I had an earlier start than usual today. The maintenance staff at the University were performing maintenance on the water system today, so I had to get up earlier in order to take a shower. While I was ready early, I decided to get on my way towards my route for today.
I traveled to Mishima, a small town part of the larger Oonuma District, whose area is larger than Aizuwakamatsu but also whose population is one-tenth of Aizuwakamatsu's. Districts in Japan are becoming more popular in the rural areas. As these populations shrink and technology improves, it gets harder and harder to justify these smaller towns running their own business. Therefore, they team up with other smaller towns in the area to make a district.
Here's the route that I took. In order to get to the starting point (Fukushima Prefecture Route 32), I had to take National Route 401. I did not film my time on Route 401, but I should have, because as I went further south, the road became quite scenic, and representative of how roads in rural Japan truly are. Unfortunately, I was playing music in the car at the time, so to avoid getting DMCA'd, I can't post the footage. Maybe in the future I'll do the whole route as a dashcam.
If you're one of the four people who read my TwT posts, you'll have probably picked up on two things. The first is that I've recently been editing my videos to reduce some of the glare, shake, and background noice. The second is that the general post theme that the roads maintained by the prefecture can be tight, tiny, and esoteric, while the roads maintained by the national government are straighter, smoother, and less surprising. However, the aforementioned road types swapped their characteristics today. Route 401 was very narrow when passing through Aizumisato. I mean narrow as in my car was over the "center line" without deliberate action. Later on, after a nice, long tunnel to get the standing heat out of Tackawanna, it turned into a seasonal (that part actually surprised me), six mile-long road with so many curves. On the flipside, the southern portion of Route 32 actually had lane markers on the side and the edges. Apparently, it serves as an artery for plenty of smaller hamlets in the area, and there was even a construction area where they were still working on a wider bridge.
But Route 59 brought back those oddball rural road characteristics. I actually missed the turn onto it because it was inconspicuously hiding behind a corner shop. As soon as I turned onto it, however, I was met with a driveway-width road with a massive freaking hairpin curve at the start. There was also moss growing in the center of the road between the usual tire contact points. What's more, only half of the road had guard rails. That meant that nothing was stopping you from that 200 foot drop into the creek below in certain places. It was actually a bit terrifying.
In any event, it looks like I may not be able to do much travelling for summer vacation at all. My scope has been significantly shortened to a four-day sprint to Hachinohe and back via National Route 45 and the expressways. Even that will cost some significant money, although I will have the cash on hand to do it. I will need to decide tomorrow if I am actually going to go through with it.
Yesterday I decided to take a trip up north of Inawashiro to the Bandai region of Fukushima. This was my general route. I took the Bandai Gold Line up over Mt. Bandai to Fukushima Prefecture Route 459, and then went around the perimiter of Lake Hibara, one of five lakes in that region. The lakes were actually formed in 1887 when a volcanic eruption from Mt. Bandai changed the surrounding landscape.
It was a lot cooler yesterday than usual, even in Aizuwakamatsu. That made the whole trip more comfortable, because the sun was not beating down as hard as it normally does. A lot of people were out enjoying the weather, too. In fact, it was nice enough that a local Ferrari group was taking a nice tour on the roads. I saw a couple of 308s and 458s in the convoy. (The video is on my Facebook page for those interested.)
Towards the end of the latter dashcam video, I made a wrong turn; instead of going west coming off of Fukushima Prefecture Route 64, I ended up going east, back towards where the Bandai Gold Line deposited me. Thankfully, I didn't go too far before realizing my mistake, so I turned around and went back the right way towards Kitakata. Speak of the devil, apparently Kitakata had some sort of festival yesterday. I had heard about it on the news two nights ago, but forgot all about it. Oh well. There will be others in the region.
I stopped at a rest area on the way back, and looking back, maybe I should have kept going. That's because I scraped underneath Tackawanna's front bumper against the concrete curb as I was pulling into a parking space. You see, her wheelbase is not as short as a kei car, but it's shorter than most other passenger cars. Therefore, I have the ability to pull farther into a space, but I overestimated how far I could go before that portion of Tackawanna hit the curb.
