Here follows some notes I wrote during my little trip to Shizugawa and Kamiwarizaki. It's a bit of a long post, since it's written as a series of posts.:

Friday
13:52 Sendai-eki

I really hate this connection sometimes. When it works it's great, connect anywhere at any time. But lately it's been growing more and more erratic. Particularly irritating is when it says it cannot find a page without even trying, that's what I'm getting right now when I try to log in to my Blogger account.

In any case, my quest to find Kamiwarizaki is off to a slow start. I should have realized that trains to backwater fishing towns in northern Japan woldn't be very frequent. When I arrived here at the station a little after noon and asked the tourist office, they recommended I take the 14:43 train to Kogota and change there for a train to Shizugawa. Strolled around downtown a bit, but it got too hot so now I'm sitting in the station. I'm considering getting on a train for Kogota that leaves at 14:20. It won't get me to Shizugawa any quicker, but I'm tired of sitting still. There is of course the risk that this train is slower and will arrive too late for me to transfer. But what's life worth if you don't even dare to take these little risks? Worst case I'll spend the night outside some station in the middle of nowhere and take the train back tomorrow morning. Ok, here we go.

15:09 Kogota
I'm already out in the middle of nowhere and I still have about an hours train ride left. It looks like it may rain, I just hope I can get there and get my tent up first, but that's probably too much to ask.
The most interesting thing that's happened so far today is a couple of small children pointing out that I'm "kowai! kowai!".
From where I'm sitting I see only a row of old japanese women (make that one woman, the rest just left), some railroad tracks, some kind of construction work, rice paddies and low mountains in the distance. (old women now replaced by high school girls). I sure hope that the station isn't located in central Kogota.

21:21 Kamawarizaki
I found the place finally. Not that it was hard to find, just a bit further away than I thought from looking at the map outside the station (admittedly that map didn't give a scale). I suppose I should have taken the bus... or at least gotten of the train at the right station (for people going here: get off one station *before* Shizugawa). However it was still quite early (train got in at 16:35), so I started walking... And got here just before eight. The last part seemed like some kind of modern gothic dream. Dark except for the light from a full moon, partially hidden by sparse thin clouds, and the occasional street lamp and passing truck. Bats could from time to time be seen outlined against the moonlit clouds and spiderwebs spun across the little used sidewalk would let their presence be felt but almost never seen. In all a close to perfect night if it wasn't for the sweat and blisters.
When I arrived the office looked dark and closed. I was confused, would any self respecting roadside campsite close before eight? Walked around the building a couple of times, trying all the doors, and had just decided to give up and put up my tent and just sort everything out in the morning when I found the doorbell. Without getting my hopes up I tried it... and a woman answers! Filling out the paper with my name and address and paying the 800 yen went quickly and smoothly (though I realize now that I'll only live at that address for a little over a week longer) and now I'm sitting in my tent having just feasted upon canned fish and bread.
This is obviously not the most popular time for camping. They have room for 350 tents here, but there seems to be at most ten.
Now I shall have a couple more choco sand cookies and read Cryptonomicon by flashlight. And behind it all, the sound of waves.

Saturday
3:41
How the heck did all these mosquitoes get in?
You usually get one or two when you come in yourself, but there must be about a dozen here. If I don't want bloodstains when I roll the tent up I'll have to kill them all in the morning.
It'll be good to be back in Sweden where mosquitoes aren't smart enough to navigate through the net. I've zipped the tent all the way up now, not leaving the opening with the net hanging over it. It'll get a bit warm, but at least I can set about killing bloodsuckers without having any more come in.
...
A dozen was a bit optimistic, I've gotten eight so far and there's at least another seven or eight lurking in the corners. Hunting mosquitoes by flashlight is an interesting exercise, especially when you're trying not to get stains on your tent. Of the eight, seven have left bloodstains on my palms.
Nine
Ten, either they're learning to fear the flashlight or only the naturally wary have survived 'til now.
Eleven, 4:18 dawn is here.
Twelve, definitely more than a dozen then.
13, 14, 15, still a bunch to go.
16, 17, 18, 19, 20 I see at least another four. I'm also getting a headache.
21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26
There is a couple more, but my lust for blood (hey, it's *my* blood) has been sated.
27
28, that may have been the last one.

6:41
One mosquito escaped when I opened the tent, the brightest one. She will now go out in the world and multiply. With all the people here trying to kill them and thereby sorting out the stupid and the weak, no wonder the Japanese mosquitoes have gotten so smart.
In daylight Kamiwarizaki is beautiful, jagged black cliffs and rocks stick up out of the waves at an odd angle and on top of these grow pine trees. In spite of the mostly sleepless night I'm glad I came.
It's almost seven, but I'm in no hurry to get going. Maybe I should take my tent down before it gets too hot though. Speaking of tents, my 30-year-old one looks a little out of place. Lower and much more "tent shaped" than the newer ones. In hard weather I've no doubt that mine would last better; it's more ground hugging and is held down by no less than 27 pins (28 can be used but that makes the outer tent hard to get in and out of).

11:14 Shizugawa
Wonder of wonders! It seems I'm here at the one time when something is actually happening in sleepy Shizugawa. The first thing I saw as I stepped off the bus (yes, I decided to take the bus this morning instead of hiking through this abysmal heat) was a group of dancers and a dragon. There's some kind of summer festival going on. The parade/festival train thing seems much too long for a small town like this. On the other hand there weren't very many spectators, maybe this is so popular that they all participated so no one was left to watch.
While following the sound of pipes and drums to get to the main body of the festival I was stopped by a middle-aged man who spoke excellent English. He offered me a cup of cold tea and made small talk for a few minutes.

Oh, and I got one last mosquito just before taking the tent down, making the final score 29.

12:30 Shizugawa-eki
How long does it take for the average person to back a truck into a tree?
Train coming...

12:34 On the train for Kogota
So this guy drives a truck into the lot in front of the station, goes back and forth for a couple of minutes until he finally backs into a tree. Not branchbreakingly hard, just kind of pushing into it.
Then he drove away.
Odd.

12:54 Still on the train
I finally understand what the "one man car" or something similar that has been called out at any number of stations means. It means that there is only one employee on the train, the driver, and none at the current station, so you have to exit through the front door where the driver checks your ticket. You can imagine how small a station has to be for the Japanese (who've been known to use five people for helping a car get out of a garage) not to have somebody working there.

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Good thing I copied everything before posting this time, Blogger failed to post and now I can’t even log back in to repost it. I suppose I’ll post it later sometime.