Sendai and Kamoaosa

After Kitakata, I had one day by myself, then on to one or two more days of couch surfing. Seems reasonable enough, except for one small fact: I'm in a town of 50,000, and I have absolutely no idea where I'm sleeping tonight. That's a very scary situation in which to be.

So, 30-pound backpack in tow, I struck off for the local train station. While waiting for a train, a complete stranger ("Yoshi", I found out his name eventually) came up to me and started talking. Apparently I don't look Japanese, and so people seem to think I speak English. Well they're right, so Yoshi and I struck up a [very broken] conversation: Where I was from (San Diego? Padres!), where I was planning on going, what I thought of Japan, what he was doing, and so on. It was a pleasant way to spend the time waiting for the train.

So I took the train to Wakamatsu, then took the slightly bigger train to Sendai. Great, I'm now in Sendai, and I don't know where I'm going to sleep. I want to stay in a place that's reasonably priced, yet can fit me in today. Fortunately my guide has a map! No hotels listed, but it lists an Internet Cafe. I set about navigating the city to find this cafe.

Matching up the map to the city wasn't that difficult, but once I got to where it should have been, I discovered I could not find the building. After much walking around, I determined that I was actually looking for a hostel, which I now suspect had closed down a few years ago. Instead, I found the Hotel That I Got From A Vending Machine.

It looked from the outside as though it had been pieced together component-wise: A square array of windows, all looking the same, meeting at right angles. The scenario went something like this: Put money into the machine (I put in JPY 10000), get change back (I got 4005 back), and get a receipt. There are two important numbers on this receipt: (1) Your room number, and (2) a code to get into the room, and to get into the building after-hours. That's it. No staff to hassle, no keys to get, no checkin, no checkout. All very business-like. Which explains why the overwhelming majority of those at breakfast the next morning were Japanese dressed in business suits. The sleep itself was fairly good, and I'd definitely stay in another one of that chain's hotels.

As for Kamoaosa: It was lovely. I got there by taking the shinkansen from Sendai to Akita, then taking the (gas-powered!) local train to Oga, then taking a bus to Monzen, at which point they picked me up in their car and drove me to Kamoaosa. That's remote.

The town is a fishing village so small it doesn't have a Wikipedia page, and as of publishing this entry, has 94 entries. I'm sure it has a few more now. My hosts there were absolutely wonderful: They have a spare guesthouse they let me stay in, they fed me dinner, and they loaned me bedding.

On the first day, they let me go out and claim a rock for myself, upon which I sat for a good long while decompressing from the stress of the past few days. On the second day, they loaned me shorts, a shirt, gloves, socks, shoes, a bag, a floatey, a screwdriver, a mask, and a snorkel, and they took me diving for shellfish. The water was warm, and the shellfish were pretty. We saw baby fugu, but didn't do anything with them. Also, from a distance, urchin look just like soot sprites.

I ended up staying for two nights, as one night just wasn't enough. It was definitely worth it. My two couchsurfing hosts definitely made this visit one of the high points of the trip.