Typhoon: will my flight go?

This summer typhoon season has been unusually strong in Japan. I've been told that typhoons don't usually even reach Hokkaido, and this year there have been 3 or 4.

From Asahidake I returned to Sapporo for one night in a hotel before my flight home.

A typhoon hit Hokkaido the evening before my morning flight to Osaka and transfer to a flight to Vancouver. Upon returning to Sapporo, I checked the JAL flight status website, and saw that my flight was marked for possible delay or cancellation. The website was not very helpful in terms of providing more information about what to do. I was a little stressed. I went to the hotel reception and they called JAL for me. When they got through, they said the flight was OK for now, and I should go to the airport in the morning as planned.

The next morning it was still raining, but not that hard. When I got to the airport the departure information screen showed the flight departing as scheduled, and everything went OK. 

Asahidake

On Saturday, after the last day at the school, I took a train to the city of Asahikawa, and then an infrequent bus to the remote Asahidake Onsen, in Daisetsuzan Park in central Hokkaido. The park is very large with opportunities for multi-day hikes around several mountains. Asahidake Onsen consists of half a dozen hotels, each with its own hotspring bath, on the road leading to the tram at the base of Mt. Asahidake.

I stayed a few nights in a hotel here. On my first full day I took the tram, which is a 10 minute ride part way up the mountain to an altitude of 1600 m. This is just above the tree line giving great views of the mountain.

I was particularly fascinated by the vents of sulphuric steam coming out of the side of the mountain.

At the top of the tram there is a walking path that takes about 30 minutes, and has great views of the area and the valley below.

In addition, part way around the circuit there is a path that leads to the top of Mt Asahidake, the highest mountain in the park at about 2300m. Many people were taking the path, the weather was good, and its only a couple of hours to the top, so I decidedI to go.

Just over half way, I entered the clouds, and the wind became very strong blowing raindrops. The terrain became steep and scrambly as well. Overall not that bad though, and I was at the top pretty soon.

I was lucky to get up the tram when I did, since it was closed for the next couple of days due to high winds.

last day at school

The language school runs week to week, so every Friday there is a 'graduation' for those students who are leaving. Everyone gathers in the lounge and the graduating students get a certificate, and people take pictures.

Today about 20 people had their last day. Some had been here a few weeks, some as long as three months. Today was also the end of the schools 'Summer Course' which is six weeks long and includes a lot of cultural activities. Lots of good memories and good friendships were made, so it was a very emotional moment.

Here I am with a couple of friends: Krisna and Jason.

Jing-isu-kan

Another Sapporo specialty is Jing-isu-kan (from Genghis Kahn), which is a type of restaurant where you cook slices of lamb on a coal barbeque right in front of you. I found a great little place that I've been to a few times.

It is a small place and very popular so you have to way in line. You sit at the counter, and someone brings over a coal barbeque to put in front of you, and a plate of slices of lamb. They put onions on the barbeque, and you can order other vegetables as well. You put the lamb slices on the barbeque a couple at a time, turn them over once after a couple of minutes, dip in sauce and eat!

With the barbeque right in front of you, it gets quite hot, so you usually leave kind of sweaty, but it is worth it.

Historical Village of Hokkaido

Tuesday afternoon I took the subway to the end of the line, and then a bus to the last stop, to reach the Historical Village of Hokkaido. In this reconstruction of villages from the pioneering days of Hokkaido, actual buildings were moved from their original locations all over Hokkaido, and placed here. The village is organized into 4 parts: a town, a fishing village, a farming village, and  a mountain village.

The town had large government buildings, a newspaper building, traditional hotel and shops. Hokkaido was settled by the Japanese starting in the 1800's, at a time when Western culture was being introduced. So large important buildings such as government buildings are in a completely Western style.

Other smaller buildings like shops and residences are in the old traditional Japanese style, with tatami mats on the inside, for example.  In a way, the village feels very familiar to me, since it is similar to historical reconstructions of pioneering towns that you can find in Canada.

The farming village had an interesting silkworm farm. Overall, the fishing and farming village houses were even more traditional looking: 

The mountain village had extremely simple dwellings like a thatched hut. The larger buildings were dormatories for loggers:

Overall I thought the village was well done. You could spend a lot of time there if you looked at everything in detail.

Otaru

Sunday's there are no classes and no school activities, and so it is the day of the week that I do some travel on my own. Today I did a day trip to Otaru.

Otaru is a touristy city about 40 minutes by train from Sapporo, on the coast of the Japan Sea. Behind it are mountains on which you see the cut areas for skiing in winter.

