Letter 23

Greetings, Tim!

First, I will answer the questions you asked.

Penghu is relatively convenient than other islands. You can travel there by flights from Taipei, Taichung, Chiayi, Tainan and Kaohsiung. You can also take high speed ferry that departs from Chiayi. There are a plenty of flights. 

Things don't become more expensive in Penghu. At first I thought things become more expensive so I went to 7-11 and checked out but I found out that the price is totally same as Taiwan's 7-11.

Actually when we went there we didn't see many tourists. Or we just couldn't recognize them. But many places and attractions are quiet and beautiful then, there weren't many people. So it was comfortable to travel at that time.

As for why my aunt moved from San Diego to Irvine, I had to ask my dad and will tell you when I have the answer.

I discovered that you wrote about Akita when I was at school today, so I thought I'll write much this time. First of all, I'm curious about everything about Japanese human geography, so I also googled for information. Below are some more facts about Akita Prefecture:

1. The capital city is Akita.

2. Is very famous for its agriculture, especially rice.

3. Is also very famous for its alcohol products and is called as "The country of wine".

4. Is also very famous for its forest resources.

5. Have an area of 11612 sq.km. and a population of 1,040,000 in the year of 2014, the density is 89 people/km. The population is only a little more than the population of Zhonghe (which city I live) plus Banqiao (which is the capital of New Taipei, next to Zhonghe), which is about 960,000 but only have an area of 43.181 sq.km in total.

Because I haven't been to Akita, I looked the panoramic street view of Akita City, and what I felt is Akita is just a miniature of Tokyo. You still can find almost anything you want, and what's more, there are many big parks in Akita City, so it's basically a relaxing place to live, the pace is much slower than Tokyo or Osaka. I think to live at Akita is also a good choice if you want to live in Japan. The climate is not too hot and not too cold, the humidity is not too high, the city is not too big and noisy, you can get anything you want. For me, there are plenty of supermarkets and parks, while there are still some department stores near Akita railway station. I think supermarkets and parks are necessities of a city. 

Furthermore, I searched the Shinkansen (High speed rail) access to Tokyo from Akita. Because the high speed rail service from Akita to Tokyo consists of regular railway part and high speed part. The regular railway parts, which are called Tazawako line and Ou Main Line, are 127.3km long in total, and were upgraded into 1,435mm track gauge for high speed trains to run on in 1997. The speed limit is 130km/h. After the train arrives at Morioka, which locates in Iwate Prefecture (on the east of Akita), it enters high speed part called Tohoku (Northeastern in Japanese) Shinkansen and goes all the way to Tokyo. It takes 3 hours and 39 minutes for the fastest train from Akita to Tokyo. By the way there are flights to Tokyo Haneda, Sapporo Chitose, Osaka Itami and Nagoya Centrair airports. It takes 65~70 minutes for a flight to Tokyo, and 85~95 minutes to Osaka. There is no direct train service from Akita to Osaka because high speed rail system becomes different from Tokyo Station. The total distance from Akita to Tokyo by train is 662.8km, the fare is 17,800 JPY, which equals to 163.7 USD. The airfare to Tokyo is 27,890 JPY, which equals to 256.4 USD. In a nutshell, it's also very convenient if you want to go to Tokyo from Akita or vice versa. 

I checked Google Map and found that Akita University is near to the city center, only 1.5km away from Akita Railway Station. I guess why Sayori told you the school is out in the middle of woods somewhere is because the rear of the school is really woods and hills. But it is just located in "sub-suburbs". check out this website, this is how it looks from the gate of Akita University.

I haven't been to Akita, but I've been to another city that is more northern than Akita, Aomori. Aomori City is a seaside city in Aomori Prefecture, and Aomori Prefecture is most famous for its apples. Aomori City is similar to Akita, but a little smaller. Though, Aomori is still a good place to visit. There are some seaside parks, a memorial museum of the ferries that used to run between Aomori and Hakodate, the largest city in south Hokkaido, before the Tsugaru Strait railway was built in 1988, and some nice, quiet streets. Aomori was the terminal of Tohoku Shinkansen, but after the Hokkaido Shinkansen opened, Shin-Hakodate-Hokuto railway station became the new terminal. Yet, Aomori is still an important city and transportation hub in northern Honshu. Below are some pictures of my visit to Aomori in July, 2014.

