To get back on to Japan’s largest island, I decided to take the ferry
from Hakodate to Aomori. But the boat is no cruise liner, used mainly by
lorries to get from A to B via sea. For the price of the ticket, you buy
yourself some ‘carpet space’, sitting shoeless in a carpeted room while lorry
drivers, a middle-aged woman, a 2.4 children family and an unsavoury-looking
character in a ‘Hello Kitty’ tracksuit. The journey was uneventful and when
arriving in Aomori, I trailed the lorries off the boat with my two heavy bags –
for the first time in my life I felt like a real man.
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| Arriving in Aomori |
It was hot and the sun was blazing, and I had a not ridiculous – but long
enough in the heat – walk into central Aomori. A few minutes in, a taxi stopped
in front of me and the middle-aged woman from the ferry stuck her head out and
beckoned me aboard. Turns out she wasn’t a simple, middle-aged woman, but a
psychopathic killer on the run. I exaggerate, of course, but her repeated insistence
on hi-fiving led me to believe that she had some undoubted head problems. But I
wasn’t to say no to a free ride, and not just because my Japanese is limited.
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| Aomori |
Stopping only one night in Aomori before heading south and arriving
relatively late, I had a quiet night with some quick food and an evening
stroll. For some reason, I just wasn’t motivated to explore Aomori Prefecture
further whenever I was there. Which will probably be a regret, as there are
some supposedly good sights to see in the area. But no time to mope on what
could have been, I have a six-and-a-half hour train journey down the west coast
to Niigata to survive.
After changing at Akita, I sat on the right hand side of the train as
it headed south along the coast. The sun out again and having run out of food
before the changeover, I started to feel a little ill the further we travelled.
This wasn’t helped by the fact that the train was one that Rik Mayall could
only describe as ‘rickety’. Still, it ran on time, hey British rail providers!
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| Hotel Nikko, Niigata |
I was pretty much dead on arrival, but soon found that my hotel was
probably the tallest building in the city and my room was on the 26th
floor. This meant my room probably provided one of the best views of Niigata,
though I soon learnt that accolade equates the best educated out of Luton Sixth
Form College.
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| Niigata |
Niigata is a strange one; and not just because this is a city so
amazingly out of the natural order as to be the place where Emile Heskey scored
a World Cup goal (that actually happened!). With a population of over 800,000,
Niigata doesn’t fall into the list of large cities that I have visited that may
not be the best tourist spots (Fukuoka, Kobe, Sendai, et al), but feel like
they would be easy places to live.
To start, there is an absence of tall buildings in the city. This
leaves a visible sky, but also means that the train line – normally hidden
among the buildings – is a quite dominant feature on the cityscape. A power
station also looms over the city, with the smoke from the chimneys merging into
the clouds to create a quite bleak atmosphere at times. Imagine Sheffield…then
commit suicide.
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| Niigata |
The city also seems to lack a central hub; split into three parts: south-east of the train station; between the train station and Shinano River; and
west of the river, out to the coast. Things are generally spread across the
city, therefore, and a lot of walking is probably required to find things. As it
rained a lot while I was there, I felt there was a lot of the city that may
have passed me by, and what I did find was hardly Luton in Bloom.
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| Niigata |
The Friday night when I arrived, Japan were playing Jordan in the 2014
World Cup qualifiers. I went out, unwittingly wearing my new Air Jordan
T-shirt, to search for a pub showing it, only to find only one pub where you
needed a reservation to get in: I would define that more as a restaurant. While
you can find good pubs and bars in Japan, sometimes you come across ones with customs
I would describe as strange and as such do not create the desired relaxed
atmosphere for a casual few. I’ve never been to Ireland (the theme for this
particular establishment), but I don’t imagine you need to reserve a table on a
Friday night for a drink in a pub. With kick-off looming and nowhere else visible,
I watched the Samurai Blue dismantle Jordan 6-0, Honda bagging a hat-trick.
Kagawa is definitely Japan’s second man.
Stadium No. 6 now visited: the Niigata Big Swan Stadium, which is probably
better viewed from above than on the ground. I was only a few days shy of
visiting it on the ten year anniversary of the beautiful game’s most awe-inspiring
moment: Emile Heskey’s goal in a World Cup finals against Denmark in the second
round in a 3-0 victory. It’s amazing how much buzz there was about England’s ‘golden
generation’ and how there was a lot of expectation for England to do well a
decade ago. But watching the highlights of the match back, you can see that
greats such as Trevor Sinclair, Nicky Butt, Danny Mills and Mr Heskey featured:
there is a reason we don’t get beyond the quarter-finals very often.
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| Big Swan Stadium, Niigata |
Bad weather was forecast for the Sunday, but instead the sun came out
(it had been keeping its gay side well hidden) and I went for an on-foot tour
of the city to all the sites: the power station, railway bridge, etc., but
ended up at the coast which is nice for the sunset and provides views of
Sado-ga-shima in the distance – the city’s highlight.
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| Niigata |
I didn’t find much for me in Niigata. Other cities haven’t been great,
but have had enough to suggest they could be good places if you lived in them.
From my tourist’s perspective, I didn’t see much in Niigata, but maybe that
makes it a better place to live.
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