Last Saturday, the weather was a balmy 13C (55.4F: not bad, considering it's the lee-ward end of December in a region famous for its snow), so more or less on a lark I decided to go for a drive up the highway into the mountains.
First thing's first, here's my trusty steed-
I chose blue partly because, believe it or not, it's one of the more assertive car colors you'll see driving around Japan (or at least Niigata). It's also a
Kei Car, which is nice when trying to negotiate Japan's fun-sized parking spaces. I've yet to name it (accepting submissions now- I haven't even decided on a gender yet!), but for the time being, even nameless, it gets me from A to B, and I love it much. Incidentally, talking on a cellphone while driving is universally illegal in Japan, so periodically there are "moshi-moshi pittu" scattered along the highway (it means "hello pit"). This picture was taken at one such pull-over.
The highway winds through a number of breathtaking vistas more or less right off the bat, none of which I was able to photograph for a lack of space to pull over. The severity of the mountains is such (at least initially) that several times a tunnel will connect immediately to a bridge spanning a gorge, to yet another tunnel. It was arrestingly pretty. I did manage to find one pull-over, however, that offered something like a view. This is a poor representation, but still, have at-
My initial intent was to simply take in the scenery for a while, then turn around, so I arbitrarily chose a town fairly far away on the road signs, called "Nan'yo" as my destination, and pressed onward.
After a while, I got hungry and needed to use the bathroom, so here was my first stop:
Apparently this is what rest-stops are like in Japan. I passed a few more along the way, and they looked (from the outside) pretty comparable- toilet, restaurant, kitschy gift shop, and vending machines. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? One notable difference was that this particular stop was selling a number of seedlings and
bonsai of plants endemic to
Yamagata, whose boundary I had just crossed. Another thing worthy of note was that this rest-stop sold
manju, not unusual in Japan, but always welcome. I bought a pizzaman!
After eating my pizzaman and having a look about, I kept heading into Yamagata. The ragged, fang-like peaks gave way to a more herbivorous terrain, with wide valleys spread between ranges of mountains. the distant view was, I must say, gorgeous. However, (and it's possible December without snow isn't the best time to look), many of the small mountain towns I encountered were, frankly, rather ugly. I was hoping for an experience like many I've had in Colorado, where traveling into the mountains is a good way to avail one's self of the personality eccentricities that tend to migrate to the isolated mountains. What I had forgotten is that Japan is both A) ancient and B) crowded- people have been living in the mountains here for a looooooooong time, and the migrations of oddballs that have taken place in the U.S. don't have a good corollary here. I didn't find much evidence of interesting and unusual shops or cafes- just people living at higher altitude. I did encounter one nice corner in a town called "Shokoku," however- and here it is:
Not breath-taking, but not such a bad little town either.
I drove a good ways more, but didn't see or photograph anything worthy of reporting beyond what I've already said here, so let's jump to
Nan'yo. Nan'yo is an unimposing, unimpressive little community that probably spends most of it's time in
Yamagata-shi's economic and cultural orbit. Consequently, there's not much there. All the same, here are some pics-
For those of you that can read Katakana- the sign that says "ramen" was also where I had dinner. I felt like I was in a scene from a movie about the lonely every-man at Christmas time- stepping into an unremarkable ramen shop in a small, twilit, chilly town, far from home. Nostalgic Christmas music was playing over the speakers (including, unless I am mistaken, "I'll be Home for Christmas"). However, there were (it being a
ramen-ya aside) some distinctly Japanese touches: the Christmas decorations looked like they had been subcontracted out to a flying squirrel with a staple gun, and immediately after "White Christmas" or some such song, seizure-inducing J-pop started playing again. Ah, Japan.
The other thing this restaurant had going for it was that every entree came with a monstrous mound of shredded cabbage. The cabbage here was particularly fresh and wholesome-tasting, and I wondered for a minute whether I had finally found a bit of "local flavor" for which I had been searching. Maybe Yamagata grew a lot of cabbage in the cooler mountain elevations! Chatting with the server on the way out, however (itself an unusual behavior- customers don't really mingle with service staff here like they can in America- a Japanese cultural convention I blithely and frequently ignore) I discovered that cabbage is heavily grown all over Japan, and that my katsu-kare (pork curry) experience here had been, in almost every regard, unremarkable. C'est la vie.
When I came out of the restaurant, I did see one more thing worth noting, which almost made the whole trip worth it-
This didn't turn out very well, because of the dim light, but if you'll look down and to the left, you'll see a largish gorilla. It was holding a strobing electric torch. The building it was advertising is a karaoke place, with architecture that's bizarre enough to easily distinguish it from the surrounding town. It looks vaguely, I don't know what. Mongolian? Anyhow, I thought it was pretty cool.
That does it for the day trip- I drove back, obviously, but past the same places and in the dark, so what's more to say?
On another note- today is Christmas Day here, so Merry Christmas everyone! I'm at work (mwa mwa) typing this up on my trusty yellow lap-top, and exchanging Christmas stories with the other ALTs (also at work) via Google chat. I hope everyone's well, and enjoying the holiday!
