when we got there, we found it closed - they had run out of soup!!!!!   We then walked until we found something, the only restaurant we could find was a Chinese, so that is what we went for.  Tom had an enormous bowl of ramen, Matt had fried rice (he missed the karage on the menu much to his disgruntlement) and I had mahboh tofu which is a dish I’ve always wondered about (sort of spicy savoury mince and chopped up tofu in a sauce) I quite enjoyed it although think they were a little heavy handed on the old msg.

We then walked back to the house, got a photo taken of all of us together and gave them the last Ingleton pebble to pass on.  Then bed for Tom and whisky, dodgy cheese and chat for us.