If it's Wednesday, this must be Morioka

Wednesday 21st April














This photo is of me enjoying the cutest little can of Sapporo Beer last night (Cheers, Matt!!)






We're starting to get a bit confused about what day it is at the moment, but as the only cure for that is getting back to the Monday to Friday routine, we'll put up with it for now.
As we were on the train for most of the day, we only have a few photos taken from the train window (not the ideal way to get a good photo). They do give a bit of an idea of the scenery that we passed, so here they are.


We arrived early at the Sapporo Railway Station as planned and after a false start, managed to line up in the right place for the unreserved carriage. It turned out that the carriage had very few people in it, but that wasn't a gamble we wanted to take, as this leg of the journey took 3 1/2 hours and we didn't fancy doing it standing up.
We had to change trains in four minutes at Hakodate, which would have been quite OK except, for the first time in all of our train journeys, the carriage numbers were not marked on the outside of the carriages. A massive swarm of passengers was disgorged from one train and headed across the platform for the other one which was waiting - and then we all started walking rapidly in all directions trying to work out which carriage to get in. We had a seat booked in carriage 6 which could have been one end or the other. Eventually we had to ask and managed to find our seat. The first half of our carriage was occupied by some young high school children on an excursion so it was quite lively until they reached their station.
We were rather puzzled when going through the undersea tunnel between Hokkaido and Honshu. For some reason which remains a mystery, the train stopped at the Tappi Undersea Railway Station, 230 metres below sea level. As far as we could see, nobody got on and nobody got off and it all felt a bit odd. I was very pleased when we started moving again, as a tunnel under the sea is not one of my favourite holiday destinations.
When we surfaced on the Honshu side of the tunnel, we immediately began to notice the change in terrain. Whereas Hokkaido was still mostly snow-covered, or at least slushy from the melting snow, Honshu had drier rice paddies and people were out and about doing the preparations for the coming season. There was still snow in the mountains, and the occasional clump of unmelted snow by the side of the tracks, but generally spring has sprung in Honshu. On tomorrow's trip back to Tokyo, we will pass back through the cherry blossom front. We think that we might have seen one tree in bloom today, but we're expecting a feast of blossom tomorrow.
Morioka is cold, but not the 'to the marrow' kind of cold that we experienced in Hokkaido. The forecast for Tokyo is for 12, 13 and 14 degrees for the next three days, and then gradually becoming warmer over the next few days. Yes, once we've left! That'd be right!
We had dinner in an Italian pasta place tonight and found that it was more expensive and less satisfying than the Japanese meals we've been enjoying. We therefore just had to follow it with an ice cream and a sultana bun. There were some interesting flavours of ice cream to choose from including pumpkin, green tea, black bean, red bean and broccoli. We settled for a strawberry and a blueberry.
Back at the hotel, we switched on the TV and found a program which was discussing bowel problems in Japanese women, including little cartoon graphics of what goes on in there. A good excuse for an early night, I think! Tomorrow we plan to explore Morioka by bicycle.