The good news is that you can't see any damage if you were standing, or even kneeling in front of Tackawanna. The bad news is that I could feel some scrape marks underneath her front bumper. With winter coming, and a few tiny, but still visible "problem" areas in the paint, I don't feel too comfortable with the bumper's exposure. Then again, I have been planning to have Tackawanna repainted at some point, because her last paint job (and you could tell that an amateur did it) is not of the best quality and fading quite quickly.
But there's a problem with that, too. I can do one of two things:
shell out $1000+ (money I don't have on hand, by the way) for a professional paint job from a local body shop that will do the paint job, and do it right.
do the job myself for about a third of the above figure, but have to worry about finding/setting up an environment to do the work in, do multiple coats [and all that fucking sanding] over the span of a few days, and rent a car in the meantime so I can still get around.
Decisions, decisions, decisions...
No trip today due to all-day club activities. And in terms of summer vacation, I'm trying to see what there is to do in Niigata, which is much closer than Hokkaido. I'll see where I get with those plans.
Now that the week is starting to wind down, I can catch up on the blog.
This past weekend was an extended one because this past Monday was a Japanese national holiday. Therefore, it was the best weekend for some labs to have their lab get-togethers. I was invited to the one held by my lab, and then a second one held by another professor on campus. I ended up attending both, and it was a heckin' good time.
Sunday was the trip with my lab. We traveled in a convoy from Aizuwakamatsu to a farm/park hybrid in Koriyama for a picnic. The attendees were some of the grad students and their families, another professor, my advisor, Prof. Tei, his wife, another professor at the university, and one of his college-aged relatives from the states.
Prof. Tei is the guy on the right.
The trip almost didn't happen due to the weather. It was my job to check the weather, but Apple's Weather app, which runs off the weather channel, kept thinking that it was continuously raining or very close to it. I therefore had to observe some of the domestic-based websites, which assured me, even the early morning of the trip, that even though there were some clouds and some drizzle, the weather would be clear enough for us to enjoy the day.
And then, at the meeting time and location, it rained. Stupid fucking weather websites.
But we weren't going to let the rain stop us. We decided to try going to the farm in the hopes that the weather would clear up. And, as a thankful surprise, it did.
Lots of open space
There were a lot of families at this park, and there were plenty of kids as well. We set up camp next to a blocked-off area by a stream and ate lunch. As a prerequisite for eating, we had to share a story with the others. I ended up sharing the story of that time in high school when someone fell out of the back of my Explorer during Halloween. Prof. Tei shared a really good story about the time that he got so wasted that he couldn't fulfill his duties as a translator while chaperoning a foreign businessman. Laughs were had by all.
JDM t-shirt
At some point during lunch, I spilled some Coke on my sock. A few minutes later, a bee decided to make itself comfortable on said sock. I managed to kill it and throw it away, and we soon found out why the bee was present. In that blocked-off area that we were sitting next to was a tree. This tree had a rather visible nest in it. If I didn't properly kill that bee and let it fly back to the nest, I'd probably be too sore to type this right now.
Koi on steroids
One of the features of this farm was a series of tandem-style bicycles that groups could rent. It's different from a standard tandem bicycle in that the riders are seated next to each other, and the others can also ride on the bike as well. I went twice; once as a passenger, and again as the driver. I had more fun as the passenger, because as I had found out, I have no core or leg strength at all. This especially was problematic when I tried to pedal us up the hill. I ended up having to get out and push the bike up the hill while the other guy pedaled. I need to get to the gym this summer.
JDM tandem bicycle
The next day, Monday, was the trip with Prof. Cohen, another American who is a professor at the university and taught one of my classes last semester. The group was much smaller, as this was a second outing that he was conducting and some of the people who went with him on Sunday could not go on Monday. It was myself, Prof. Cohen, two German research students, and a Japanese student. This time, we all went together.
