Day 4 on the Northern Sea Circuit - Let it snow!

 

In hell

Soup curry スープカレー is quite the popular dish in Sapporo 札幌. My wife and I had passed by several restaurants serving the item during our first few days in the city, and all of them seemed to have people waiting in long lines outside in the cold, patiently awaiting their turns to try some. As it turned out, it was a good thing we didn't join any of the queues - our hotel's breakfast buffet included soup curry as a recommended dish to try. I had some on our last morning there. The verdict? A soupy, mildly spicy stew that was pretty good, but difficult to see what all the excitement was about. Then again, I forgot to eat it with rice, an oversight which wouldn't be rectified until almost at the end of our stay in Hokkaidō 北海道:

We awoke on our third morning in the city to a light snowfall...:

...that grew in intensity as we checked out and lugged our bags above ground to Sapporo Station 札幌駅. Sapporo isn't Tōkyō 東京 or Washington, D.C., however, so the few centimeters sticking to the ground had no effect on the transportation system:

Which was good for us, as we had tickets for the Hokuto 北斗 limited express train, which would take us from Sapporo on a roughly 75-minute ride past fields covered in snow to Noboribetsu Station 登別駅:

Normally on a trip like this both Shu-E and I would carry all our clothing in bags small enough to fit in oversized compartments on airplanes. However, as my wife was planning to spend almost a month in Taiwan seeing family and friends following the conclusion of our Japan jaunt, she brought along a large suitcase instead. 

Traveling around Japan with hefty luggage pieces isn't recommended. While trains like the Hokuto and highway buses have luggage racks or compartments for stowing large bags, ordinary trains and buses don't, and struggling with luggage while getting on and off most forms of public transportation is one sure way not to ingratiate yourself with the locals. There are delivery services that can transport your baggage from one hotel to the next, but seeing as we were only going to be staying one night outside of Sapporo before returning to the city, it didn't make much sense to use one of these (I've done so in the past, and they're quite convenient!). 

Arriving at Noboribetsu Station and seeing the long line of mostly foreign tourists attempting to get onto a very crowded bus with their suitcases for the short ride to the hot springs area (the reason for going to Noboribetsu 登別 in the first place), Shu-E and I made the eminently sensible (and not too expensive decision) to take a taxi to our hotel. After entrusting our bags with the staff (it was too early to check in), we set out to have a look around Noboribetsu Onsen 登別温泉: 

The first order of business was to find somewhere to have lunch. I would end up ordering a "Hokkaido Winter Special":

One of the innumerable great things about Japan is that restaurant items often look exactly, or at least very close to, how they are presented in the menus: 

The snow was coming down as we left the restaurant and made our way to hell. "Hell Valley" 地獄谷, that is, one of several such places in Japan - a smoking volcanic crater reeking of sulphureous gases and dotted with hissing vents. It was all starkly beautiful in the snowy conditions:

Tessen Pond ("Iron Spring Pond") 鉄泉池 was fenced off, an understandable move considering the water temperature was around 80°C/175°F:

For the record my wife came across this large snowball and didn't accumulate it herself:

The scene behind us in the above photograph:

Leaving Jigoku-dani and heading back to the center of town:

We detoured to climb up the steps to Yuzawa Shrine 湯澤神社:

By the time we returned to the Takinoya Bekkan Tamanoyu Ryokan 滝乃屋別館玉乃湯 it was time to complete check-in procedures, and then to have a first look at our room for the night:

Relaxing in our room with a locally-made craft beer (purchased from a shop on our way back from the underworld) before dinnertime:

And what a dinner it was by the time evening rolled around! This is one of two good reasons why you should splurge (a little, in this case, thanks to current exchange rates) and stay in a ryokan 旅館 (or a very nice minshuku 民宿) for at least one night while traveling in Japan. 

Out of nothing more than sheer laziness, I've uploaded the menu description to go along with the food porn pics below:

A Hinamatsuri 雛祭り display in the lobby of the ryokan:

The other reason for staying at a ryokan, especially one in an onsen 温泉 town or village, is the opportunity to soak at the end of the day (and sometimes in the mornings, too) in a hot but relaxing pool of water. In Japan this means sans clothing, but I long ago got over any inhibitions I may have initially had about being naked among strangers. Readers of this blog will note, however, that this isn't the case with Shu-E. And unfortunately for her, our room at the Takinoya Bekkan Tamanoyu didn't have its own bath or shower (only a toilet), meaning she had no choice but to go downstairs after dinner and get nekkid in the ground-floor women's bath. She would tell me later that she only showered, and didn't actually set foot in the hot spring bath itself. 

And as I enjoyed the onsen experience in the men's bath, I gave no thought of all to how my wife was dealing with her bathing-related neuroses. Life was just too good at that moment...

