sayonara dairyland: Mochimune, Mochimune desu.

Traveling westward from Shizuoka City, the train passes through the stations of Abekawa, Mochimune, Yaizu, and Nishi-Yaizu, before I disembark in Fujieda on my daily commute. I try to stay awake for the ride—most importantly so I don’t miss my stop and end up being shaken awake by the conductor at the end of this train’s line in Shimada—and also because the trip is actually quite beautiful. June is a generally dreary month in this area, the notorious tsuyu (rainy season) upon us, the hordes decked out in galoshes, toting giant umbrellas...so a blue-skied day is really something to relish. But on this route, really, there are no terrible days.

After clearing the concrete core of Shizuoka, we cross the wide but shallow Abe River (so feeble it is segmented, more a braid of streams than a river) before arriving at Abekawa (kawa means “river”) station. From Abekawa to Mochimune is a lovely, rural stretch of green—still homes and warehouses and such, but more tea and rice fields, orchards, cropland—and just past Mochimune the tracks run oceanside, granting a vast yet brief view of the Pacific before the train is swallowed by a long tunnel between Mochimune and Yaizu. Yaizu, Nishi-Yaizu (nishi means “west”), and Fujieda are known as bedroom communities for Shizuoka City (but they each have their highlights—from Yaizu’s fish market to Fujieda’s Renge-ji-ike Koen), and what I see from the train is house after house between rice fields and small gardens, high school and junior high students riding cruiser bikes toward school, and elementary kiddies walking with their shiny red backpacks and on wet days, multicolored umbrellas.

In the mornings, I take the latest train possible, of course, to arrive at work on time, but in the afternoons I can make the return trip at my leisure. I had to wait a while for a sunny, haze-free day, but when one arrived I finally visited Mochimune Beach on my way back to Shizuoka—the shoreline I’d only glimpsed from the train.