Matt Does Japan

I suppose I wanted to pretend like it’s the north pole. In reality, the north coast of Hokkaido, the northernmost territory of Japan, is at a lower latitude than Portland, Oregon. What makes it seem so far north is the floating ice on the Sea of Okhotsk. Because this area of ocean is bounded by land on three sides, and a dense archipelago on the fourth, the fresh water that flows into the area from the continents and larger islands doesn’t mix as effectively with the salt water as it would if it were open to the rest of the Pacific Ocean. There aren’t the same deep-water circulations of water that are found in the open ocean, so a layer of brackish water stays near the surface of the Sea, allowing it to freeze in the winter months. Although the entire sea is south of the Arctic Circle, an icebreaker ship runs from Abashiri for tours of this sea ice. I had to see it, so I took a 5-hour train ride from Sapporo, going through Asahigawa on the way.

Sapporo Station. Area over the tracks by the platform is covered, yet there is snow.

Not nearly as much of it as there is outside, though.

Downtown Sapporo viewed from the right side of the train going roughly north. You can see the TV tower in the distance.

They have enough snow that it has to be disposed of near the city limits, in what looks like a landfill. Those are dump trucks taking plowed snow from around the city and piling it on. Images on the train ride:

Just to the southwest of Abashiri, there is a large lake that freezes over in the winter. I saw tents and people on the ice.

The train arrived in Abashiri after 4:00 pm. Unfortunately, this left precious little daylight because it was winter. I had to find the hostel before it got dark, or I’d be in trouble with the cold weather and 50+ pounds to carry. The train station in Abashiri has a nice map of the city, but no indication of the hostel. They also had fish.

The guidebook and a printed map let me know that the hostel was on the northern edge of the city, above the bluff overlooking the sea, but it lacked a scale so I didn’t know how far I would need to walk. Taking it on faith that it would be a reasonable distance (<3 miles), I started walking on the bridge over the river north of the train station. I was surprised to see swans in the water.

I continued to walk toward the sea, about 8 blocks away, where I planned to turn north along the coast until finding a road that wound up the steep hill to the left. I knew the characters for the name of the road, and I hoped there would be a sign for the hostel. Along the road, there were small industrial buildings to the left that seemed to be in the business of processing seafood for market. The smell wasn’t pleasant. The farther along I got, the fewer buildings I saw. I walked a block past where there were no buildings, and chickened out, turning back for a couple of blocks looking up the hill for the road. It was dark by this time, and very cold. I walked back north again for a few blocks, seeing nothing, and turned back. I was nearly panicked. The hotel across the road from the train station was full, and the one next to it was as well. Abashiri is a city, but a small one, and I hadn’t seen other hotels on my walk. I was becoming concerned not that I would freeze to death, but that I would need to impose myself upon the warm interior of a business like a convenience store or gas station, or the government building I walked by, and stay awake all night. I needed my sleep, so I walked several blocks back to streetlights and activity, and hailed a cab. At first, the driver seemed very pleased to get a passenger after dark in the dead of winter where almost no one was out. It took me a few minutes to communicate with pointing gestures on my map the name and supposed location of the hostel. He started driving through the blocks north, along the road I walked and past the farthest point I walked and turned around from. Much to my chagrin, the road up the hill was literally 100 feet from where I turned around, and there was a sign for the hostel, with English on it. As I was about to curse myself for wasting money on a cab, the road turned out to be steep, a little slippery, and with some blind turns, so I decided it’s best I didn’t end up walking it. Then the cab driver got lost. Every wrong turn, U-turn, missed turn, he became more embarrassed. Cabbies are supposed to know their territory well enough not just to get someplace, but well enough to know all the shortcuts. I gave him the benefit of the doubt. It was after dark and hard to see. Road signs were obstructed by snow. He eventually reached a dead end, where a lone house with the lights on and smoke rising from the chimney sat. He got out of the car, and in the final blow to his ego, he interrupted the family’s dinner to ask for directions. We were at the hostel in under 2 minutes. He had stopped the meter around 1200 yen, when he got lost, which was a reasonable fare, not inflated by the extra driving around. Before stepping out the cab, I tried to pay him. He refused. I insisted. He refused. I offered him a 1000 yen note, as a compromise for his minor failure, something. He refused. I felt so bad for him. I know that embarrassing situations are much worse for Japanese, and I just wanted him to feel better about himself on the lonely winter night. But he drove away a sad, sad Japanese man.

