Part one of my Northern trip

Oh, these two weeks of travelling have done me much good! Sure, I rested quite a bit before that, but that was a completely different kind of rest, at home, on my bum and in my pyjamas, as opposed to outside of the house.

Although before going to Hokkaido itself I spent a few days in Osaka, there’s no point in going on about it too much. I know Osaka, and the nearby cities of Takarazuka and Nishinomiya, quite well, after all I spent three months there and that was my first ever stay in Japan – those few days were more about seeing friends, host family and a former teacher, not travelling. The only travelling I’ve done was around bars and restaurants, which I didn’t know before, which meant that I both satisfied my cravings for a proper burger and pizza, and I tried Luisiana cuisine (oh my God, Luisiana jambalaya! I’m in love!), and I discovered one of the most awesome places on Planet Earth that is Space Station: a bar where, for the price of at least one drink (which are also very good) you can play to your heart’s content on consoles vintage and new with games old and new. Brilliant, just brilliant!

But before I move on to the tale of winter wonderland that is Hokkaido, I want to show you a couple of pictures from one park where the first plum blossoms were in bloom.

Why am I showing you them? Well, the flowers are pretty, yes, but I’m more after showing you the contrast between the Kansai region, where Osaka is, and Hokkaido.

That’s just a mountain of snow shoved aside from the street and the pavement, but still, the contrast’s quite good: spring in one part of the country, middle of winter in another. And in this case we’re not just talking about simple differences of weather, like we would if it were the UK or France – here we’re having the simplest differences in climate. Small differences, according to the Köppen-Geiger system, just from a moderate climate (Osaka – pfft!, yeah, if Osaka summer is moderate then I’m a dinosaur!) to cold one (Hokkaido).

But leaving climate talk aside, let me get to the point that is my actual stay there. I won’t lie, a week of real, normal, not-damp winter was something I really needed and though not all of the places I went to had much to offer, the positives outweigh the negatives. I came back from Hokkaido rested, happy and with a tiny bit of regret that it’s time to go back, because I felt at home the entire stay – thanks to both the people I met, and to Hokkaido itself.

Here I have to say that when coming to Sapporo (札幌), which we could call the capital of Hokkaido (biggest city on the island and fourth biggest in Japan in terms of population), and Otaru (小樽), which I’ll talk about now, you need to have a certain attitude. If you tell a Japanese person that you’re going there, every single one of them will squeal with delight or tell you that they really want to go. But if you say the same thing to a European or an American who went there, they’ll tell you that these are boring places, there’s nothing there and if you really have to go, don’t stay too long. Upon returning, I now understand exactly why is that. All the tourist spots in those cities listed in guides and pamphlets are, well, European-style buildings and in the case of Otaru: shops with glassware and clocks. Yes, for the Japanese, especially those who never went abroad to Europe or the States, these are quite unusual and exotic, they won’t find them in other places in Japan and definitely not at this scale. In most places I’ve been to, excluding skyscrapers etc., Japanese architecture or Japanised Western architecture dominates the area, while in Sapporo and Otaru it seems to be the opposite. But for the Europeans there’s nothing exotic about that, we could all name probably at least five buildings built in Greek style, for example, in our own towns, nevermind the whole of Europe, and the clocks and glassware too aren’t that unusual to us either, even if we do tend to associate the latter with Venice a little bit more than other places.

Clock Tower, the most famous thing in Sapporo. In reality it's a lot smaller than it may seem on pictures and when I came out on the street the Clock Tower is on, it took me a good minute to actually find it!

Former Hokkaido Government Office Building, known as Akarenga (赤レンガ), which means red brick.

Attention! Building throws snow at bears.

Sapporo TV tower.

Just-a-wall.

Just-a-gate.

Otaru Canal during the day.

Canal Plaza.

Just a doggy in front of the Canal Plaza.

Former building of the Bank of Japan.

Old trainline.

Otaru Canal in the evening.

Otaru Canal in the evening.

All pictures above, except the seventh, eighth and the one with the dog statue, are named in guides as tourist spots. You can probably see for yourselves that they’re not very Japanese and from our point of view they’re quite, well, usual, here, a building made of red bricks or in Greek style. This has quite a lot to do with the history of the island itself: until the Meiji Restoration (1868) Hokkaido was pretty much just a deliverer of food (it still kind of is, Japanese agriculture, dairy etc. is in Hokkaido), and afterwards the influences of the West, in particular of the USA, were quite strong there, mainly to protect the island from being invaded by Russia. Very briefly, my knowledge of Hokkaido’s history is better if we talk about the history of its native inhabitants, the Ainu people, but that’s something for the next post.