We first went to Lake Inawashiro for a swim and a Frisbee toss. Again, my lack of bodily strength proved challenging when I tried to go swimming out past where the shoreline dropped off. I would swim out, realize that I could not go out any further, and then flail myself back towards the shoreline. Still, it was nice soaking in the lake. The water temperature, while cold at first, eventually felt nice. It's a shame that my boating license back in the states can't transfer to Japan, because seeing all those jet skis out on the water made me envious.
>that guy on the far right that thinks he's the shit
After the swim was a trip to the touristy area of Inawashiro, where we had lunch at a "German" beer hall. (One of the German students lamented the quality of the German sausages that was being served.) We also stopped across the street at the museum dedicated to Hideyo Noguchi, a bacteriologist known for his contributions to fighting syphilis. A humorous point in the exhibit was an animated caricature of Noguchi at his desk. There was one loop where he used English terms, and when he said "Just do it!", I started cracking up. (This is to blame.)
This portion of the exhibit had a Western retro comic book theme.
On the way there, Prof. Cohen told me that he had a gold driver's license, where if you have no offenses on your driving record for about seven years, you get a gold bar on your license, and that lets you get cheaper insurance and the like. On the way back, he got busted by a speed trap for going 71 km/h in a 50 km/h zone, and had to pay about $150 on the spot. Needless to say, that was a bit awkward. But if he doesn't do anything else after a year or so, he can get his gold endorsement back. I hope he does.
This weekend was pretty fun, but now I have to start focusing on preparing for my presentation next month for my research plans. This is an important step towards finishing my degree, so I'll be doing a lot more work in the lab trying to get ready. In addition, my last TA class was today. I'm being recommended by the head professor to come back and TA the class again next year, but in the meantime, I'm hunting for an internship. I have a possible lead with a local laboratory; I'll see how that goes.
Bonus pic: caught me off guard
-wp
(Credit to Prof. Cohen and Prof. Dogun Tei for the nice[r] pictures.)
I had a hard time getting to sleep last night. To put it into perspective, the sun was coming up just as I had finally exhausted myself. I've had a bad habit of staying up late recently, so to help maintain a steady sleep cycle, I'm "disconnecting" after midnight from now on. Therefore, I'll need to make this post, and make it quick.
Today, I decided to go see the local wind farm. In Koriyama, the next city over from Aizuwakamatsu, there is the Nunobiki Plateau Wind Farm. Situated in the mountains overlooking Lake Inawashiro, it has 33 turbines, each of which could power just over a thousand homes. It also has an observation area, Akatsu no Katsura, where you could overlook the turbines and see the many sunflowers that the city plants. Therefore, I hopped in Tackawanna, now with a set of new speakers in both of the headrests, and we set off.
I took two wrong turns today. The first was not turning onto the road that connects National Route 294 and the power station. Google Maps showed that a local Lions sign reminding drivers to buckle up was the marker for the road. As it turned out, I missed that marker, and had to take some side roads to get to the right road.
The second was taking the first right instead of the second. I ended up taking a mountain road that landed me in Tashiro, a southeastern area of Aizuwakamatsu. I therefore had to go back the way I came. (I caught that part on the dashcam, but Google Maps does not see the connection between the road from Tashiro and the road that I had originally turned off of, so I can't show you the route that I took.)
The road to get to the observation area had quite a few twists and turns. It felt like a good location for a hill-climbing rally stage, especially with the rather high grade required to get up the mountain. Going down the mountain was much easier; I was in second the whole way down, and barely even bothered with the actual brake.
In addition to the observation area, you also had the opportunity to actually drive through the farm on the service roads. That's what I ended up doing first. When I first came in, a cloud was rolling low on the mountain, so you could barely see the tops of the propellers. However, as I was heading back towards the road, the sun came out and shone brightly for a brief moment. It was pretty nice.
How they designed the sunflower "maze." The left shape is a smiley face. The right shape is the city seal.
I arrived at the northern portion of the observation area. A few families were there, and a few more showed up along the way. I went over to see the sunflower field, but apparently, I was way too early. The sunflowers, although being planted over three weeks ago, were still in the sprouting stage. I'd have to wait another month or so for the sunflowers to finish growing. Bummer.
