We went down to the public bath at 6am for one last soak in the onsen before check out. My bath had two ladies in there already. The view out the window was so snowy and gorgeous, with the snow capped peaks in the distance and the snow softly coming down.

After a good long soak, Jives and I sat and had a coffee together in the common room before heading back to the room to pack up our stuff. We left the room at 8am and checked out. The guy at reception called us a cab and we waited 15 minutes for our ride to arrive.

We jumped in the cab and told the cab driver “eki” or station. The trip back to Tono station was 2900 yen, a bit cheaper than on the way to the ryokan on the first night. Once we arrived at Tono station, we bought a locked for 600 yen and stashed our bags before heading to a 711 to get onigiri (rice balls) and coffee to have for breakfast (since we hadn’t eaten in a day).

We then walked around Tono city and tried to find the pokemon manhole cover that is there, but failed (probably because the snow was so deep). We then went towards the train station and saw the kappa shaped police box and the tengu that resides in the tourist information tower. We then went into the train station to warm up by their heaters. A nice lady tried to talk to us, she was excited to talk to a foreigner! She spoke practically no English and we spoke almost no Japanese, so it was an interesting conversation. Jives talked to her about a film and Tom Cruise, apparently she was a huge Tom Cruise fan.

We said farewell to our new friend and jumped on the Kamaishi line train back to Shin-Hanamaki at 10:15. The train was much emptier this time (last time we rode this train it was commuter hour) and we got a block of four seats to ourselves. We also got to see more of the countryside this time, as it was lighter out then when we arrived.

The snow was falling like crazy over the spanning countryside and the dense forested mountains. The train took 54 minutes and we arrived back at Hanamaki station, transferring to Shin- Hanamaki station where the man at the JR counter booked us tickets on the Hayabasa train from Morioka to Hakodate. You need reserved tickets on this train because it goes under the sea from Honshu to Sapporo Island. We then sat in the waiting area and ate our sandwiches and had a warm beverage before getting on our non-reserved Yamabiko train to Morioka. We checked the signs before the train arrived and it said that the non-reserved cars would be 1-13 and 12-17. We sat down near car #15 and waited for the train to arrive.