The next leg of my trip was going to be the hardest. Even though I was already half way across the island in Aizu-Wakamatsu the big challenge was the road to Niigata. Somewhere, I don’t know where, I had heard or read that the Niigata hitch was for some reason almost impossible. A 120km stretch of road that at first look seemed simple but in actuality was anything but.
My first thought was to take a train to a semi-secluded spot about 20km outside of town and hitchhike from there but when I found out that I would have to wait 3 hours before boarding I scrapped that idea. After reexamining the city map and from the information I got from the two helpful city information ladies I decided to walk to what they described as an area that only had, in their words, ‘only a few shops and some gas stations.’
Remember way back when I was on Hokkaido and I kept encountering those sprawling 1 building deep cities that never seemed to end? Well, that was what dragged on before me once I left the train station and headed for the edge of the city. From the high point on a bridge I could see the road city go off into the distance and the only thing I could do was shake my head and laugh.
The weather was nice so at least I was lucky on that count but over the next 4 or 5 kilometers every place I tried to hitchhike was unsuccessful. About 3 hours passed as I walked and tried to catch a ride out of Aizu-Wakamatsu.
I finally ended up at the actual edge of town where shops came to an abrupt end and the road made a definitive split. My stomach was growling and my energy depleted so I plopped myself down in front of a 7-11 convenience store for some lunch. I even treated myself to some ice cream for desert which helped to revive my spirits a bit. It’s the little things in life sometimes.
I set up near a bus station but far enough away that drivers wouldn’t be confused. It was a great spot, highly visible and a convenient place to pull over and before long an old man and his wife offered me a ride. It wasn’t all the way to Niigata but the 20km or so of forward movement felt like the right thing to me at that moment. ‘Bit by bit,’ was my mantra for the day.
The first ride of the day is usually quite exhilarating. You’ve just managed to get a complete stranger to help you out and as the landscape whizzes by you know you’re getting closer and closer to you’re destination. You can’t help but feel good.
Ironically they dropped me off in the town I had considered taking a train to earlier that morning. Checking my watch I realized it had taken about the same amount of time but minus the train fare. The unfortunate thing is that they dropped me smack dab in the middle of another road city and it was a 3km hike to someplace where I could set up. No complaints, just another hurdle to jump.
With my bag in place and a smile (genuine) on my face I stuck out my thumb and waited. A lot of thoughts were going through my head. Mainly, ‘will I be able to get a ride.’ With what I knew my chance didn’t seem good but there was no way I was going to give up.
Thirty minutes, forty minutes, an hour passed as I stood in the sun sweating and wondering. I glanced up and down the road considering a change in position but in the end decided to tough it out where I was.
My tank was just about on empty and I was about to take a break when a car pulled up and the passenger window rolled down. ‘Where are you headed?’ came the obvious first question. ‘Niigata’ was my hopeful answer but I quickly added ‘though anywhere in between here and there is good.’ He smiled back, ‘No problem. We’re headed to Niigata.’
Getting my pack into the back of his small car was a bit difficult but after that was done I was introduced to the family. Ken was driving while his wife and 10 month old child Kenshin were relaxing in the back seat. Ken explained to me that he made the trip back and forth from Niigata to Aizu-Wakamatsu almost daily for work and that so far he’d already helped out a few other hitchhikers. It was a long road and he figured he’d do his part to help people like us out. What a nice guy.
The thing that got all of us laughing was that they’d actually seen me before, back in Aizu-Wakamatsu some 2 hours ago, when I was trying to get to the edge of that road city. They figured they’d give me a ride but apparently I’d disappeared and so they thought nothing more of it until all of a sudden I reappeared in front of them with my thumb out again.
We finally arrived in Niigata about 2 hours later but their desire to help me out got us a bit lost. You see, my final destination wasn’t actually Niigata, it was Kashiwazaki. I was planning to take a train from Niigata to Kashiwazaki and so they figured they would find me a station in between since they had a bit of time. Unfortunately the closest station was some 30km away but we didn’t realize that until about half an hour had passed and we finally stopped at a convenience store and asked.
We were all pretty tuckered out by the time the car pulled up in front of Niigata’s main train station. Ken still had to drive 20 minutes back to a printing house in order to pick up newspapers bound for Aizu-Wakamatsu (1 ½ hours away) and I did not envy him a bit. We said our goodbyes and I went to find a train to Kashiwazaki .
My mind was filled with the thick fog of tiredness so it took about half and hour of sitting and relaxing before the realization of what I was in the middle of doing sunk in. When I bought the train ticket nothing clicked, when I found out the departure and arrival times I didn’t think about it, even when I looked at the map I was clueless. Suddenly I sat up straight, looked around, and went ‘wow.’
Why did I go ‘wow?’ Well let me explain. It was about 135km from Aizu-Wakamatsu to Niigata and it had taken me 6 hours to bridge that gap. At some point along the line I had decided that my end point for the day was Kashiwazaki (for old times sake, I had camped there many years ago on the beach and wished to repeat the experience). What I forgot to do was check the distance from Niigata to Kashiwazaki . My train ticket was 1620yen, the travel time about 2 hours, the distance 85km. I had just leapt 220km across Japan, though I hadn’t meant to go that far.
The two hour train ride passed relatively fast but about half way though I gave up the idea of waiting to eat dinner in my tent and dug into the lunch box ken had bought me. I arrived in Kashiwazaki around 9pm and it was another 20 minute walk to get to the beach where I set up my tent. The place I chose was about 20 meters from where I had set up in winter many years ago. I hoped that this time there would be no snow. The whole area had changed and felt completely different.
That didn’t stop me from grabbing a couple beers, lighting up a cigarillo and calling some friends for a friendly, late night chat. It was relatively warm evening (compared to some of the places I’d been) and the beer loosened the kinks from my tired shoulders. I took in deep breath after deep breath of fresh sea air and it tasted good. The satisfaction of a day well done spread through my body and brought a giant grin to my face. It had been hard to catch a ride across the island but I had done it.
I wondered what would happen tomorrow.
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