After a brief lunch from a nearby food stand (300 yen for a glass-bottle Coke, what the fuck?), I drove over to the southern portion of the observation area, where there was an observation tower that you could go to the top of to get the best view. The base of the hill it was on had gravel stairs...and that was it. Everything else was dirt and rocks. As a lazy American, the climb got me out of breath rather quickly. However, when I got to the top of the hill, and then the top of the tower, the view was worth it. I could see all the way to the lake, and I could also see all 33 turbines. They even had a "map" along the perimiter, taken almost ten years prior, of what the view looked like and where all the local cities and towns were positioned.
That's a lightning rod on top of the tower.
I took quite a few photos, and I don't want to link them all onto this page, so here is a link to a Google Photos album with all the images.
This is a three-day weekend due to the holiday, and I'll be out socializing for the rest of it. Tomorrow I'll be going with my lab to a farm in Koriyama, and that night I may be going to a car club meetup at a restaurant in Aizuwakamatsu. Then on Monday, I'm going to another lab's event at Lake Inawashiro. I'll be sure to talk about both days when they've happened.
Today's plan was to travel the entirety of Fukushima Prefecture Route 383. (Map) This route is located in Kitakata, a town north of Aizuwakamatsu. In order to get there, I had to follow National Route 121 all the way up to the turn onto the road, which is partially shared with Fukushima Prefecture Route 335, and then wind my way through some back neighborhoods until I hit that glorious mountain road. According to dashcams from years before, a certain section of the road was blocked off to passenger cars. However, I figured that this year, things would be different, and I would be able to pass through and travel the whole length of the road without issue.
According to both Google and Apple Maps, Route 121 splits into two pieces once you get north of the Ban-etsu Expressway. The eastern portion is the traditional route, which has all of the businesses and stoplights splattered on it. The western portion, however, is an expressway known as the Aizujukankitadoro (会津縦貫北道路) that took over 20 years to plan and build, and whose portion connecting Aizuwakamatsu and Kitakata just opened last year. It was a good 10 or so minutes on that road. I managed to get Tackwanna up to 60 MPH (pretty fast for the roads around here), and with the top down on a moderately warm summer day, I was living life to the fullest. This is what you buy a convertible for. I had good cruising music on, and there was little traffic. The only caveat, however, was that it was a single-lane expressway. There were two lanes at one point, but only for about half an hour, and still single file. Still, I'm glad that I was able to travel it. It saved quite a bit of time on my travels up there.
After originally missing the turn onto Route 383, I managed to get onto the right road and work my way around the rows of rice paddies to get to the objective road. I put the car into third gear and made my way up the mountains. The sightseeing areas were vacant, and there were very few people around. I pressed on.
The road started getting narrower. I entered a hamlet area, which contained a few houses, one of which was vacant and dilapidated. In Japan, as the birthrate shrinks and people move to Tokyo, the countryside ends up getting less populated and greyer at the same time. People die, and their kids, if they have any, don't want to move into the house. But paying taxes on vacant land is more expensive than paying for taxes on land with a structure on it. So the house sits, and falls apart. I pressed on.
A man parked in the middle of the road moved his station wagon out of the way for me. The road started getting rougher. At this point, it seemed like the town no longer wanted to take care of the road, because few people lived in this portion of the town, so some patches of the road were slathered with gravel. I pressed on.
I entered another hamlet, this time with more dilapidated houses. I don't think that there was a single person under 60 living in this part of town. At this point, the road decided to stop being paved, and turned into a single-lane dirt road. No gravel, and grass growing in between the tire tracks. I pressed on.
I had a conversation with a friend the other day, who also owns a Miata. He suggested that I lower the suspension on my car. I can say now for certain that if I had actually attempted that road with a lower suspension, I would still be up there right now. It was very bumpy. A sign on a tree said to watch out for bears. I pressed on.