 In the late 1800's it was an important port, and many of the buildings and a pictoresque canal from that time have been preserved.

There is a main shopping street with souvenirs, and crafts such as glasswork. There are artists drawing and selling their work along the canal, etc. An interesting thing that seems important here is the selling of music boxes. Maybe music boxes arrived when the city was a port in the 1800's, but there are huge stores selling music boxes of all shapes and sizes: Everything from the classic style to music boxes in the shape of sushi.

There is also an interesting museum with large music boxes from around one hundred years ago, and the metal plates that they played to create music:

After looking around the center part of town, I took a short tour by boat along the canal.

It was very hot and sunny in the morning, but by late afternoon heavy dark rain clouds were moving in, and I caught a train back to Sapporo.

odds and ends

This week was just a few small trips. The weather has changed.It cooled slightly to about 28 C, and it has become generally cloudy with a couple of days of very heavy rain.

On Thursday morning about 7 students met at the school at 5:45 am for a tour of the Central Wholesale Market. This is where the food comes in from the countryside to be bid on by brokers and then distributed to stores and restaurants. We got there early to be able to see the bidding take place, and we were given a guided tour of the huge facility.

That same day, in the afternoon, I joined some students on a tour of the Asahi Brewery. It covered the basic brewing process, and showed the machines for putting bear into kegs and cans at amazing speeds. And, best of all, there was free samples afterward.

Yesterday, I took a bit of time on my own and went to the Hokkaido Shrine, in Murayama Park. It is a new-looking building.

Generally, since Sapporo was built starting in the 1800's, it doesn't have the historical or spiritual feel of other cities like Kyoto. On the other had, the parks are large with a lot space and trees.

Today I went on a day trip with the school. It was supposed to be a trip to Josankei, a hotspring town about an hour from Sapporo, where we would do some hiking before going to the hotspring. However, the heavy rain has caused some landslides there lately so that trip was cancelled. Instead, we went to a large bath house in the city.

Beer festival again

Last week, after returning to Sapporo from Noboribetsu, I decided on the spur of the moment to go to the Sapporo tent in the beer festival again. It was packed, as usual, but I found a place to stand at a small table  and had a beer. When I finished a girl came to clear away my glass.

There was a young Japanese couple standing at the table next to me. The guy saw me at the empty table and maybe he thought that I didn't know how to order another beer. He asked me if I wanted one and I thought: sure, why not. He flagged down a girl selling tickets and when I bought the ticket he took it to the counter for me to get my beer.

By this time I noticed the crowd was singing along to the music. It was pretty good, probably the latest J-Pop. I looked up some songs using the SoundHound app on my phone, showed it to the young couple and joked in Japanese that I was learning the latest Japanese music.

A while later the crowd got even more boisterous. Whole tables of people who didn't know each other had arms over shoulders, singing full out, swaying to the music. On the TV screens around the tent, a countdown appeared, and when it reached zero, all the staff in their yellow T-shirts lined up on either side of tent, arms raised, swaying to the music. By this time the young couple had left, so I asked someone else next to me what was going on. They told me that this was the end of the beer festival.

Wow, talk about timing. One of those times when following the flow of the moment really pays off.

Noboribetsu Onsen

Noboribetsu Onsen is a hot spring town than can be explored as a day trip from Sapporo. It's about an hour and a half by train to Noboribetsu town on the coast, and then a hour bus ride up the mountain to the hot spring town. As soon as you arrive, you smell sulfur in the air, and there are vents everywhere emitting steam from underground. There is one main shopping street, and several large hotels that each have their own hot spring baths. Just behond the main street, there is a park with trails around a desolate area called Jigokudani, which is consists of sulfurous mounds of earth with natural vents emitting steam.

Beyond that, about a half hour walk through forested trails takes you to a lake called Oyunuma, which consists entirely of hot spring water. There is a stream flowing out of the lake, and a little ways downstream there is a platform where you can enjoy a natural hot spring foot bath:

After walking around I went back to the hot spring town, and went into the large public bath. It is huge, with over half  dozen different baths of different temperatures and mineral content.  After a couple of hours there, I caught the bus back to the town and then fell asleep on the train back to Sapporo.

Bon festival

The Bon festival is a traditional festival celebrated throughout Japan. It is a time for families to come to their homes and remember ancestors. A big part of it is the Bon Dance, which everyone takes part in. In Sapporo it is held in a part of Odori Park, with a big stand for drums and singers, and people doing the Bon Dance around it.

