Saturday - an Omi Hail Mary
Oh my goodness .. of all of our days in Japan, this one had to be the most stressful and chaotic, but it also turned into one of the most rewarding. We had planned to come to Niigata, the home of our Omi clan in Japan, as an anchor for the entire trip, for many months. We had been in touch with Akemi-san, wife of the grandson of George Omi's older sister, in the months leading up to the trip, but for reasons that we didn't fully understand at the time, our communications trickled out and we ended up with half formed logistical confirmation. Our family was located north of the city of Niigata, so we planned to rent a car at the train station and make our way up. More on that in a bit ...
The first step was shaking off our previous night of unrest, checking out of Tokyo, and getting on the Shinkansen.
Niigata Prefecture (新潟県, Niigata-ken) is located along the coast of the Sea of Japan in the Chubu Region. It is famous for its high quality rice, beautiful coastal and mountainous sceneries, spectacular firework displays in summer, skiing in winter and hot spring bathing around the year. The prefectural capital is Niigata City.
We arrived in Niigata in the early afternoon, still with plenty of time to sort out our car and begin the trip, which we knew would be a bit of an adventure at this point. Jamie met us in the train station.
Our first major hiccup was at the car rental agency, where we had pre-reserved our car. But they hadn't asked us for an 'international driver's license' when we made the reservation. I had rented cars in Europe several times before (Ireland, Spain), and had never needed anything besides my US license, so I hadn't even thought about this detail. No dice ... without the international license, they wouldn't be able to give us a car. We were out of luck, and also down several hours in the plan for our day.
We decided to make the trip the more complicated way, on regional rail. Unfortunately, the best address we had was a few miles away from the closest rail station, so we would need to improvise a bit once we got close.
At this stage, Natalie was out, and Julie agreed to stay behind with her and they had a separate little adventure off the coast of Niigata city.
Jamie, Sasha, Ronin, Naomi, and I were off on the regional rail to re-connect with our Omi family, who remember, don't exactly know that we exist at this point.
We got on the rail, and initially got off a stop early. We lost another 30 minutes with the mistake, but more importantly, we saw busses and a waiting taxi looking for passengers at this station and came the mistaken conclusion that there would be similar transportation at the next stop.
When we got off on the correct stop, we had officially arrived in the country. Crickets, literally, and no busses, no taxis. We were on our own in the late afternoon sun, a few miles from the town of Seiro, where our relative were (probably) located. At this stage, we considered heading back, but after a family huddle, we decided to press on.
The walk from the train station ended up being really insightful and quite pretty. We were along country roads, through little residential sections, by family farms and rice patties, by a large confectionary factory. We were able to get a remarkable sense of what life feels like in this area of the country, generally out of the range of tourist itineraries.
When we finally began to approach the only address that we had, the sun was beginning to set.
We were heading towards an address that had a distinctive look on Google street view, but when we arrived, there wasn't a house. We clearly had something off. But I had been there 12 years prior, so I had some visual landmarks to go from, and I was pretty convinced that we only had to cross a stream and past another set of rice patties to find the spot. Once we completed the additional course, we were in a residential cluster that clearly looked familiar. But we went up and down a few blocks and couldn't find the house.
We asked a lady who was outside of her house for help, and she scurried inside and closed the door.
We asked another lady who was outside of her garage, and she listened to our story through Google translate and rushed inside to grab her husband, Watanabi. This couple ended up as our heroes of the trip.
They didn't know where are relatives were offhand, and we struggled with this a bit, until we remembered our old Flickr account, which had pictures from our trip there 12 years ago.
This one in particular immediately jogged his memory. The hair salon! Get in the car!
He drove us directly to the house. At this point, it was dark out and we were a bit shy about bothering them. But Watanabi had come too far to let this drop. He marched right up and starting buzzing and buzzing, until our relatives emerged.
They were, understandably, confused ... but it all worked out. The full story, as relayed by us a bit breathlessly when we finally connected with Julie and Natalie that night, is recorded below.
This day ended up being about stitching the connection back together, but it was too late in the day to have a proper visit.
They agreed to receive us the next day.
We ended the day taking the train to our Airbnb, a traditional home in a small town south of Niigata. Our host there was Yuka, a younger woman who had inherited the home of her grandparents. She lives in the house by herself, and had a small house in the yard for all of her cats. All my neighbors are in their 80's! Yuka was an amazing host and we got very close to her quickly. She would help us a great deal with translation the next morning, and with our relatives that night to help us plan the next day.
