When I woke up that day on 19th of september, I did not imagine I would have a long conversation with a bunch of businessmen going to Sendai. We also shared some food and drinks. But this might be a bit out of context, so let me tell you the whole story.
We woke up quite early this morning. By 6:20 we were already on our way to the train station to catch the Shinkansen that would get us from Aomori to Kyoto. The planned route was Aomori-Tokyo-Kyoto and it was supposed to take about 6 to 7 hours in total. We boarded the train like usually and I saw a large group of businessmen and women boarding the same train as us. Coincidentally they boarded the same train car as me! And I got a seat next to an older gentleman, who apologized every time he needed to go to the toilet or anything. I thought he was really nice and carried on with writing the next blog post.
However, 2 stations later the train stopped. I already found it a bit weird that the train made such a long stop at the previous station, but I just thought that maybe this train was the slower kind or something like that. This later turned out not to be true. After a while the gentleman next to me decided he would exit the train. He must be going to a toilet I thought. But once again, I was wrong. He came back with a full bag of snacks and drinks. He started handing them to everyone. After handing out the drinks he came back to his seat next to me and this is where the story begins.
He offered me a drink. The selection wasn’t out of this world, but he had some green tea, beer and two cans of chuhai. Chuhai is a Japanese alcoholic beverage that tastes like fuzzy vodka with an added taste of a lemon. Just not nearly as strong. I picked the last option, since I have tried this drink before and liked it quite a lot. I am not a big fan of alcohol beverages but this one tastes similar to Schweppes, just a bit more lemony. He then also offered me various snacks, one of which was a bag of radish and cheese sticks. The sticks tasted really good but they had a familiar flavor. Almost as if I have eaten something similar before, at home. A flavor from my homeland – but even after thinking for a while I just cannot remember where the taste comes from. Maybe I remember on my way back home. What matters is that the snacks were really tasty and the people around me really friendly. Grateful for the drink I was curious what their group was about. So of course I asked him. It turned out they were salary men and women working for an Aomori banking company. They had a collective holiday (or whatever this type of holiday is called). In addition to that I figured they were also going in the direction of Sendai (which is one of the stops from Aomori to Kyoto). And after a bit of chatting I also figured out that the train was not moving anywhere because of an accident on the Tohoku line. Out of all days it had to happen today when we have to cover a bunch of distance, didn’t it?
But this story doesn’t end here. The nice gentleman next to me who I will call Yamata from now on, offered to travel to Sendai with us, since there were no bullet trains available. This made the journey a lot easier and convenient and it also allowed me to meet a bunch of new people. The first person was this Yamata who was really helpful. He looked up the trains for us and asked the staff at the station if our tickets were still valid on this line. I also asked him about some recommendations in Kyoto – mainly food – and he took his time to show me a really cool place with omurice. We also exchanged some information about our countries and of course there was the classic talk about why I came here, if I am having fun, where I am going etc. You know the drill by now. The next character I met was the company president. He seemed more of a serious guy who loved beer. He asked me a bunch of questions but there were quite some that I simply couldn’t make out. He was mainly interested in where Slovenia is located. Explaining that wasn’t that easy, but at least I told them it was close to Italy. The president on the other hand inquired if it was close to Montenegro and I told him where Montenegro was in relation to Slovenia. He seemed pleased with the answer and let me go. The third character were the two salary women who were eager to share their snacks with me – once again it was the radish and cheese sticks. Other than that they asked a bit about Slovenia and praised my Japanese (something you will hear often if you know a bit of Japanese – but not a lot of Japanese). And the final character was yet another salary man. He was mainly interested in my opinion about Aomori and I told him I liked Aomori’s apples. He thought this answer was really funny, which I guess it was since he at first assumed I was here for business. I later of course told him that this was merely a summer vacation.
So even though there were no bullet trains and we had to take an extra local train (in the end we arrived home at 11 pm), the whole journey was pretty entertaining. In Sendai when we each went our way, we exchanged a couple more words, smiles and shook hands. Thank you the kind people of Aomori and I hope you had a great vacation – even though I was told you had work already the following day.
On a side note, as I am concluding this post I am starting to realize something. It is Sendai again. The last time it was the heavy rain and I was unable to reach Ishinomaki from Sendai because of it. This time it was a decoupled train (while the train was moving) that caused the whole Tohoku line to stop for multiple hours. This is the first time such an accident occured (and it had to happen on the day when we needed Shinkansen the most). And so once again I was stuck in Sendai, seeking food and shelter. At the very least, this time around, I actually reached my destination. And for the end, here is an article about the accident that caused the delay if you wish to read about it :).