Finally, the road had had enough. I reached an area with a waterfall, and it was there on the other side of the concrete overpass that it decided to put up the signs. I had hit a dead end. I couldn't press on anymore, and there was no cellphone service in the mountain, so I had to turn around. But first...
Thwarted by a piece of string and some wooden signs.
I headed back down the road. As I entered the second hamlet again, I noticed an older woman who was not there before working along the side of the road by her house. I could tell even from a distance that it took at least five seconds for her to process exactly what was going on. Wait 'til the girls hear about this, she probably thought to herself. A foreigner, driving a convertible, going up and down that dead end dirt road right next to our house. What are the chances?
[muffled enka playing in the distance]
When I got to a safe place to stop with cell service, I checked my maps to make sure that I was taking the correct route. As it turned out, I wasn't. This was the actual route that I had taken. With a readjusted plan, I just needed to retrace my steps and turn onto the right road. Only when I went to turn onto that new road, I saw construction signs at the front, one of which basically stating that the road was not a thruway and that sections of it were closed off to the public due to construction. So much for that plan.
I went back to Apple Maps and kept looking. Fukushima Prefecture Route 459, a main road, had enough twists and terms to be an acceptible alternative. So I planned a new route and set off. As it had turned out, Route 459 didn't appear to have those characteristics, especially towards the start of it, where the road width and quality felt like that of the roads that I had just previously travelled. Over time, though, the roads started getting better in terms of quality.
Kitakata was a pretty chill place. As it turns out, if I had stayed behind on Route 335, I would've had some sick roads to travel. Oh well. Another time, perhaps. But I took the Jukan on the way back, and this time, I caught it on video. Another good cruise to end the day.
If there's one thing that I can fix, it's car audio.
Since I've owned Tackawanna, I've needed to do a few repairs and replacements on her. The first one was the battery, which was old and no longer holding a charge. It took me a couple of jumps from a colleague, and $280 for the battery, which had to be shipped to the local auto parts store. Because I had recently purchased a membership card for the auto parts store, they installed the battery for me for free. I didn't know how to get to the battery at the time, because unlike most cars, the Miata/Roadster's battery is located in the trunk of the car, and the negative terminal was way up against the wall, where the bolt was secured tightly and could not be removed with my fingers, a small wrench, or my socket wrench with all the extensions on it.
Later on, I started having a strange problem with Tackawanna. Whenever I would cold start the car, the engine would slowly sputter to life. This problem only repeated itself when, say, I would start the car for the first time on a given day. After the engine had a chance to warm up, it would start without delay. I went onto the forums to check, and my intial guess, as well as fear, was the starter. The starter would be a handful to replace on my own. I'd have to put the car on jacks and take off the front driver's side (remember that the drive configurations are switched for Japan) wheel to get to the starter motor, where I would then need to use a socket and quite a few long extensions to get the starter out.
But I kept looking, wondering if it could be something else. And surely enough, I found someone on a website dedicated to Miatas claiming to have the exact same problem as I did. Their problem was solved by replacing the fuel pump. This made me even more nervous, because I had fuel pump problems back when I had the Blazer. But upon further research, I discovered that the fuel pump was actually located right behind the passenger seat. All I needed to do was fold back the carpeting behind the seats, remove the fuel pump cover, disconnect the fuel lines, take out the fuel pump assembly, and swap out the pump. Suddenly, it seemed less scary. I can do this myself after all, I thought.
When it came to buying the fuel pump, I had two choices. I could purchase a cheap, eBay-quality fuel pump in Japan for about $30, but I would have to splice wiring on the assembly in order to hook up the new fuel pump, which was an instant turnoff. I could also purchase a quality fuel pump from the states, with an OEM connector for the relay lines but it would cost extra, including for shipping. I decided to go with the latter, and picked up a Walbro fuel pump from a Florida distributor for $140, including shipping. I actually got a deal on the shipping; it cost twice the international shipping surcharge to get it here.