The hostel was a large house on a stretch of road with woods on one side and farmland on the other. Having arrived after dark, but not tremendously late (around 7:00 pm), the proprietor of the hostel, a middle-aged, tall man with bookish glasses looked up from his newspaper at the front desk surprised to see a customer at all. A weeknight in February on the northern frontier of Japan is probably the lowest time/place for a hostel owner. I ended up being the only guest that night.

I didn’t have dinner because of the incident with finding the hostel and the cab ride, and no restaurants were within walking distance. I had only a CalorieMate and bottle of water for dinner.

I slept well.

The Sapporo International Youth Hostel has awesome rooms, multiple beer-only vending machines, a spacious laundry room, and friendly staff. It does not have good breakfast food.

After the first day of this stuff, I started eating breakfast from the Sunkus convenience store a block south (yogurt and cereal, mostly). Speaking of which, now is as good a time as any for me to attempt to explain Japanese post addresses. I’ll get to the Historical Village of Hokkaido later in this post.
This Sunkus convenience store’s address is, in Japanese:

〒062-0907
北海道札幌市豊平区豊平７条７丁目３−２６

The first character, “〒”, denotes the postal code, which is 062-0907. This ‘t’-shaped character is seen prominently on the mailboxes throughout Japan, most of which are red. Like in other countries, postal codes are assigned to particular post offices whose letter carriers have responsibility for the areas covered by the code.
The next line has the rest of the address information, decreasing in order of geographical specificity. The top level is prefecture (like a state in the US). “北海道” is Hokkdaido (北 is “northern,” 海 is “sea,” and 道 represents the old concept of a geopolitical entity above prefecture but below nation). “札幌市” is Sapporo (actually it’s “Sapporo-shi”; the 市 means town or city, “shi”). “豊平区” is the district in Sapporo, Toyohira-ku. “豊平7条” is a further subdivision within Toyohira-ku. For example, the Hostel is about a block north of the Sunkus, but it is in 豊平6条. The rest of the address is “７丁目３−２６.” “７丁目” is the block. For example, the Hostel, in the “6″ subdivision, is in the “6″ block of it’s subdivision. “3-26″ is the building’s designation. So, based on this information, and with the extra information that the Hostel’s building is designated “5-35″ on it’s block, you should be able to figure out that the hostel’s full address is:

〒062-0906
北海道札幌市豊平区豊平6条6丁目5-35

There is also a 7-11 convenience store nearby, at:

北海道札幌市豊平区豊平７条１０丁目４−１８

Oh by the way, the katakana for “Sunkus” is サンクス (”sa-so-ku-su”).

After breakfast, I took the subway to Sapporo JR Station and took the Chitose line to Shin-Sapporo (New Sapporo) Station, in the eastern suburbs of the city. From there, the JR Hokkaido bus line has a five minute route directly to the Village. There is also a subway line (Tozai) that goes from Sapporo Station to Shin-Sapporo Station, but I had a JR rail pass so my ride on JR was free; the subway would have cost me a few hundred yen.

Sapporo is still very proud of its Olympic heritage. Although the Winter Olympics were held in 1972, 35 years ago, the public signage is clean and new, and in addition to the winter sports, it includes graphics depicting events from the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany. This median was in Sapporo Station:

An interesting shop, “VIS.” At least they’re honest about the intent of their business.