The school organized a trip to the festival dance, which was only a few blocks away. They also provided yukatas and several of the students dressed for the occasion:

At the park we watched the dance for a while, and some students took part. The dance seems to consist of a  few simple movements, but people really get into it and add their own style. It's obviously something that Japanese people know very well, having grown up with it. It is a very lively expression and an interesting aspect of the culture.

Moerenuma Park

Today after class I went with a couple of guys from the school to Moerenuma Park, in the northeast corner of the city. It was built in the late 1990's and features a lot of wide open space with geometrical features. It's makes me think of an abstract piece of art on a very large scale.

There is a large fountain in the park, which is off most of the time except for a few times a day when a show takes place. In the evening it is also lit up, and we stayed for that.

conversation class

In the middle of my second week already. Wow, the 4 weeks are going to go by extremely fast. On Tuesday there was a "conversation class" at the school, in which Japanese speakers met with the people learning Japanese to allow them to practice. There were about 10 or so Japanese, of all ages. During the conversation class there were games organized to bring people together, and it lasted a couple of hours.
Afterward, several of us students were hanging in the lounge, and a couple of Japanese girls from the conversation class were there, waiting for their English class to start, so we continued speaking in both English and Japanese.
After their English class was finished, they joined us for dinner at a restaurant that specialized in Okonomiyaki. This is a kind of omlette full of all kinds of ingredients, which you cook on a hot plate right at your table.

The restaurant was an the 10'th floor of a shopping center near the train station, and we hung out afterward for a bit, taking pictures.

Sunflower fields, zoo, soup curry and more

Yesterday was a trip with school to the area around Asahikawa, about a couple of hours drive north of Sapporo. We all piled into one of those big tour busses, which was great for socializing on the way there and taking a nap on the way back.

The countryside in this part of Hokkaido consists mainly of a lush, flat, agricultural area, although you can see mountains in the distance. Our first stop was the sunflower fields which was quite beautful. We had a couple of hours to wander around. It was still hot with intense sun.

The next stop was the Asahiyama zoo in Asahikawa. This zoo is apparently quite famous in Japan, but I thought was fairly old-style with small enclosures. I did see a couple of animals I'd never seen before, like the Red Panda:

After arriving back in Sapporo, some students said they were going for Soup Curry, which is a Sapporo specialty, so I tagged along. We ate in a very nice, very popular restaurant in the basement in one of the buildings near the school. The restaurant made nothing but soup curry, and from the menu you choose the type of broth, the type of curry, toppings, degree of spiciness, and rice. It was very good.

 Afterward, the others said they planned to go out, and invited me along. Everyone went home to change, and we met outside a club/lounge called Gossip in Susukino. For 1600 Yen you got entrance and tokens for 5 drinks. I didn't think I'd use them all, but I did, and more. Very friendly atmosphere, with a few other foreigners. There was about 8 of us and we stuck together as a group for the most part. There was no dance floor but people just danced whereever they were standing. After a while we conversed with some of the Japanese people - with a lot of use of Google translate on both sides of the conversation. Overall it was a lot of fun and the time went by fast. I walked home at 4:00 am and it was already getting light out. Yes you could say I'm getting too old for this, but what the hell!

Susukino festival

Yesterday late afternoon, several of us gathered in the lounge at the school, before walking several blocks to the Susukino area for the festival.

At the festival, a main street was closed to traffic to make room for taiko drumming and a parade of people in traditional costume.

Several side-streets were also closed to traffic and filled with tables serving food and beer. 

It was a great chance to meet more students and it was a lot of fun in the lively atmosphere.

I get the feeling that the locals have a kind of 'work hard and play hard' kind of lifestyle. Certainly between the festivals and the beer gardens there is a lot of beer being drunk. The Susukino area is one of the largest nightlife areas in Japan outside of Tokyo with a lot of clubs and hostess bars etc. This created a funny juxtaposition of traditional and modern during the festival, as girls from the bars were still outside to advertise:

first activity with the school

Today was the third day of classes. In addition to the 3 hours of class time every morning, I signed up for private lessons that take place in the afternoon on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. So with homework, I'm actually pretty busy. The school is on the 2nd floor of one of the tall commercial buildings in the center of town, and it has a lounge area that is great for hanging out after class, doing homework, and meeting other students. It's also air-conditioned!