On a Wednesday night last month, the night before a series of rainstorms was about to hit the region, I decided to just go for it and swap the pump. I pulled Tackawanna onto a service road right next to the dormitory and right underneath a spotlight, and got to work. Pulling the carpeting off the back was harder than it should have been. Tackawanna is 25 years old, so I was pulling back carpet and sound-dampening foam that had virtually glued themselves to the metal. But that was the least of my problems.
After getting the pump out, I had to wait about half an hour for the fuel pump and assembly to drive off. Once I did, I started taking the pump off of the assembly, which took a lot of effort. I almost stripped the screw securing the base of the assembly, and had to jam the connector piece that attached the fuel filter to the fuel pump. Then, I had to use a bit of force to put the assembly back together, which felt kind of odd, but wasn't concerning me as much as it should have.
It got worse. I put the pump assembly back into the fuel tank and was about to reconnect the hoses, when all of the sudden, fuel started streaming out of one of the inlets. In a series of cussing and struggling, I managed to get the hoses back on. It wasn't until later that I had realized my mistake. When replacing a fuel pump, you have to do two things. The first was running the engine and then disconnecting the relay to the fuel pump so that fuel would be entirely sucked out of the lines. That part I actually did before I disconnected Tackawanna's battery and did the swap. The thing that I forgot to do was take off the gas cap in order to depressurize the tank. So when I put the fuel pump back in, the pressure in the tank caused fuel to be pumped out of the tank and into my interior. It took a lot of spare towels (thank Flying Spaghetti Monster I picked up five) and plenty of airing out to get rid of the fumes, which was especially hard because I couldn't put down the top without blocking access to the fuel pump.
But I'm not done. I reconnected the battery and turned the key. It cranked and cranked, and the fuel pump was making sounds, but it wasn't starting. I was crushed. Suddenly, an hour-long job had turned into four. It was now midnight, and I was getting tired. Thankfully, over the course of the evening, three of my dormmates passed by me working on Tackawanna, and stuck around to help with putting the fuel pump together and pushing Tackawanna to a parking space, where I would have to call a tow truck two days later to pick her up.
I had Tackawanna towed that Friday to the auto shop whose general manager, Saito-san (I must know at least ten people with that last name in Aizu; it's the Smith of the Tohoku region) tried to help me find a Roadster when I first came to Japan. The shop is called Straight Arrow Motors, and is located in the southwestern portion of Aizuwakamatsu. Through a combination of Japanese, spoken English, and Google Translate English, I was able to convey my issue to the general manager, who gave me a lift back to campus and told me that he would check my work and not to worry. This was before my trip to Nagoya, so it would probably not be ready until during my trip, when I'd be out of town.
As it turned out, he was right. Tackawanna was fixed on Tuesday, the day I was travelling to Nagoya, which made it two days early. I also managed to keep the bill under $200. As it turned out, I actually made a mistake when reassembling the fuel pump. (It was probably related to me forcing the assembly back together.) But, to my personal surprise, the fuel pump fixed my problem. I was now getting no issue with a cold start. Much relief was had that Thursday, when I came back to campus to find Tackawanna in the campus parking lot.
And as for Straight Arrow Motors, they even went the extra mile after the repair. I still had the fuel pump, an old spare tire, and some crummy interior trim pieces that were now lying around the common area. As it turned out, I couldn't just throw away the old fuel pump into the garbage; I'd have to have it disposed of through a certain company. A local company that the foreign personnel advisor suggested wanted $33 to dispose of the pump, $10 to dispose of the tire, and a variable fee to dispose of the trim. They also wanted to come get it themselves. Feeling rather skeptical, I contacted Saito-san again over Facebook and asked him how much he would charge to dispose of these things for me. He only charged me for the tire, and told me that it was okay to drop it off at the garage. When I went back to the store to drop the old parts off, he met me there and even invited me to a car meet at a restaurant later this month. Needless to say, I now have an emergency mechanic in town, as well as a friend outside of the University.
