After a pretty anti climatic vegetarian breakfast it was time to brace ourselves for another full day of travel. I'm pretty good at taking local trains now since this is the like 1/4 of what you do when you live and work around Japan. I have been granted the time and money to see a lot of this country and I can't imagine that this part of the journey would be so bad until...we arrived at Morioka station for out outbound journey.
From there one the lovely staff told us a roundabout way to Aomiri which would take more than 9 hours. The other route is paying ¥7500/each for an hour ride in the Shinkansen.
Or we could pay ¥650 to the JR transfer point. In the end for the sake of money we went with this option.
The mountain ranges were more than pleasant scenery. Today weather is lovely, sun shining and as we move more North we start to see the trees turning green awaiting soring as much as the south did a couple weeks ago.
A short nap later, I awoke and there was snow! Who would have guessed that Jenny would chase winter >.<
Having an hour to waste in Odate it was time to wander. here I learned the true meaning of inaka (countryside) we aimed towards the river but as we walked everything was closed even though it's lunch time on a Saturday. Where are all the people? Did the sidewalk just turn into a road? This intersection doesn't have any traffic lights...
Back on the train.
Aomori was more desolate than I thought, the walk from the station in the middle of the sunny afternoon showed little signs of life. We didn't even cross paths with many department stores. Over a large bridge to the ferry port.
The port itself looked uninhabited by tourists leaving me to believe that we had reached the wrong ferry terminal. The traffic pulling in was mostly semis trucks and family cars I didn't think that pedestrians were able to board. I became skeptic but we were in the right place. Phew.
From there we bought a ticket to Hakodate. ¥2220 and an unnecessary courtesy bus which I presume is only meant for shuttling people with an abundance of luggage. The passengers were far and few between, like a dozen or so. 3.4 hours later we finally arrived. I'll let the video explain the boat atmosphere.
Lastly, Hakodate had such an industrial vibe to it, even combinis weren't frequent. Leaving the underlying effect that I had left Japan entirely.
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