Village Hidden in the Leaves

The weekend of the 8th and 9th (a three day weekend for us here in Japan - I got Monday off too!) I went with a friend to explore the northeastern part of Okayama, a part of my prefecture that I had never ever been to before. It's not like I've had much reason to go up there. Tsuyama City is the largest city in that part of the prefecture, and getting there is not easy. You can drive there if you have a car, of course, and that makes things a billion times easier. It still takes about 70-90 minutes though, and that's with taking the ridiculously expensive expressway (like a toll road).

But for those of us without cars, we are left with a couple options. One is the bus; I'm sure there's a bus that goes up to Tsuyama from Okayama, and possibly even from Takahashi. Second is the train. There are two trains that will go to Tsuyama. One of them is from Niimi (which, in itself is 30-40 minutes away by train). That train leaves not very often, and takes a ridiculously long time to get there. I think from Takahashi it's at least three hours? That basically goes across the northern part of the prefecture, probably in a one man train. I bet it's gorgeous. The second train requires getting to Okayama, and then taking the Tsuyama line up there. From Okayama it's somewhere between 40-60 minutes depending on if you get the train that skips some of the stations or not, and about 1400 yen, one way. So like, to get there from Takahashi is a little under two hours, if you get your connections right.

However, our destination was not Tsuyama. Oh no. My friend, who's a huge Naruto (a Japanese comic about ninjas) fan, wanted to visit this town called Nagi, since the author of Naruto was born there, and based the Hidden Leaf Village off of his hometown. I was there mostly for support (plus I generally enjoy exploring the prefecture, and I had never been up this way). She wasn't sure if they had anything for the author there, or were trying to capitalize on his success with Naruto and turn it into a tourist destination. Either way, we figured that we would take the train there and, should it turn out that it was just another little rural inaka town that we would bring our Japanese study materials and study at a conbini or restaurant or something.


View Larger Map (B is where Nagi train station is. A is Nagi proper. If you zoom out once, you can also see where it is in relationship to Tsuyama. If you zoom out two more times, you can see where it is in Okayama prefecture. Also, for reference, I live in Takahashi City)

Our first sign that the town, at least near the station, had nothing to do with Naruto, was that we were the only two people to get off at the tiny station, which was basically a small platform surrounded by a vast amount of forest. You know in Narnia (the first movie) how the kids get off at a train station that's really empty and in the middle of nowhere? Yeah. That was Nagi Station. There was the one train track running towards it and away from it.

That being said, the place was absolutely gorgeous. They had pine trees and other trees that we don't have on the western side of the prefecture as much. The train ride was also really pretty. We saw a festival going on... but that looked like it was a good hour walk to get there from the station. We passed it at first and were like 'oh hey let's go to that festival!' and then we just kept going... and going... and then we passed this really pretty bridge and were like 'well I suppose we can walk there since the trains are going to be pretty sparce...' ...and then we kept going and finally, probably about a half hour walk away (so really, not too bad) we got to the station. We were the only ones who got off.

The station itself was in a place that was nowhere near any kind of buildings other than the board of education and a couple of houses dotting the small river it ran by. They all looked empty, and possibly like they weren't in use. Of course, it being the weekend, there was a fair chance they were in use, just simply closed. It being the inaka, there were spiders EVERYWHERE. Those huge yellow and black stripey spiders that get to be amazing sizes had managed to populate the area in the absence of people. It's kind of funny, since I don't actually mind those spiders, so long as they aren't in my house. Usually they just chill up in their webs and they don't really move. I haven't seen them jump or move like... ever. So I don't mind going up close to look at them or take pictures, especially since we have them everywhere in Takahashi as well. My friend though, being from Okayama city, was creeped out by them since they're kind of large, and I don't think they have many of them in the city.

Clearly though, from looking at the map, we missed Nagi proper by about... three hours. Three hours and twenty minutes, to be exact. That's how long it would have taken us to walk to the central part of the city, where presumably, there are things like the post office and maybe a restaurant or conbini, or at least vending machines. Oh well! Can't help that. The chances of us going back there are pretty slim, though, it was really really pretty. If we had a car or something, I'd be down for going back. But yeah. No car.

Unfortunately, we didn't get to do much exploring either. When we got off the train and walked down the steps from the platform, the first thing we did was check the time schedule for trains going back to Tsuyama. The next one was in half an hour, and the one after that was in not one, not two, not three, but FOUR HOURS. From what we saw, even if we walked to the festival, we would still end up with time to kill. And from our minimal exploring, there was no place we could actually sit down and study at, save the station. The station was actually a really nice building; probably the nicest in the area. It had a little bench area, as well as a book area (no Naruto though) and a sign telling you that the nearest thing from the station was about 1.5 km away. Hooray.

Also of interest within the immediate vicinity of the station was a signboard with a map of all the historical sights of the area. More interestingly, there was also a list of the village areas with a household and population count. They weren't very high. I think most ranged from 6 households (16 people) to somewhere around a hundred or two.

