Jawaad Mahmood in Tokyo

Kanazawa to Sapporo is a long trip – even in a best case scenario, it won’t take less than 13 hours and 43 minutes to travel 1600 kilometers. The majority of the distance (Echigoyuzawa -> Saitama -> Hachinohe) is on the Shinkansen. However, a majority of the time is on small trains; the White Wing (Hakutaka) from Kanazawa to Echigoyuzawa, the Hakucho (Swan) from Hachinohe and the Hokuto (Northeast) from Hakodate to Sapporo. From the window, I managed to snap a couple of pictures – people who I would never meet, places I would never see. What is Itoigawa? Any stories behind Saigata? What are their stories and the ambitions of the people who live there? Maybe I will never know.

The trip from Kanazawa starts in the Hakutaka. 261 kilometers in about two and a half hours would bring me to Echigoyuzawa, from where I had less than 10 minutes to switch from train to train. This, in of itself was a beautiful journey – if not for the constant construction. Passing along water ways and seafront developments, you get to see the Japan Alps, the beautiful waterfront which is exquisitely cultivated, and the small towns scattered all along the way.

Itoigawa is apparently a beautiful city, from what I read. Holding 51,900 souls after a municipal merger in March 2005, it is on the west end of a tectonic fault line that lies between itself and Shizuoka. There is a picturesque cliffside park which is called Oyashirazu – literally meaning “Not knowing one’s parents”. It is said that Oyashirazu is a location which split Japan’s cultures in half, between the lands to its east and the lands to its west.

親知らず、子はこの浦の波枕、越路の磯の泡と消え行く
(Won’t even try to translate it, sorry, Japanese poetry about the origin of the name Oyashirazu)Oyashirazu’s name has several origins attirbuted to it – the main one being that the original path past Oyashirazu was so teacherous that in rough weather a child would hang on for dear life without paying heed to his parents, and vice versa. In some cases, the legend extends to a noblewoman searching for Yorimori Taira, a defeated soldier of the Taira family who lived in seclusion there, who subsequently loses her child due to the waves and writes a Haiku in comemoration. Perhaps it is an irony that in another 6 years Japan Railways intends to extend bullet train service to Itoigawa through the newly planned Hokuriku Shinkansen Line. (Such a line would ahve cut my 2.5 hour trip to 50 minutes, but that is another story)

Here I pass by Saigata train station. The sign is not the normal JR line sign – rather the station is used by both the Hokuetsu Express Corporation and Japan Railways. Saigata station is found in Jouetsu City, an amalgamation of 15 different cities (2 in 1971, 13 in 2005).

Jouetsu holds the record for snowfall in Japan, nearly 4 meters in 1945 – it is little wonder that skiing was first introduced to Japan in Jouetsu! (Although you wouldn’t guess judging from that pic I guess )

I probably had just reached Hachinohe when taking this picture.

Part of the far north of Japan, once collectively known as “Michinoku”, it now serves as a train hub – and the last stop of the Bullet Train (for now). Now it is nothing more than a glorified fish processing plant, with rumblings of becoming an industrial/IT hub.

Although I have no pictures of Hakodate, the main entry point to Hokkaido from mainland Japan, I would be amiss if I didn’t mention that the famous Shinsengumi who guarded the last Shogun were utterly defeated here, with their lord Hijikata Toshizo dying from a bullet wound which shattered his spine.

Finally, a grueling 15 hours later, here is Sapporo – the capital of Hokkaido, and very much like a certain dirty little city back in Canada that I call home. That, however, is a story for another day.

P.S. – Any long distance rail traveller will appreciate this pictures for reasons they know all too well.