Journey　North

My trip north started early Tuesday morning as I made my way to Tokyo station from Yokohama to catch the Shinkansen. I made it with plenty of time to spare and was getting settled in on the train when I had a surprise visitor. The woman at the JR counter who had helped me make my train reservations to and from Hokkaido had come looking for me to apologize that some of the information she had given me about my return trip was false. Originally we thought that I could return on an overnight train from Sapporo that arrived Tuesday morning in Tokyo, even though my JR pass expires at midnight on Monday. After I had left the reservation office she had checked to make sure that that was the case and it turns out it wasn’t so she got up early on Tuesday to make sure she could catch me on my train to apologize and let me know what I needed to do to get the reservation changed. And she gave me a present as an apology for the situation! She was so sweet and helpful. I’m still just flabbergasted by the courtesy; totally unexpected and a wonderful way to start the trip.

The train ride itself was fairly uneventful. I slept for a couple hours on the first train and spent the rest of the time watching the scenery go by. Very pretty scenery too. Lots of snow-covered rice paddies and old-fashioned houses before going through the Seikan Tunnel, which is the longest underwater tunnel in the world (~57km long under 240km of water and rock). Kinda freaky going through it when you stopped to think about but it’s something that I’m glad I got to do nonetheless. The southern part of Hokkaido looks much like the northern part of the main island with a few more hills and more snow. Sadly by the time the train left Sapporo to continue north it was dark and I spent a good chunk of that ride plotting out my week after having acquired a ton of brochures from the info desk in Sapporo station.

Wednesday morning I was planning to catch a ferry out to one of the islands off the northern coast to do some hiking but a rather sever miscommunication (my Japanese is pretty abysmal) lead me to arrive at the wrong port roughly an hour and a half after the ferry had left. A very nice gentleman who was working at the port I showed up at gave me a lift to right port since he couldn’t explain how to walk there. Can I mention how amazing the Japanese are? Got me to the right port in about a fifth the amount of time it would have taken me to walk there (though I never would have found it, very few signs were in English and I never did manage to find a map the I could read), and helped me find the person I needed to talk to. Finally figured out that the ferry only leaves twice a day and if I took the second ferry I wouldn’t be able to make it back till the next day.

So that plan got scratched and instead I spent the day wandering around Wakkanai. Very slowly, I might add; the sidewalks were covered with a layer of solid ice that was several inches thick in places and I left my ice skates back in the states (silly me, right?). I found a cool little temple up on the side of a hill (after dodging all the heavy machinery that was loading piles of snow into dumptrucks to make room for cars on the roads) and had fun watching the crows that were fighting over something on top of one of the snowdrifts.

 Also made my way down to the rather interesting breakwater dome and seawall. The dome is strange because, well, it’s short and seems to serve no purpose other than to be a strange end to the seawall. Oh well, it was about as strange as the seawall itself. From the land side it looks really normal but the other side is made up of huge concrete jacks (you know, the things that kids try to hit with marbles?). It looked like a group of giants had been playing a game and then just pushed all the pieces in a heap against the wall. Made a really neat sound when the waves hit it though because it echoed up through all the empty spaces and distorted from the normal ‘waves on concrete’ noise. Also found some starfish that had partied a little too hard last night. Remember kids, moderation is key.

For the afternoon I took a bus out to Cape Soya, the northernmost point of Japan. The bus ride along the coast was beautiful and I got to see a sea eagle pull a fish out of the waves and fly off with it. The cape itself was pretty but not all that interesting. If it had been warmer I probably would have stayed longer and explored a little more but as it was I had fun shooting as the wind pushed me across the ice (like a moving walkway, only slipperier). Definitely glad I made the trip out there and I got to go back to the hotel and thaw out with a hot bath and a sushi dinner.

Thursday was another early morning as I hopped a train from Wakkanai to Abashiri over on the eastern coast. The first leg of the trip was really neat because we were speeding through dense forests and mountain valleys in the middle of a snow storm. Parts of it looked a lot like the Rocky Mountains actually; felt like I was taking a train home rather than through northern Japan. Had a brief layover to change trains and ran in to two other Americans, Fritz and Andy (the first tourists I’ve seen in Hokkaido). Turns out they’re doing a whirlwind tour of Japan while taking a break from teaching English in Korea and we had a good time talking about Japan and teaching ESL (I can’t wait to start my course in Thailand). The second leg of the trip was fairly boring, due in part to not having a window seat to watch the world go by, but I got some photos edited and listened to a good chunk of my book on tape (currently listening to “Stranger in a Strange Land” by Robert A. Heinlein; absolutely fantastic novel, I highly recommend it).

Got into Abashiri early afternoon so I dropped my luggage off and managed to track down bus, train, and boat schedules in English so I could make plans for Friday. Having also acquired a map I decided to wander around town a little bit since it was still fairly early. Found the local Mister Donut to grab breakfast for tomorrow (would you believe that the Mister Donut was actually marked on my map along with all the tourist attractions and museums? I was highly amused) and walked through the pretty much deserted central shopping area. It’s interesting that a place that advertises itself as a winter tourist destination was so empty and most of the shops and restaurants were closed. Maybe it’s because it’s the lull between New Years and the Snow Festival.

Found a place that was open and sat down having no idea what I was getting myself into. The place was a yakinikku restaurant where you order raw ingredients and cook them yourself on the grill inset into the tabletop. And the ingredients here? All Wagyu (Kobe) beef. Now, Wagyu is one of those things you see them use on Iron Chef America and you think, right, like I’ll ever be able to afford that stuff (the price per ounce is obscene in the states). And I somehow managed to find a place in the home of Wagyu beef where I could actually afford to eat. Let me tell you, it was divine. The texture is smooth and buttery because of all the marbling and it just sorta melts in your mouth. And I proudly managed to not screw up cooking it (I had no idea what I was doing, never been to a restaurant like that before and there were no instructions). It was a fun and truly tasty experience and man, I could really get used to eating meat like that. Maybe I’ll move here and live of Wagyu and raw fish (the quality of fish here is amazing as well). Hmm, sounds like a plan to me!