Chiba is a large prefecture, something you notice while traveling from Tokyo to the southern seaside resort of Kamogawa. The journey takes a good two hours — and this by express train.
Once past the city of Mobara, the JR lines enter a more truly rural landscape, marked by narrow bunds separating rice fields, forested slopes, views of old graveyards with tiger lilies blooming on their fringes and old wooden stations, their weatherboard siding painted blue or white. As the train slows down to negotiate the winding shoreline, you begin to sense the under-appreciated beauty of this prefecture.
Less impressive are the immediate environs outside JR Awa-Kamogawa Station, which fail to announce this as a seaside resort. Instead, the visitor is met by the familiar set of a convenience store, a police box, a game arcade and a row of shabby shops with gloomy rooms above them. There is hardly an ocean plant in sight to infer the proximity of the sea, though I did spot one traumatized phoenix palm, trapped in a nest of high tension wires, its fronds unhealthily brittle, trunk dry and friable. Fish restaurants, open-air cafes and tree-and-flower-bedizened boulevards leading to beach fronts are conspicuously absent, the visitor having to either ask directions or consult a local map to negotiate the tired streets that run down to the waterfront. (Luckily there is a tourist information-office at the station.)