trip to Niigata

Kayo and her sister Mari invited me on a "one day trip" to Niigata. We left late at night, using a Youth 18 Ticket and got to Niigata in the early morning. Mari is a big fan of Japanese History so she talked us into going to a place where a Japanese Castle used to be. We took a local train (with me opening the window and hanging out as we zoomed past deep green rice fields) to a small station where we could walk to the site. We asked the local train station man if there were any restraunts in the area and he laughed at us, too small for that. We asked about atleast any convience stores and he said "I've heard of one over that way, although I've never seen it myself." We headed over that way, and found a small convience store where we got tons of food and ate it outside while watching ants scurry below us. Then we hiked up through a green mountain, along old overgrown paths. Semi bugs hummed in the trees, the summer sun burning our skin and sweat drenching us. At the top there was nothing but the top of the mountain, the castle was removed in the Tokugawa era long ago, but the view of the city below was beautiful. Glittery small town buildings cluttered together with puffs of green trees, leading to an endless gray-blue sea on one side. After that we made our way to a rocky seaside in litterally the middle of nowhere. Our guidebook said there was a bike rental shop, but it had closed years ago. We wandered around, seeing a few sport fishermen in the river leading to the ocean, and some huge electricity generating windmills. We stopped at a large local soveniour shop and got some drinks and sat and watched the ocean while drinking. After that we took the local trian back to Niigata for a wonderful sushi dinner. The only badmark on the vacation was the fight we got into about having fights. Its an ironic thing to have a fight about I suppose, and there were many causes, with the biggest being our sleep-deprived minds. It was quite a scene, two Japanese and a foreigner screaming in a sushi joint. That calmed down and we walked back to the overnight train and took it back to Tokyo. A blur of memories that arent quite captured here in the words I've thrown out of my head.