Funny how different people react differently to the heat. On days when it already feels scorching hot early in the morning, some students arrive with an exhausted look, face flushed, hair stringy from sweat. Others don't seem to be affected at all. Unfortunately I fall into the former category. I've heard others say their rooms are pretty hot at night, so I'm not alone there.

Yesterday there was a fireworks competition in Sapporo, and there seemed to be a lot of excitement about it. About 40 students from the school went to attend. It was held at the banks of the river. I've often noticed that rivers that run through cities in Japan have very wide flat areas between the water and the built-up concrete banks. I guess the areas provide room in case of flood, but in the meantime they make great public spaces. The concrete banks formed seating areas and they were packed with people by the time the fireworks started. We got there quite early and put down a large tarp on a grassy area under a bridge, and we all sat there. Being under a bridge turned out to be a good choice, since there was a brief rain storm that delayed the fireworks but about half an hour. This was the first activity I attended with the school, and it was great to meet more students. They are mostly quite young and a lot of fun. I met a couple of students that are staying at the same share-house, and I was relieved to hear that they had the same first impression of the place as I did.

The fireworks show itself consisted of about twenty separate displays, each a few minutes long and sponsored by a different company. The result was one spectacular display after another - like every few minutes was a grand finale.

arrival in Sapporo

After a long but uneventful flight from Vancouver to Osaka, 5 hour layover in Osaka, and 2 hour flight to Sapporo, I arrived late Saturday evening. I stayed at the Airport Hotel, and the next day the driver came to pick me up, as arranged by the school, to take me to my accommodation.

However, when I got there I was told that the school had sent me the wrong information, and that I was actually staying at another share-house owned by the same company. By this time the driver had left, so the staff took me by taxi to the other place. When I saw where I was staying, it was a disappointment compared to the place I was expecting: the building was old, paint peeling everywhere, not as clean, and the common area was small and not as welcoming. My room had just a cot, and the window was rusted shut. You get the idea. Although this kind of spoiled my mood for a while, I should say that it turned out ok. I was eventually able to pry open the rusted window, and this share-house has the advantages of being quite quiet and being closer to town.

Sapporo is sweltering hot right now. Well over 30 degrees C and very humid. Even the locals are complaining about the heat and everywhere you see people fanning themselves and mopping their faces.

I spent the rest of the day walking around, taking the train, finding the school, and just getting my bearings. There is a long linear park that run east-west through the center of the city, called Odori Park, and it is the site of many of the festivals that happen throughout the year. Right now there is a beer festival, and every block of the park is converted into a massive beer tent - one block for each brewing company.

I stopped at a couple and had something to eat, and beer, of course.

Yesterday was Monday and the first day of classes. There was a brief orientation for the new studendts, and everyone seems pretty friendly. There is a 3-hour class every morning. The classes are small, mine has only 5 students. The biggest change for me in terms of learning Japanese is that now nothing can be in English since the students come from everywhere. So all the explanation of grammar or vocabulary has to be in Japanese which you have to try follow. The pace is reasonably fast, so a fair amount of material was covered in just the first day. Definitely going to learn a lot. 

next adventure: language study in Sapporo, Japan

Everything is set for my next trip. This one will be a bit different: instead of moving from place to place, taking in different sights, I will be staying in one city for most of the trip. I will stay 4 weeks in Sapporo which is in Hokkaido, the northern most island of Japan, to attend the Hokkaido Japanese Language School. I've been studying Japanese off and on for a couple of years now. I took a few courses before my last trip to Japan in 2014, and I've recently been taking more courses and participating in language exchanges such as the Japanese Cafe meetup. I'm basically at a high beginner level of Japanese, and I'm hoping this study in Japan will boost my Japanese to the next level. While at the school, during the week I'll have classes every day, and in addition I'll have private tutoring every other day. The school also organizes activities local trips, so I think it will be a lot of fun.

Another interesting aspect of the stay in Sapporo will be my accommodation. On the application form for the school I selected 'share house' thinking it was a single family house shared by several people, the way students share a house, for example, here in Canada. Apparently it's a popular accommodation for young people in Japan because it is more affordable. 

I've always wanted to go to Hokkaido. I think it is the fact that Hokkiado is one of the more remote places in Japan that attracts me, with lots of natural spaces. The weather in the summer is supposed to be similar to Vancouver, which is better than the heat and humidity in much of the rest of Japan in summer. During the time at the school, I hope to participate in many of the day trips or weekend trips to places near Sapporo. Then, after the 4 weeks in Sapporo I will spend a few days at a hot spring in Daisetsuzan National Park.