By the way, this is the sign in Morioka railway station, which I had mentioned before. Shin-Hanamaki is the direction towards Tokyo, Shizukuishi is the direction towards Akita and Iwate-Numakunai is the direction towards Aomori.

Since the topic of Japan travel has started, as for the Picture of the Week, I'll continue the topic.
This section is done at 20th, so I had already seen your comment. Thank you for putting Penghu and Akita on your "nice places to visit" list. Since that, I will recommend more attractions to you. On my trip to Tokyo (from Hokkaido, and then Aomori), I went to a little town that was called "Kanita" ("Crab field" in Japanese). But the town is now merged with several other little villages due to the decreasing population. The new town is called Sotogahama. Sotogahama has a population of only 6,012. Kanita had always been my must visit town because I researched about the Tsugaru Strait railway, and Kanita is the last stop in Honshu before the train to Hokkaido enters the Seikan Tunnel. I will make a brief introduction about Seikan Tunnel and Tsugaru Strait railway.

First, Tsugaru Strait is a strait amid Honshu and Hokkaido. People used to take ferries as the transportation across the strait. The ferry is very dangerous that it caused several fatal accidents in 1954 and 1,430 people died in total. So Japan National Railway decided to build a railway that connects two islands. The construction of Seikan Tunnel (青函トンネル, 青函 is from 青森 and 函館, which are Aomori and Hakodate) began in 1961 and ended in 1985. The tunnel is 53.85km and 23.30km is below sea bed. It's second longest tunnel in the world. By the way, optical fiber cable is also installed in the tunnel.

The Tsugaru Strait railway started operating at 13/3/1988. There are express services run between Aomori and Hakodate. The speed limit in the tunnel is 140km/h, so it only takes 30 minutes to go across the sea. In contrast, it took 4 hours for ferries to do it. The express service, which is considered as regular railway (1067mm track gauge), had finished since 26/3/2016, the opening day of Hokkaido Shinkansen. Hokkaido Shinkansen uses the Seikan tunnel because they won't build another tunnel. Now, the tunnel is double-gauged, which means there are three rails in each track for both 1067mm gauge and 1435mm gauge, but now 1067mm gauge is only used for freight trains.

Anyway, let's go back to Kanita. Kanita is a station which is little but big. Why it was big because it used to be the first stop after going through the tunnel to Honshu (and vice versa, now the express service is gone, so the station became even smaller), and why it is small is because it was only used by 221 people per day in average in the year of 2012. Below are some pictures of it.

 On the way to Kanita.

 This is the diesel train bounded for an even more remote place called Minmaya, where only 31 people per day use the station. (It has only one car.)

 Seheji is the direction towards Aomori (a.k.a. civilization), Naga-Oguni is the direction towards Minmaya and Hokkaido. 

 It roughly means: North latitude 41 degrees, which shares the same latitude with New York and Rome - Kanita. I'm actually bad in Japanese.

Remember I said that Kanita means Crab Field? The sentence above the crab says welcome, and the sentence below says "The oasis of Tsugaru Strait railway".

 The local product of Sotogahama and Kanita displayed in the station.

 They picked a crab as the station master of tourism, and he is called Tsugaru Kanio.

What's more, this is his office.

 The waiting house of the station. They still have vending machines in such place like this.

 The station market. My mom and I had lunch here.

It's just basically a little fishing village. I remembered that I didn't see a convenience store here so this might be the most remote place I've ever been to in Japan.

(Pictures were taken at 17/07/2014)

Kanita is a quiet village that worth a visit. Because I'm about to hand this letter, so I can talk about more about Japanese countryside the next time, if I have no idea of what to talk about in Picture of the Week.

Sincerely,

Melvyn Chou, 20/04/2017.