Finally, there's one more piece of good news. Since I had the car, I noticed a rattle coming from the speakers in the driver's seat's headrest. (That was apparently Mazda's workaround for a car with no backseat at the time.) According to the forums, the factory speakers were cheap, five watt speakers that had the tendency to fail quite easily. I went to the local Hard-Off and picked up a new pair of 100 W speakers for around $30. This morning, I pulled Tackawanna up in front of the dormitory and did the swap. It took some foam hacking and some minor splicing to get the speakers to work. Not only did I do the installation right, the death rattle is also gone, and the sound quality is much better. As a matter of fact, I decided that later on, I should do the passenger side's headrest speakers as well.
(Here's the song that I used to test the speakers.)
Speakers aside, I hope that that's all the work that I'll have to do to Tackawanna for a while. This is especially because I plan on taking a road trip to Hokkaido either at the end of this month, or at the start of August. I don't want to go during my vacation time, as due to the various summer holidays, the roads and expressways will be jam-packed. After summer break, it will start getting cold up there very fast, so I don't want to wait much longer. Whatever the case, I plan on taking another local trip tomorrow.
Today's trip almost didn't happen. The weather forecast was predicting a 70% chance of rain in the mid-to-late afternoon (which in the end, it did not), and I had to proctor a test in the evening. In addition, I needed to figure out a route that would be short enough for Tackawanna and I to cover. As the morning went on, I started to have second thoughts. I checked Google Maps and found another route: Fukushima Prefecture Route 376.
In my first TwT post, I went up the east coast of Lake Inawashiro and then back onto National Route 49. However, I didn't go near the west coast at all. So today, I decided to give it a shot. And this is where I went.
If you zoom in on the area near Inari Shrine in the above link, you'll notice that Route 376 technically feeds into National Route 294, before breaking off back into its own road later south. However, that does not mean that there is no road between those two points. There is actually a local road that winds its way around the lakeside edge of Mt. Kanayama. That was the route that I took to get from the northern portion of Route 376 to the southern portion. Driving that road was a blast, and I got to experience Tackawanna at her true handling potential. Granted, I kept to a maximum speed of about 30 miles an hour, but I still had fantastic control around the especially tight corners.
The coastline of Lake Inawashiro was especially cooler than in Aizuwakamatsu. Aizuwakamatsu had a predicted high of 88 degress Fahrenheit today, but around the lake, it felt like the low 70s. The breeze was nice, and there was plenty of shade on the road. People were also out enjoying the weather and the lake. The eastern coastline was at or close to the shore along a dual-lane prefectural road; the western coastline had more beaches and gathering locations. Seeing all the boats and jet skis on the lake made me feel envious; I wish that my boating license could be considered transferrable in Japan so that I could go out on the lake, too.
(As an aside, there were a lot of wealthy people out on the coastline today. How do I know? The large SUVs and foreign imports. I saw a new Cadillac Escalade, in white, with custom plates, in one location, and a lifted Jeep Cherokee SJ in another. You need to have serious money to afford a vehicle like that here.)
On the way back, instead of taking Route 49, I turned onto yet another mountain road, this time with no route number assigned to it. This road was situated on Mt. Furiya and Takayama, and would take me back to Aizuwakamatsu without having to travel up and around like I did before. It was a twisty, challenging road, and I probably would've enjoyed it more had it not been for the guy in the red Nissan Pathfinder on my ass the whole time.
Seriously, I could not shake this motherfucker off. He rarely left my rearview mirror, and if he did, it was only very briefly. Whatever distance I would make from him would easily be lost seconds later. I was going pretty fast, but he was apparently willing to go faster, and there are no places to pull over on this road. I'll be honest for a second here; Tackawanna is not necessarily a fast car. I can actually get overtaken by modern kei cars if I'm not giving enough throttle. (And there's nothing wrong with that, because who cares about speed when you have a freakin' convertible?) But if there's one takeaway from this, it's that there's asshole drivers, even in Japan. I'm just glad that I didn't have to stop on a hill; I probably would've gone right back into his front bumper.
There will be no trip tomorrow, which means that next time I should write about why Tackawanna was having issues earlier. I said that I'd write about it yesterday, but I didn't. Whoops.
