Japanorama

Matt, Keiko and Emi’s 2007 adventure.

At the end of January, after a relaxing period of preparation, Matt, Keiko and Emi set off on a tour of their ancestral sites. This is a stimulating account of their experience(s).

Hokkaido

Japan's northernmost and chillymost island.

We arrive in a blizzard. As we come in to land all we can see ahead on the plane tv is white and a tiny, skinny, fragile black line. That, we realise, is where the wheels of the plane will go.

It is cold. At most street corners in the city are these handy gravel dispensers, which, combined with the road and pavement heating, promote pedestrian longevity.

Cars hurtle by on ice willy nilly.

We are advised to get special non-slip shoes.

We are given brochures on how to walk on ice, slush and snow.

We are alert and alarmed at first. Then we notice many young ladies walking about town (in blizzards) wearing very short and teeny clothes with high heeled footwear- so we relax.

The 58th Sapporo Snow Festival is the main reason we've come to Hokkaido. Part of the 58th Sapporo Snow Festival is the ice sculpture display; hundreds of large and enormous sculptures made of snow and ice filling a huge park in the middle of town.

Lots of stalls selling beautiful festival food and affiliated stuffs help bring some warmth back to our frozen toes.

We go to ice bars and have hot chocolate.

Some of the sculptures are very enormous. This one is of an expedition ship and penguins and dogs and a whale. It's not to scale.

You can see more snow sculptures here.

Once we stopped falling over we found that we loved Sapporo: fantastic, spectacular, cheap and filling food and bracing after-dinner walks in blizzards.

‹ We made these (they are snowmen).

‹ We didn't make this one. Emi's gloves are white because she had been throwing snowballs.

We went to Satoland (Sugarland) for more snow-related enjoyment.

This is an ice maze.

There were also giant ice slides and a large hall where you could dry your wet bum in front of kerosene heaters.

Emi made another snowman, you can see a (1.3MB) movie about it here.

We left Sapporo and went to Otaru, on the coast. The train ride was beautiful.

We saw people surfing here.

It is cold, minus eight in the shade.

Otaru was the first town in Hokkaido, famous for sushi and glassware, a canal and its annual candlight festival.

The people of Otaru make around eighty trillion wax spheres with little candles in them and ninety seven quidzillion ice lanterns with little candles in them. Then they light all the little candles and one hundred and millionty konkasquillion tourists go "aaaahh."

We went "aaahh" the loudest.

‹ This is the canal and some candles and some snow.

If you look up (but not too far up) anywhere in Otaru, you see busy ski slopes or a wall.

‹ This is a frozen amusement park near Otaru. We went to the end of the route on a bus and found this place by the sea. Next to it an aquarium piped out music and "We are closing, please go away" across a desolate car park.

We climbed up past a shrine to a headland to this view. Below us we could hear some enormous seals talking to each other about how crap the aquarium they were stuck in was. Ahead of us these wonderful fake log concrete fences - and the sea.

On the way back to town the bus stop was a snowdift.

The next day we went to an onsen - a hot spring - and simmered in outside pools staring at a bamboo forest and birds and - of course - snow.

Lovely.

NEXT > Kyoto: Blossom Time