Bu that doesn’t mean that we won’t find any of the traditional Japan in Hokkaido, or, to be specific, in Sapporo or Otaru. However, I think that except for a few houses (one of which I’ll describe in more detail later), it’s mostly to be seen in the form of temples of all sorts. I only went to Hokkaido Jingu (北海道神宮) in Sapporo and went past another, the name of which I didn’t note, because that was my orientation point on the way to my hostel in Otaru.

Hokkaido Jingu

Temple by the hostel in Otaru.

Stairs leading up to the Morinoki hostel.

Yet if I am to be perfectly honest, the most of Japan that I’ve experienced, especially in Sapporo, was thanks to my Cuchsurfing host. I’ll tell this story a little bit out of order, but following some themes.

The most important thing here is that my host lives in a house that must’ve been there since well before World War II – I even suspect that if his mum wanted to, she could lend the house to some TV crew and have a period drama set there. Just imagine: the night has fallen and stars shine brightly above your heads, it’s winter and snow’s everywhere. And it’s this while duvet that a simple, short, at most a one storey, but very wide house springs up from, although for now all that you can see of it is the porch and the typical wooden walls. But when the host slides the door open – unlocked, after all it’s safe Japan and the suburbs of Sapporo on an island that is one big “middle of nowhere” – I saw bamboo mats covering the floor of the entire house, a row of sliding doors and each of which led to a simple room and was about a step above the floor level. But as if in spite of the Japanese love for simplicity in interior design, every room was hiding, apart from the furniture typical for each room (futons in bedrooms or a table in the kitchen), some “junk” stuffed in wherever there was space for it: stacks of old cupboards with enough drawers, compartments and hiding places to store everything and more; simple wooden screen, which, if it stood someplace else, could be mistaken for another paper door or maybe even a sliding window; lamps giving a warm, but quite faint light, which made the rooms even more magical, even more mysterious and taken out from times at least two emperors earlier… Magic, simply magic and I won’t lie – I felt like I should be wearing a kimono, not a hoodie and boots.

But I think I felt even more inadequate in my clothing earlier, when my host has taken me to a tiny restaurant where we had dinner and where I tried the local specialty that is karee-jiru (カレー汁), sometimes also called curry soup (スープカレー). The restaurant was teeny tiny, I’d probably never even notice it on my own, but upon entering… Ah, I really, really felt so inadequate! At first I saw a ginger cat (of course), but then I noticed how dim the whole place was and the furniture that definitely remembered both world wars, I felt the smell of the food and, above some businessmen talking in low voices, I heard music. Again: just magical! It’s in places like that where I rediscover the wonders of Japan, in those small, dim and often overlooked places, not in the crowded ones that blind you with neon lights.

Karee-jiru. Delicious!

And to end this post on the topic of food, though this time a bit more widely available, there were two things that I have tried for the first time in Sapporo: miso ramen (味噌ラーメン) and a Starbucks’s frappucino flavoured with… sakura, cherry blossom!

Miso ramen and gyoza set.

Sakura frappucino.

Even before I set off I knew that Sapporo has its own type of ramen, that is noodles in soup, the second most popular dish in Japan right after sushi – but when it turned out that this Sapporo ramen is just upgraded with some sweetcorn and a small stick of butter (yes, literally butter chucked in the soup), I thought that I’ll pass. But miso ramen is a type that comes from Hokkaido and which, despite plenty of opportunities, I haven’t tried yet. And so I did try it. And I am so glad that I have done so in a ramen place, not in the instant form, because it was delicious! Delicate ramen noodles, some vegetables, quite a big slice of juicy pork – it was simply om nm nom nom nom!

As for the sakura frappucino… Well, that wasn’t the first time I tried something sakura flavoured, but it is a flavour that’s very difficult to describe. The only way I can think of, and which I usually use when asked, is that it tastes exactly as you’d expect it to, that is flowery. But do not be afraid, while sipping the frappucino I have attempted to describe its taste as best as I could. At first it tastes very milky (which is completely understandable, milk is the base here), and then, for the briefest of moments, literally a fraction of a second, it seems to taste a little of white chocolate… and that’s when the cherry blossom flavour steps in. And it’s at that precise moment when you realise that it is entirely what you could’ve expected and that somehow, subconsciously, you imagined it to taste like that: delicate, very flowery and sweet, but not in a pushy way, subtle, impermanent (oh how Buddhist does that make me sound!), natural. It’s the kind of sweetness that does not know what sugar is and which isn’t overwhelming and won’t make your mouth feel sticky. It’s a great, great shame that sakura frappucinos are only available when there’s season for them, because I absolutely loved it. Though on the other hand it may be better for my wallet after all (Y530 for a grande)…