February 05
5th
No real reason to update, except to gloat, pour scorn over my detractors and ask, quite reasonably, "who's laughing now?". I got my Jap test marks back, and whilst right about the listening section, am proud to report a whopping great 96.25%. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it. The first thing to go my way in I can't remember how long, and hopefully a good omen for the rest of the year.
Whilst I'm here I might as well direct you to this great site which represents everything my site failed to become. Great title too, "avoiding life", I wonder why that strikes a chord! I may not post again 'til after Hokkaido...I guess we'll see.
25th
Hokkaido, Japan’s frozen frontier. (11th-14th February)
Apologies for the long absence. I haven’t been able to update in a while because I wrecked my camera, and a description of the Snow Festival would be no fun without the pictures. Luckily Ricky has the same camera, so I was able to salvage what was on the memory card. However, he was in Northern Ireland for his brother’s weeding last week, hence the delay. February has been uneventful bar the trip to Hokkaido. At least school has been tolerable, and I seem to be getting 4 or 5 classes daily, so for once I haven’t been bored! However, I’m in peril of losing you, the reader, through a description of my daily routine, so without further ado, Hokkaido.
Three days of escape from the reality of life were simply not enough, but at least Hokkaido was a great experience while it lasted. Hokkaido is the second biggest island in Japan, and besides a few disputed islands to the north which Russia has held since the last war, it’s Japan’s northern-most outpost. It was populated by a race of people called the “Ainu”, who have been systematically wiped out since the Japanese first started colonising Hokkaido a few hundred years ago. Their origins are pretty unclear, but present theories link them to other Northern Asian peoples who once lived in Siberia, and it seems likely the Ainu’s territory once stretched over the rest of Japan until invaders (present day Japanese) started spilling in from Korea and China during the Yayoi period.
Hokkaido is on the same latitude as southern Spain, but its climate is more like that of Finland! When we arrived the snow was about three feet deep. Daytime temperatures didn’t get above -4C, and at night dropped to about -8C. The roads were caked in ice; snow tractors and shopkeepers with shovels were working overtime to keep snow and ice off the roads and footpaths, with varying degrees of success. The weather was incredibly changeable; one minute we’d be basking in sunshine, the next a snow storm would sweep over the mountains and we’d be enveloped in a blizzard. The locals seem to have survived by building the city half underground, making Sapporo resemble some kind of giant termite hill. The public transport system (tram lanes) is also excellent, avoiding the problems of traffic jams/vehicles breaking down in cold weather. Despite the obvious drawbacks to life in such an inhospitable location, Sapporo is the cleanest, newest, most ordered and least busy of all the cities I’ve been to in Japan, and therefore my favourite.
As I said before, my birthday coincided with the “Snow Festival”, so I got cheap flights to Sapporo at the peak time of the year, which was immensely pleasurable! The streets were lined with snow and ice sculptures, from tiny crappy snowmen made by children, to huge structures bigger than a house, taking hundreds of army irregulars weeks to construct, and sponsored by Disney and other major companies. Needless to say, the cute factor went into overdrive, with Disney characters, Hello Kitty, Pingu and what not in abundance. There were also better, more mature sculptures, such as a massive Nagoya castle which took my breath away. I’ll put some up in the Gallery to speak for themselves.
We went sightseeing around Sapporo on the second day. The Fish Market (Nijoichiba) was fascinating, with thousands of giant scary crabs in tanks waiting to be eaten. Hokkaido’s fresh seafood is renowned, and the crab certainly was delicious. We even tried whale “bacon” on the second night, though I wouldn’t write home about it! After the market, we took our pictures from the top of the TV Tower, which has inspired its own “kawaii” character – “Terebi Touchan”. I don’t even want to start explaining this one…every THING in Japan has to be accompanied by its own particular “cute” mascot, yet quite frankly I’m amazed that they’ve managed to create a cuddly toy version of a huge pile of metal and concrete. “terebi” of course means television, but because words with more than 3 syllables are problematic, as is pronouncing “v”, it has become “terebi” (see also McDonalds-“Mac”, etcetc). “Touchan” combines the elements “Tou” for tower, and “chan”, a suffix which babifies (not a word, I know) words, in much the same way as “horse” becomes “horsey” and “cat” becomes “kitty”. “Touchan” (“towery?”) also happens to be a childish version of “otousan” meaning “father”, hence the silly little moustache on the caricature. Ugh! The view of the city was great (see gallery), but somewhat ruined by the melee of people all clamouring for terebi touchan goods and merchandise!! We rounded the sightseeing off with the old clock tower and old government office – pretty impressive as a building, probably because it’s built out of red brick in the Victorian style, and doesn’t look like it’d blow over in a gale like most of the buildings in Japan.
As evening approached, we took the tram to the foot of Moiwa Yama, and then a cablecar to the summit. As I’d anticipated, there was a variety of restaurants at the summit, and we were able to gaze out over the city as night fell. The lights were incredible, especially from the Susukino district. Susukino, if you’ll permit me going off on a tangent, is the Red-light district, and has more “ahem” establishments than Amsterdam, Shinjuku and Bangkok put together. I suppose people in Hokkaido have to keep warm somehow! So we went out to take pictures. I struggled with my rubbish little tripod, to get a reasonable night-scene, and succeeded only in dropping my camera onto the hard, compacted snow, and wrecked it completely which, to say the least, put a bit of a downer on the evening! So no more photos after this point.
The last day was reserved for Snowboarding. The snow in Hokkaido is incredibly soft, so it really doesn’t start to hurt till you’ve fallen for the 1000th time. I started to get to grips with using both edges of the board to turn, a big step up from using only the back edge, and resulted in me getting more snow than usual down my neck. The most bizarre moment of the day was running into two Hertford Students from the year below me (Frederika and Sarah Galbraith if anyone cares), who are both living in Tokyo at the moment. Talk about coincidences! Anyway, that’s pretty much it, but as I say, check out the photos.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY |
| UPDATES |
| ABOUT THE AUTHOR |
| JAPAN PHOTOS |
| JAPAN LINKS |
Send E-Mail to: hudson_in_japan@hotmail.comCopyright © 2005 . All Rights Reserved