Blargh, this riddle-solving isn't going too well. I've been looking at the Hakodate Main Line since it runs along a couple different coast lines of Hokkaido, but there's about a thousand stops along it and I don't want to comb through those. And Wikipedia doesn't say anything like "and the town of blah borders the coast of riddle-answer," and frankly I'd be disappointed if the riddle requires such ridiculous understanding of geography and the Japanese railway as that.
I feel like I'm going about this wrong. I'm trying to find the village when there should be some clue in the material that's available to me as to what the home town is. There was that cryptic little hint Lambdadelta gave, "if the riddle isn't hard....then there is just no point to it." Or something like that. That might be the hint I need, but I can't make heads nor tails of it right now. Maybe sleeping on it will do the trick.
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"It's a magical world, Hobbes ol' buddy...let's go exploring!" - Calvin
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