Day 5 on the Northern Sea Circuit - Bearly making it back to Sapporo

 

Back in Sapporo

Breakfast at the Takinoya Bekkan Tamanoyu Ryokan 滝乃屋別館玉乃湯 on our fourth morning in Hokkaidō 北海道 looked like this. While I love Japanese food (both washoku 和食 and yōshoku 洋食), traditional breakfasts are a different matter. For someone who likes to sit down in the morning with a bowl or two of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs, grilled fish and pickled vegetables don't provide much of an incentive to start the day off fresh. However, the occasional morning feast in a ryokan 旅館 or minshuku 民宿 while traveling is something to be enjoyed and savored: 

After checking out and entrusting our bags with the ryokan staff for safekeeping, we made the short walk uphill to the Noboribetsu Bear Park Ropeway Base Station ロープウェイ山麓駅のぼりべつクマ牧場. The snowfall of the previous day had been replaced with clearer skies. Because our destination was the Noboribetsu Bear Park のぼりべつクマ牧場, each cab came with a cute stuffed bear to keep us company. Our ursine companion got a bit lippy on the ride to the top of the mountain, so I had to have a "counseling session" with him:

As you can see he had adjusted his attitude by the time we reached the top:

Looking back toward Noboribetsu Onsen 登別温泉:

The views from the top of Washibetsu-dake 鷲別岳...

and Kuttara-ko 倶多楽湖, a circular volcanic crater lake that, according to my Lonely Planet guidebook, "is remarkable for two things: there's not a single river flowing into or out of it and it has been left almost completely untouched by human hands". The lake can't be reached by road:

There are two things you can do (three if you include taking in the views) at the top of the mountain, one good, the other not so. The positive activity is to have a look at the recreation of an Ainu kotan (traditional village) called Yukar no Sato ユーカルの里:

With no obvious source of heat other than the hearth, I concluded that the relatively warm interiors of Ainu homes were well adapted to the harshness of a Hokkaido winter:

The not so good thing to do is to gawk at the listless bears confined to their small enclosures. Because food is always available they don't hibernate, but there isn't much for them to do other than to make Chinese tourists excited by their mere presence:

The windows are designed so that tourists can get a closer look at the bears from the "human zoo" (as the interior passageway is dubbed):

There were some activities held while we were there, including a "duck race" that we largely ignored, though Shu-E said she heard some visitors betting on the outcome. We did go inside for a "show" that involved having three people from the crowd go down to the floor and hide treats. Once they were safely back in their seats, a bear was brought into the arena to hunt down the food. Not the most gripping of performances, but the audience seemed to enjoy it. Still, I felt a sense of relief leaving Bear Mountain and returning to the onsen 温泉 down below:

Our ryokan, which looked much nicer on the inside than its exterior would've suggested:

With a little bit of time remaining before our limited express train departed at 13:23, we browsed some souvenir shops on the main street:

The Shichifukujin 七福神 or "Seven Lucky Gods" is a septet of kami 神 in Japanese culture and mythology. In many areas it's possible to go on a Shichifukujin Meguri 七福神めぐり mini-pilgrimage during the New Year holiday (January 1-3) to visit different shrines and temples, and even collect all the figurines, which can then be displayed on a takarabune 宝船 treasure ship much more appealing in design than this souvenir pictured below. I regret never doing this when I was living in Tōkyō 東京:

Many people (Japanese and non-Japanese alike) are familiar with the Ainu word kamuy カムイ, meaning a divine or spiritual being. That's due to the popularity of Golden Kamuy ゴールデンカムイ, a popular manga 漫画, anime アニメ and live-action series about a Russo-Japanese War veteran's search for a stash of Ainu gold with the help of a young Ainu girl. My daughter had heard the name, but wasn't very familiar with the series:

If I were still living in Japan I would've bought some bear meat to bring home. I recall there was a famous "hunter's restaurant" in Vilnius that had bear on the menu, but according to this old post I ordered the beaver stew there instead:

Having called a taxi to take us and our things from the ryokan to Noboribetsu Station 登別駅, we had around 45 minutes or so before our train would arrive and depart, which appeared to be sufficient time to have lunch. There was a small restaurant very close to the station called 食事＆喫茶eファミリー (which translates as "Dining & Cafe eFamily") that seemed like the ideal spot for a quick bite. The atmosphere felt very local as the older woman running the eatery seemed to know the equally senior women sitting at the counter quite well. The customers sitting at the tables, on the other hand, were all foreign travelers like ourselves (you can see part of our luggage in the lower right):

I ordered the pork ginger set and waited for it to arrive. And waited. In the meantime my wife's food came, which she quickly finished. When my meal finally arrived at the table, there was less than 15 minutes to go before the train departed. As you can see in the photo the volume was quite generous; I somehow managed to eat it all and return to the station with a couple of minutes to spare (it should be noted the food was good - just make sure you have enough to eat there if you're waiting for a train):

The Hokuto limited express 特急北斗 pulls into the station:

If you based your impressions on Japan solely on comments left on social media posts (assuming you've never been to the country yourself), you could be forgiven for thinking it's a veritable paradise on earth, a place of unparalleled beauty devoid of any crime or other forms of blight. Though Japan is a country of great beauty in places, the reality is (surprise!) more complicated. Shu-E and I used to live in Yokkaichi 四日市, a city known for its waterfront industrial complexes called konbināto. And while these コンビナート do emit a certain beauty at night, in the daylight the scene more resembles this:

https://jt-desk.com/spot/mie/1916/

From our 4th-floor apartment balcony close to Ise-Matsumoto Station 伊勢松本駅 we had a beautiful view of the Suzuka Mountains 鈴鹿山脈 in one direction, and of a dystopian industrial hellscape in the other (with odors to match when the wind was blowing in the wrong direction). In the 1960s and early 1970s the smog produced by these oil refineries and petrochemical factories was so bad the city now has a form of asthma named after it. Hardly the land where "everything is cute" as someone recently posted on Facebook.

