AKITA TO SAPPORO VIA AOMORI

My trip today from Akita to Sapporo took ten hours and three trains. People wonder why I'm not catching a plane, for this would have been a short hop of less than an hour.

There is something to being on a train. Paul Theroux, in his Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, suffers through an agonizing, difficult journey, one of several books he has written about train experiences. In this version, he does not splurge. In my training, I do not cut any corners. Here is my super lunch on the Super Hakuto today:

I focused on Aomori beer and sake, an assorted chicken bento, salad, a croissant and some cheese thing. Too much food, really. Again, I got carried away.

Aomori is noted for apples:

Pearl always bought apple chips from Aomori.

The final rice harvest is in full swing in Northern Honshu. Everywhere you see machines.

Yes, they don't pick rice by hand anymore. Neither do they plant using people. I can still remember Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai and "The Rice Planting Song." How happy the people were just to be planting rice.

I also noticed on one train a whole lot of toilet paper. These won't be around long in many parts of the world, like in the USA. In Japan no one steals toilet paper.

I'm now at the Nikko Hotel at the Sapporo Station. My final meal of the day was Sapporo ramen with roast pork. That was the only size beer (20 ounces) and ramen (really large bowl) they served. Something about this noodle, for you always sweat through the meal.

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The Dow Jones Industrials are continuing to surge, up 132 to 9731. World markets were mixed, but the Japanese Nikkei is at 9800, just above the DJI. Crude oil is at $71/barrel and gold jumped $21/toz to $1038. However, gold appears to be rising for all the wrong reasons. I'll explain soon.

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Typhoon Melor is now down to 130 MPH. Looks like landfall early Thursday morning around Osaka. According to the predicted pathway, Melor and my bullet train will still intersect in the vicinity of Sendai on Thursday. Maybe I should leave for Tokyo on Wednesday.