Since I would be taking the 0830 train to Sapporo changing for Asahikawa then a bus to Daisetsuzan, I would have to get up early. The time was imposed on me by the last of 3 bus services up the mountain. However this was no hardship because the sun rises early, around 0500, and I had to get breakfast outside the hostel.
I hardly saw the keeper or his wife during my stay. They had a hands-off attitude to the hostel and they only staffed the counter when somebody needed something. They did however provide tea and hand-made icecream at 2100 each night in the lounge.
I didn't feel like salmon roe first thing in the morning, even if it's a local delicacy. I ended getting some mystery savoury balls that had bits of squid in it from the 7-11.
The contrast between Sapporo and Hakodate was so marked when I stepped out of the station. There were waves of office workers and shoppers to wade past. Of course Sapporo has about 2 million while Hakodate has about 300,000 population but I'm sure it's more than that. Perhaps, like all big cities in Japan, Sapporo the big city sucks the people from the smaller places.
At Asahikawa I changed to a bus. This city has the distinction of being the coldest place in Japan, because it's near the centre of Hokkaido and one winter it hit a record bottom of -41C! Hard to believe that this scene would be very different in a few months. Fortunately it was a mild sunny day and temperatures all over Hokkaido were near perfect, according to the weather map on TV.
A foursome of Singapore women checked in just after me. They are here for a week or two and have been driving around. They were surprised I could get a month off. It seems that Singapore employers don't like employees taking a month off in one go.
The hostel is a beautiful lodge, the best that I've had in Hokkaido so far. It has both an indoor and an outdoor onsen. I preferred the outdoor one because I like to breathe cool air while soaking. The water in the indoor onsen was too hot anyway.
Shrouded in the evening mist, Daisetsuzan awaited me.
My first full day in Sapporo. It has a few sights but nothing worth more than a day or two; Hokkaido's attraction is in nature. It was drizzling when I set out and I was glad I had my umbrella. First to see the TV tower, which is more impressive at night when Hokkaido is snowbound. Then I got trapped in a Bermuda quadrangle of streets looking for the Clock Tower, a relic from the opening up of Hokkaido in the 1870s. As it was raining harder now, I decided to postpone it until after lunch.
First to the tourist office to get information about bus services to Tōya-ko Onsen. Also to buy a Hokkaido Flexible Rail Pass. However I realised at that point that it would not cover the 10 days I had in mind so I decided to postpone purchase of that until I reached Hakodate.
Next to get some lunch. The hostel warden had recommended a sushi train place on the 6th floor of the Japan Rail shopping building. But when I got there there was a queue of people and the projected wait, according to a whiteboard, was 35 minutes. The customers are supposed to shiffle along the chairs put out for them. What a pity, I had my heart set on some fresh seafood, which Hokkaido is famous for. Maybe elsewhere.
So I settled for another place on the same floor and had a tempura set. Pretty standard fare, but the one interesting variation was the tempura cherry tomato with cheese. (Hokkaido is famous for dairy produce also.)
Then a desert of green tea icecream from a shop claiming establishment in 1917. It was light and tasty. They put a sprinkle of green tea powder on top as well.
The underground shopping arcades here have all the latest consumer bling, but one useful aspect is that the passages extend like octopus tentacles in all directions, enabling one to avoid the weather. So much so that the exits are numbered, for the convenience of residents as well as visitors. They would make sense in the deep of winter. And winters here are very severe, so much that the tourist office issues pamphlets explaining how to dress for winter. This corner looks like a sunny garden but in fact is underground. Probably good for combating SAD in winter.
Finally I found the Clock Tower, whose design and mechanism were imported from the US in the late 19th century, hence the style. It's dwarfed by the office blocks around it, so it took a while to find. Incidentally it isn't just visitors who are bewildered by directions; I saw locals consulting the many public maps scattered all over.
I stumbled upon the Nijo seafood markets by accident. Unfortunately I couldn't buy anything inspite of the blandishments of the sellers, who thought I was Japanese. It was useful though to know how much I should expect to pay for a splurge meal of hairy crab before I leave.
Variety stores are a blaze of colour, words and figures.
By this time I was getting seriously wet so a visit to the botanical gardens was out of the question, so I returned to the hostel to rest.
In the evening, I went to a lamb BBQ place. The portions were grilled on a mini Mongolian charcoal brazier. Lamb is not my favourite dish but the tender portions here would be a revelation to those who associate lamb with steak chainsaw. I thought the white piece you see was cuttlefish, but the waiter explained that it was lard to oil the surface.
It's only 36 minutes by express train from New Chitose Airport to Sapporo and 1040¥ (about AUD15) which is quite reasonable compared to the Sydney Airport train. Around Sapporo the land is flat. There is more space in Hokkaido, the farms and houses could be in Europe until you notice the Japanese aspects. I read somewhere that many young Japanese come to Hokkaido to escape the cramped lifestyle in the south.
Sapporo's streets are laid out in a grid pattern and numbered in the four cardinal directions so it wasn't too hard to find the backpacker hostel. After escaping from the maze of passages that the central station is. I saw a lot of bicycles and riders on Sapporo streets. Despite all the trappings of a modern Japanese city, it's still bicycle friendly. The hostel was tiny—for example it wasn't easy to turn around in the prefab shower cubicle—but had all the required facilities.
Despite the fact that this was a nightlife district. I did not feel hassled in the least. The only time I was approached was when a spruiker desultorily tried to interest me with a laminated poster of some bar girls. My only worry was that since I couldn't read the advertisements, I might inadvertently wander into a place thinking I would be getting Mongolian Lamb but be offered meat of a totally different sort. Heh.
The keeper had recommended a ramen shop called Yukikaze, saying nine o'clock start. Was that right, start, not end, kuji kara? Yes, no mistake. When I finally found the hole in the wall place, there was a group of people waiting for the opening. The posted hours were from 2100 to 0400. Obviously for the owls to get a meal after a night out. I had the miso ramen and a Sapporo Classic beer. It's not one of my favourite dishes, but the execution of this one was pretty good.
In the photo you see Ramen Street. There's a New Ramen Street nearby. There are so many eateries in Susukino that I think half the inhabitants must be operating them for the other half.
Except for the bilingual signs, HK airport transit could be in any modern airport in the world. As we had landed around 0505, the terminals were fairly deserted and the people there were waiting for transfers. The shops were not open. There are still temperature sensing cameras at the gateways, a reminder of the SARS epidemic and later the avian flu alerts that gripped HK. HK airport has free WiFi and I used it to pass some time.
The Cathay Pacific planes were quite new and there is even a power socket at each seat where you can charge your computer or MP3 player. However the air conditioning was set too cold on the leg to HK and too warm on the leg to Sapporo. It was very hot and humid outside HK airport, I think it was 34C and I could see the haze in the air. I could feel the blast through the gaps in the airbridge as I alighted. I felt sorry for anybody who had to be outside. Unfortunately that might be me in 3 weeks' time.
Sapporo Airport is spotless, you could have a meal on the floor. An interesting piece of trivia is that many of the signs in the international terminal have Russian and Korean which says something about the visitors they get. The first order of business was to get some cash from an ATM. It took a while to locate the machines. But they wouldn't give me any money. Finally I figured out that I must be asking above my daily limit so I dropped the number a bit and the cash came. Not obvious from the error message. What a waste of time. But whew!
I also noticed that one of the languages the ATM knew was Portuguese. What's with that? Perhaps for the Brazilian Japanese visiting?
Since Japan has near complete literacy, writing is prominent in public, more so than in the west. This can lead to a feeling of information overload when you can't figure out what the ads are selling. The ticket machines were equally confusing. Fortunately there is usually an English option and I recognised the characters for Sapporo anyway so I got the train without problems.
Japanese train stations are also shopping centres since many people have to pass through it. There were many colourful things for sale but I didn't recognise all of them.
I'll continue the story after arriving in Sapporo in another post or it will be too long.