Designated smoking area in Sapporo Station. Even though the station has large open escalators leading to the outdoor platform not far from here, smoking is still banned outside the “Smoke Here” room. One could probably get their fix in there without ever needing to hold a cigarette in their mouth.

The bus dropped me and a small group of tourists off in the parking lot for the Village. As I looked up the snow-blanketed steps leading up the hill to the visitor center building, I immediately thought of this building’s functional counterpart at Disneyland in Anaheim, California, which I had visited on July 4, 2004. It’s more than a vague resemblance; the two buildings have the same architectural style, especially in the roof.

I bought my entry ticket and grabbed a liter of something in the vending machine. Amino Supli.

The village itself, a contemporary arrangement of relocated historic buildings from 19th-century Sapporo, with shameless and anachronistic liberties taken with their relative positions. One could compare it to Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, where an historical society did something very similar. The village is on the other side of the admission building, which was once Sapporo’s main train station. Cross country skis were propped against a rope outside the doorway, and the tour group was getting equipped. I assumed these were laid out just for them, so I set out in my boots. Later, I was told that anyone can use them. The village isn’t too large, and the snow was mostly removed or packed down, but the skis would have been nice. And romantic, if I had such a traveling companion.

I could write a whole book about snowman paradigms in various countries. Japanese snowmen are quite different from American snowmen.

I was jealous of their skis, mistakenly.

A rickshaw and a carriage.

I don’t know what island or peninsula this map depicts. The first two characters mean “high sun.”

More pictures.

Western texts for the development of a Meiji-era Japanese frontier.

More pictures. The private homes typically had two walls, improving the insulation in the winter and creating an enclosed sitting area in the summer, like a 3-season porch.

A little after noon, I walked back to the front of the village, and did the same trip in reverse, back to Sapporo Station. All of the big train stations in Japan are collocated with shopping malls, always including large, multi-story anchors. I spent some time window shopping, up and down escalators going for six and seven stories. The basement level of Daimaru has fresh fruits and other foods for sale in an atmosphere that could be best described as an urban farmers’ market. They had panels and panels of the massive apples, pears, and other fruits wrapped in stretchable foam mesh and selling for upwards of 1000 yen each, the kind you always hear about from those who have visited here. It was very crowded. A few levels up it was a more typical department store. Tiffany’s has a branch up there, inside the store but behind its own wall. I found a tea container, a gift for my mom, but it took me awhile to figure out how to buy it. A saleswoman looked alarmed when I picked it up and started walking toward the nearest counter, but acquiesced to walking me there and telling something to her coworker behind the counter. Moments like these made me feel guilty for not having learned more Japanese. In the months before leaving the US, I spent about $50 on language learning software from Fairfield (based in my parents’ town of Harrisonburg, VA), but realizing that I would only be there for a few weeks and not again for quite awhile, and probably never for an extended time, I talked myself out of spending a lot of time and effort to learn it. Should be spending more time on my rusty Spanish… excuses, excuses.

I snapped a picture of a Tissot watch I had surveilled online some weeks before. It was the first time I saw one in person (the one on the left). I bought it a few weeks after returning to the US, and for much less than the equivalent of 44,100 yen.

I had a late lunch of soup, vegetables, steak, and …. white rice.

That’s right. “Dan”cing. I, too, can do any pose with the sofa.

X-Box 360. This thing was released in Japan on December 10, 2005, less than two months prior. Frankly, I was surprised that Microsoft tried to market it in Japan at all, what with the abundance of the more popular, superior offerings from Sony and Nintendo.

Colonel Sanders. Effeminate hands. Fried chicken? No: “Classic Cheese Burger.” I didn’t notice at the time, but there’s a fast food worker behind the counter in the upper-left of the picture, just staring at me with his hands behind his back. It’s a good thing I didn’t act on my impulse to grab the Colonel and make a bee-line for the hostel; he would have been all over me before I could say “finger-licking good.” I doubt that United would have let me check it either, even as oversize baggage.

