More travel woes

This morning we had an excellent breakfast at the hotel
then got a cab for the airport. Unfortunately, while it was sunny and nice in Tokyo, it was apparently raining so hard in Northern Japan (where we were going) that the airline had cancelled our flight! After some quick rescheduling by Kenji, we headed out to Tokyo station, where we would be taking a bullet train to Hachinohe, but we first needed to get some lunches for the train







The lunch boxes were excellent, with the exception of one thing. There was this ball shaped thing (upper right chamber, below the carrot) with what looked like bacon wrapped around it. My dad claimed that it was some kind of potato, but on the inside it looked distinctly un-potato-like. In fact, although I have never eaten one, it looked like what I imagine a testicle to look like on the inside : lots of different kinds of tissue and white. It also tasted horrible; I still have no idea what it was, nor do I want to. Kenji ate the other half and adamantly claimed that it was yamaimo -- the dreaded mountain potato so hated by Anthony Bourdain.

After a smooth trip up to Hachinohe, we were greeted with the news that the train that was scheduled to take us the final distance to Aomori was also unlikely to leave, because of flooding on the tracks.


We hemmed and hawed for a while, and ended up taking the longest taxi ride of our lives (1:45 or so) up to the Asamushi spa. Happily we made it in time for dinner, which is really one of the best parts of the spa, and Chloe got to probe the limits of her culinary adventurousness. There were really too many delicious things to describe in detail, but the scallops and Abalone in particular were excellent.





The spa itself was excellent, with an out door rotenburo, two indoor pools and a warm water "waterfall" to loosen your back. By nine AM the next day, chloe and I had taken three baths, and the trials and tribulations of the previous had been mostly forgotten.