Day 3 on the Northern Sea Circuit - getting fishy in Sapporo on Memorial Day

 

Hohei-kan

"Boys, be ambitious"

Most Japanese people are familiar with these three words. They were uttered by an American professor, William S. Clark, as parting remarks to his students at the end of his stint as a teacher at the then-Sapporo Agricultural College (now Hokkaidō University 北海道大学). His presence in Japan was a reflection of the unique circumstances present in Hokkaidō 北海道 at the time. Ezo 蝦夷 (as the island used to be called) once existed on the fringes of the Japanese state, but with the onset of the Meiji period 明治時代, the new authorities embarked on an ambitious project to develop the island, encouraging Japanese people to move north and settle the land (displacing the indigenous Ainu people アイヌ in the process), and inviting foreign experts to advise and assist on the colonization efforts, which is one reason why rural areas in Hokkaido are often surprisingly evocative of farmland scenes in the American Midwest:

Sapporo's 札幌 most well-known landmark also evokes images of 19th-century Americana. The Sapporo Clock Tower 札幌時計台 was built in 1878, initially as the drill hall of the aforementioned agricultural college, and is the oldest building still standing in the city. It's also the oldest clock tower in Japan, with the timekeeping mechanism installed by a Boston-based company in 1881. I had passed by (and taken photos of) the clock tower on my previous visits to Sapporo, but accompanied by my wife, I finally went inside on this U.S. Memorial Day holiday* for the first time to have a look at the small history museum within:

Inside were displays on the clock tower building itself, as well as the early history of Sapporo:

A photo of a geological and mining engineer named Lyman with his assistants, one of the many foreigners advising the government on the development of its new frontier:

Discussing my ambitions with a bored Dr. Clark:

Visiting the clock tower had been my idea. Shu-E chose where to go next - the Nijō Market 二条市場, a public market taking up almost an entire block, popular with both local and foreign tourists: 

My wife salivated over the crabs on offer, though for obvious practical reasons we could only browse:

As we arrived at the peak of the lunch hour there were long lines of hungry visitors waiting in front of all the eateries within the market. So instead we went outside and found a small, empty izakaya 居酒屋. Sitting at the counter I ordered a bowl of cod roe and crab on a bed of rice. While we were eating a foreign couple entered. The woman asked in a North American accent if they had any oysters (I had to translate for the owner), and finding out the answer was negative, abruptly turned and left, to the bemusement of the couple running the izakaya. I diligently made sure to be polite and use the proper expressions of gratitude (not that I never do) when paying the bill at the end of our meal:

If it was oysters カキ the gaijin 外人 couple was seeking this vendor could have been their answer. I purchased some as a follow-on from our lunch:

And having been to Mount Moiwa 藻岩山 and the seafood market, that was it for Sapporo as far as Shu-E was concerned. She expressed little interest in going to the Sapporo Beer Museum サッポロビール博物館 or Sapporo Biergarten サッポロビール園 (as I had done way back in the summer of 1991) and only reluctantly agreed to accompany me to see one of the city's handful of late 19th-century Western-inspired architectural gems. So off we went, passing through the seven block-long Tanukikoji Shopping Street 狸小路商店街...:

...in order to take a tram...:

...to the vast expanse that is Nakajima Park 中島公園, home to the Hōhei-kan 豊平館, an attractive blue-and-white important cultural property that dates to 1880:

It was first used as a hotel by the imperial family when they visited Sapporo, and was moved to its present location from close to Ōdōri Park 大通公園 in 1958. Visitors are allowed to freely roam the first two floors, but truth be told there wasn't much to see inside:

The chair used by the then-Crown Prince and future Emperor Yoshihito 大正天皇 on a visit in 1911:

My wife was much more impressed with the large frozen pond in the park: 

We eventually returned for a rest at the Cross Hotel Sapporo クロスホテル札幌, enjoying a beer and the view from the lounge on the 16th floor:

With darkness falling we ventured back out into the heart of Sapporo's nightlife, the Susukino すすきの　district:

Hokkaido is famous for its crab, but surprisingly Shu-E didn't want to have dinner at any of the well-known restaurants serving it:

Instead we headed into Ganso Rāmen Yokochō 元祖さっぽろラーメン横丁, despite the fact my better half professes not to like another of Sapporo's signature dishes, miso ramen 味噌ラーメン (if you haven't figured it out by now, my wife sets a lot of conditions for herself!). I ventured here on both my visits back in the 1990s, and the crowds this time around were still thick, with the main and most obvious difference being the number of gaijin accounting for those waiting in long lines to get into one establishment or another:

Not being one who likes to stand around waiting to be seated, I convinced Shu-E that we should go into the one shop in the alley that didn't have a line of customers standing outside the door. It was a small place, with a short counter, two tables and a multilingual ticket machine for ordering food and drinks. The reason for its lack of popularity was probably due to its specificity - each bowl of ramen on the menu came with clams (which I certainly didn't mind). My miso-flavored noodles were delicious:

A good reason for not wanting to eat at the restaurant below! While I liked Bourdain, I also blame him in large part for the hideous pretentiousness of some visitors who follow an extremely narrow and rigid ideological mindset in seeking out so-called "authentic" dining experiences while abroad. These "travelers, not tourists" (a distinction which exists only in their minds) seem unaware that their hero traveled with a production crew that would scout out locations in advance, and provide him with a translator if one was needed. You know, just like how you and I travel:

We emerged out of the opposite end of the ramen alley and found ourselves in the red-light district (or one part of it, anyway). We walked by one establishment that had a bunny girl sitting on a stool and waving at passersby a la Amsterdam (including yours truly; Shu-E tried to get me to go inside but I demurred). In the old days you couldn't see the women from the street - instead there would be a thuggish-looking gentleman trying to persuade Japanese men to go inside. This time, I saw a sign on the door of another business announcing that English-speaking "staff" were available. The times they have a-changed!:

 

In our next post we leave Sapporo to breathe in some sulphury fumes in a hot springs town...

*The day has no significance whatsoever in Japan, but for me it was a paid Federal holiday, and therefore did not count toward the accumulated vacation time I had to use on this trip.