These were some of the views from the train as we reached Tomakomai 苫小牧, a port city between Noboribetsu and Sapporo 札幌, where our train made a (thankfully) brief stop:

Fortunately the view from the train windows more often looked like this:

Now back again in Sapporo - this was the view looking out from our room on the 36th floor of the JR Tower Hotel Nikkō Sapporo JRタワーホテル日航札幌, where we would stay for one night:

Shu-E opted to rest in the hotel room, but I had things I wanted to do, so I ventured out into the snow to to see the Sapporo Shiryōkan 札幌資料館. Constructed in 1926, it served as the Sapporo Court of Appeals but now functions as a local history museum:

Many of the interior rooms have been turned into art galleries. I wasn't too interested in most of the works currently being displayed, though these photos of old European cities (SCENE by South Korean artist Moon Hyung Joon) did bring back memories of our time in Lithuania:

I did like these examples from Portraits of the Boundary by Park Hae Rim:

The most interesting part of the museum is the preserved original courtroom. In a telling indication of what the Japanese justice system was like prior to the end of World War II, the prosecutor was seated next to the panel of judges, quite literally looking down on the accused and their defense attorney:

The view out the window of the courtroom showing the rear of the building:

I didn't realize that legal uniforms were worn up until 1947:

The Sapporo Shiryokan is located at the opposite (western) end of Ōdōri Park 大通公園 from the Sapporo TV Tower さっぽろテレビ塔:

I returned by subway to the Sapporo Station 札幌駅 area and did some shopping in the Hokkaidō Nippon Ham Fighters 北海道日本ハムファイターズ team store. Once the least popular team in Japanese baseball when they were based in Tokyo and shared the Tōkyō Dome 東京ドーム with the Yomiuri Giants 読売ジャイアンツ, the Fighters have become a source of pride for baseball fans in Hokkaido after relocating to Sapporo in 2004. Their current ballpark, Es Con Field Hokkaido エスコンフィールドHOKKAIDO, is located in the suburbs in Kitahiroshima 北広島 - we passed by it several times on the train during our trip: 

The Fighters were the original Japanese team for MLB superstars Shōhei Ōhtani 大谷翔平 and Yu Darvish ダルビッシュ湯. I ended up buying a jersey emblazoned with the name and number of current manager Tsuyoshi Shinjō 新庄剛志 on the back, another MLB alumnus and arguably the most eccentric personality in Japanese baseball:

BIG BOSS!:

My last shopping stop of the afternoon was at the Kinokuniya bookstore 紀伊國屋書店. Indications of how popular Taiwan is as a destination for Japanese tourists could be seen in both the number of guidebooks and travel magazines devoted to Taiwan, as well as these language guides on Taiwanese Mandarin 國語 and the Taiwanese dialect* 台語. My wife is a native speaker of both, whereas our daughter is only fluent in the former. I, of course, are from fluent in either - the only phrase I know in Taiwanese is Góa ē-hiáu kóng Tâi-gi, meaning "I can't speak Taiwanese". Except that by saying that, I can speak Taiwanese...at least a little (I also know how to tell my mother-in-law I'm full when she tries to stuff more food down my gullet): 

My wife and I didn't have far to go for dinner in the evening, as our hotel sat almost on top of the station, which itself was filled with dozens of eating options. We settled on a restaurant specializing in beef tongue 牛タン. I knew what I was getting myself into (I like the dish), but I guess there have been other foreign diners in the past who didn't, as before we were seated our attention was directed to a sign stating in English that the restaurant served tongue! I was reminded of the trip I took with Amber to Kyōto 京都 a couple of years back, when we went into an Italian restaurant and were told several times by the proprietress that they didn't serve pizza, even though I tried to make it clear we were more interested in having pasta dishes like carbonara. Damn tourists...:

Back in our hotel room and enjoying a local craft beer while outside the snow was coming down heavily:

But by the time we were ready for bed it had already stopped:

We would be fortunate on this trip not to have our itinerary disrupted by bad weather. Stay tuned as the next posts will cover our excursion into eastern Hokkaido. 

*My Mandarin teacher at the embassy insists on calling the Taiwanese dialect Minnan-hua 闽南话, while Wikipedia prefers to use "Taiwanese Hokkien", though the Mandarin page is titled "Taiwanese" 臺灣話. My wife is on the blue side in Taiwanese politics, but even she refers to the language as "Taiwanese" (which is also what it's called in Japan) Táiyŭ, so that's good enough for me.

Below are two books from my library. On the left is "Taiwanese for Beginners" 初めての台湾語, while on the right is "Traveling Taiwan Mandarin" 旅する台湾華語. The reason the books are in Japanese is that it's very difficult to find English-language titles on these two subjects: