2 November 2019
The town that got bypassed
Visiting Maebashi, which has no Shinkansen station
Where I am staying, Takasaki, has a major Shinkansen station where two lines split and go in other directions. There are also 4 or 5 other normal lines that start or end there, probably to connect to the Shinkansen.
Before the Shinkansen was constructed, the regional capital and largest city was Maebashi, not Takasaki. I went there tonight. I sure did say Shinkansen a lot today.
Depending on where you read, Maebashi may actually have a higher population, but there is nothing there. I feel as though it must be half the population it once was. It is only 3 stops on the local line from Takasaki, long stops, but no more than 10km, and yet its a total ghost town.
I could not find anywhere there to eat, and I walked around a lot. I spent too long there looking before I gave up and as a result, I was late getting back and some places were closing at 9pm, limiting my choices in Takasaki as well. Thats a lot of geography for tonight, now lets do some pics and go to bed.
This is the most colorful area of Maebashi I could find that was an actual business.
This area looked promising, but the lights are actually attached to the wall around a demolition site.
After a lot of looking, I found the covered shopping street. Almost completely abandoned.
Here is the only sign of life in the shopping street. The owner was cooking his dinner on a small bbq alongside his store.
Maebashi is full of car parking buildings. I will remember it for its wonderful car parks.
I am actually going back to Maebashi tomorrow as its where my bus departs from. That is one of the reasons I went there this evening, to try and figure out the bus situation. Confusion about the bus has only increased. Note all these sticky taped paper additions to the sign. Apparently a new timetable was released on 1 November. Today is 2 November. The bus info place has closed down. So theres a good chance I wont get to where I am going tomorrow. I hate buses.
Back at the Maebashi station, I looked around for anywhere to eat. Mcdonalds or nothing, but look, the line goes out the door and down the street! I elected to go back to Takasaki instead.
I just missed a train so had a few minutes to spare, this allowed me to find a sleepy cat guarding a pizza shop, which was closed.
Back at the Takasaki station area I found a cafe pronto still open. My choices were pasta or beer. The pasta was ok, but in the pictures it had a lot more mushrooms. They were very confused that I did not want beer.