Most interesting though, was the fact that not only were these things written in Japanese, but they were also written in English. Clearly, this meant that, at some point in time, there was (and perhaps is?) an English speaker out in that area. I'm not sure why they had a sign in English about historical landmarks near the station, but to me, it hints that people - tourists - come to this area for one reason or another (though I hope for their sakes they come in cars, despite the sign being almost right next to the station). The bigger question is, what happened?

Well, we both agreed that we did not want to wait for the train in four hours, so, despite having just got there, we would leave on the next train in half an hour. Kinda lame but... oh well? It was about 12:30 when we got there, and we were expecting to be able to find like... something where we could at least get food. I don't think I even saw a bathroom around the area. We hadn't eaten lunch, nor had we brought anything with, which was kind of stupid of us. The next train left around 1 o'clock and the train after left around 4:30. It was going to take an hour to get back to Tsuyama (and thus, food). So we could either eat around 2 o'clock... or around 5:30, unless we happened to get really lucky and somehow stumble upon food (chances were looking pretty slim though). Taking this into account, it wasn't that hard to decide on the earlier of the two trains, since we were both pretty hungry. We had left Okayama sometime around like... 9:40, which meant that I had left Takahashi that morning sometime around 9 o'clock (though, that morning I had been really really dumb and missed the 8:10 train and had to wait for the 9:05 express train to get there on time). Needless to say, we had eaten sometime around then and were reaaaallly hungry. That part, we hadn't really thought about until then. Oops. Had I the chance to do it again, I would have made a point to bring something for lunch, even if it was just stuff from the convenience store.

With that time frame though, we pretty much had only time to wander around close to the station before we had to wander back again. Missing that 1 o'clock train was not an option. I wanted to walk to the bridge, but alas, no time.

That's basically the story of our really really short trip to Nagi Town. The outskirts of Nagi town, anyways. We eventually made it back to Tsuyama, where our priority was getting food. One of my teachers is from Tsuyama, and we had talked about how Tsuyama had lots of 'B-Rank' restaurants.

B-Rank restaurants have nothing to do with the American restaurant hygenic rating system (though, I'm willing to bet that the majority of B-Ranks here would get like... a B or C from that). Instead, B-Rank restaurants are like... one step below fast food restaurants. They're not fast food places like McDonald's, since you can't always take things to go. Usually, you eat at the restaurant. But the food is ridiculously fast, sometimes faster than the fast food service I've received!) And what's more, it's really good, and generously portioned. These are places like the ramen restaurants, or rice bowl (donburi) places like Yoshinoya or Sukiya, or like the okonomiyaki restaurants that Hiroshima and Osaka are famous for. You get your food really fast, and generally, you don't take that long to eat it. That's what a B-Rank restaurant is. Chipotle would probably be a B-Rank restaurant, though I'd wager that most Chipotles are larger than even normal restaurants here. For some reason, places are just really really tiny (even in the larger cities).

Anyways, Tsuyama is supposed to be famous for those kind of restaurants. The city, next to the station, is kind of grungy, and well... my teacher said that the city really comes to life at night when people are out drinking (and going to these B-Rank places after/while drinking beer) and during the cherry blossoms bloom. So we started to look for these places.

ホルモン焼きうどん、Grilled Horumon Udon

We found a couple places all advertising that they sold the B-Rank food Tsuyama was famous for: Hormone Udon ホルモンうどん。 Hormone is... well... Hormone are a mixture of organ meats that are supposed to give you more stamina. Typical ingredients include things like the heart, the liver, tripe, kidney, and stomach. Mmm. I've tried a couple things, like heart and tripe and stomach, but generally, I found out what they were after. Some of them aren't too bad either. So like... I'd advise trying it before you ask what it is. Seriously, it's how I get through Japanese meals sometimes. Generally if you try it and don't like what you eat, people will let you alone without giving you too much of a hassle. I promised my teacher that if he took me to a hormone udon place, I would at least give it a try (especially if there was beer to wash it down with).

Needless to say though, with just me and my friend there (and I tend to be one of the more adventurous eaters in my friend group here), we decided to forgo trying Tsuyama's famous B-Rank foods. Instead, we walked to the Tenmaya store (whose sign we saw from the street) across a bridge (with these HUGE fish! You could see them quite clearly from where we were standing on the bridge, a couple stories above the river), and into the building, hoping for food within the department store. I think we failed at finding stuff, because we could only find one family restaurant and the things they sold in the grocery section of the store. Oh, and a bakery. Eventually, we ended up eating at the bakery, since they not only had sandwiches (ham and blue cheese~! SO DIVINE) but also savory breads and things like (smallish) Japanese pizza slices that weren't that bad. I also ordered minestrone soup (which came from a bag), and I kid you not, it tasted like I was eating spaghetti-O's, minus the pasta. Really really weird. They also had a gelato place we hit up after that. Japanese gelato places are super fun, especially since they have things like matcha (which, as gelato kind of tastes like sweet grass) and seasonal foods like sweet potato and chestnut.

Yeah though, we didn't see too much else there so we decided to go back in to Okayama instead, where there were things to do (and eat).

We also went to the gardens that weekend, but I think I'll save that for a post when I can add my pictures in too!