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.