Rental ads, shown here for historical purposes.

This is a sign by the road near the hostel, for the nearby university. Quite the eye chart.

Solo dinner back at the hostel. Vegetable soup and microwaved gyoza from the Sunkus. Not bad, actually. At the other end of the dining room were vending machines stocked with beer, but I opted for water. Something about drinking alone.

Portable ashtray. I don’t know why.

CalorieMate. I love this shit. I don’t care if it’s supposed to be diet food or something. It tastes alright, makes a good snack on the run, and it has a lot of English (not Engrish) on the box, so you know it’s good.

What better way to start a morning in Sapporo, Japan, than with a visit to the Sapporo Beer Museum and a glass of beer?

Vitamin Beer.

The evolution of Sapporo cans, 1960s and 1970s. Yes, that is a 1-liter can of beer.

The 1972 Winter Olympics were in Sapporo. They had special beer for that.

“No, Your Honor, we do not market our beer to minors.” This is a marketing poster for Sapporo Beer from 1920. There is no way those girls are 18-years-old, but maybe the legal drinking age was lower then.

Ten years later (1930).

1967.

… and pull back for a montage.

The upstairs bar at the end of the tour, which was closed because there was almost no one else there. I arrived at the museum 4 minutes before they opened. Thankfully, the downstairs bar was open.

A poster seen on the way downstairs. Guiness; Good For You (1965). I’m not arguing.

Like a lot of public places in Japan, you have to buy a ticket to purchase food or drink. This isn’t done to invoke any kind of cool factor. Rather, this allows the servers to avoid direct cash and coin transactions, which are unsanitary. 200 JPY for a pint of Sapporo Black Label. Beer Crackers are complimentary.

The seating area.

More pictures outside the museum.

There is an indoor shopping mall within walking distance from the museum. The professional baseball team in Sapporo is the Hokkaido Nippon-ham Fighters.

A few of the stores in that mall had some interesting names. Sapporo is a relatively young city as far as Japan goes, and I believe that the demographics are heavier among children and 20-somethings than in cities like Kyoto.

Maruzen is a good book store. I got two of my Murakami novels (English translations) there.

They had a cooking school there, too. Lots of new housewives, I guess. Yes, I’m a sexist pig.

I took the bus back from the beer museum and mall and went to yet another mall called “Sapporo Factory.” The name comes from the fact that the site used to be the location of the original Sapporo Beer factory, which was sold and relocated to someplace where the real estate wasn’t so expensive. So now it’s a mall.

When I walked into the mall for lunch, it was snowing large flakes very slowly. By the time I walked out, it was coming down like… down. The snow doesn’t stay frozen on the pavement because it is heated from below. Heated sidewalks were common throughout Sapporo wherever the property was under private jurisdiction, such as the JR station’s outdoor plaza, the outdoor areas around the Sapporo Factory mall, and certain office building plazas. Public sidewalks were not usually heated, and they had between 1 and 2 feet of hard-packed snow in most places.

The Japanese-style toilet, reprise.

An un-heated sidewalk. This is what an average Sapporo city street looked like in winter.

A Mini. I would have loved to see just one Mini with a red rising sun on the roof instead of the traditional Union Jack.

The Sapporo TV Tower during the day. Digital cameras, calibrate your datestamps! Check!

One of the things I was looking forward to on my visit to Sapporo was the annual Snow Festival, or Yuki Matsuri. On January 30, they were still working on the various sculptures in Odori Koen, the main site for the festival. The Japan Self Defense Force assists with moving the massive blocks of ice and snow.

It was cold, but not extremely so.

The Japanese love golf. This maxim should never be qualified, mitigated, or questioned.

The bedroom at the hostel.

Pictures from my dinner excursion.

“Be Black Tanning Studio.” Guys, I do not write this stuff; send your hate mail to someone else.

A dinner with a view.