15th of September, I am catching up.

Day 11/63

It must have been the fastest ever I’ve gotten off a hotel room. I woke up at 9:28 only realising that our train from Hakodate to Sendai was to leave in one hour and 12 minutes. Before that I had planned to shower, go to the post office to send one package to Australia, one back home to Finland *and* have my breakfast. It seemed like a doomed possibility, since most of our stuff was around the room yet and no packing had commenced. However, I can be organized and the post office was just 40 metres away from our hotel, so we managed to be at Hakodate station with the luxury of 20 minutes to spare, buy our saru soba lunch for the train and get some Pocari Sweat as well.

The train from Hokkaido to Honshu goes underneath the sea in a tunnel so long that there is actually a station underneath. What one does underneath the sea, I wonder… Perhaps takes care of the tunnel? We changed the normal train to shinkansen at Hachinohe and were in Sendai for about five hours.  Our hotel in Sendai is the same as in Hakodate, the Chisun grand. There is even a Lawson near by.

Sendai is supposed to be the most beautiful area of Japan. We got the only room in our hotel that is both meant for two people and has internetto in it. Fastest connection so far btw, I caught up with my picture uploads as well as my television, kind of. Internet really means a safe haven now a days.

We went out for dinner to the local Teramachi, which means a shopping arcade (it’s called the ‘CLIS ROAD’ btw… Not exactly GLIS as my reasech group’s name but close enough). After some city ramble, we located a rolling sushi place, which I think my husband chose because he could pretty much take the night off translation business and we can just have whatever we want from the plates floating by. Everything was very cheap of course, around 100yen a plate (75cents), so my dinner was about 5 euros, even though on that amount of Sushi in Finland, you would have easily ended up paying 20euros. Easy.

We also checked out the tat shopping possibilities and came across a rather high quality tat shoppy which sold samurai things and wooden plates and stuff. Jonathan almost bought some more yukatas, japanese style bathrobes, which he has completely worn off since the last time he bought them in 1992. Finland is a land of saunas, so we are eventually wanting to get some to ourselves as well as our potential guests to our so far potential sauna that we hopefully someday have…

Sendai seems like a busy city. I still haven’t seen enough to make up my mind if it’s the most beautiful place in Japan or not.

Day 10/63

After such an efficient day in Hakodate yesterday, we bounced out of bed before seven and were on our way to Sapporo by 8:30 train. Morning excersises included walking to the station and scouting the station area for yet another memorial (read: like a statue, but crap). We did manage to find a small althar for Hechi Kata Toshiso, a samurai that killed himself at the battle of Hakodate at that particular spot (they had lost the war).

I love Japanese trains. Three hours and we were in Sapporo. Lucky enough, I sleep anywhere, so I just blinked and I was there… Our mission in the beer city was to find a proper Ainu (the Northern People) museum, but first we stopped for a gorgeous lunch at ‘Taj Mahal’, where my vegetable curry with cheese naan was so far the best lunch I’ve had. And remember that yesterday we had Viking buffet that was pretty awesome. I am however, very addicted to curry and this was a heavenly place. Cost us about 800yen (6euros each)…

Then we were off to find the Ainus… This proved out to be one quest where mr. cock-up paid us a visit of “we are not open on Mondays”. Reminding that getting there from Hakodate took a train of 3hours, a walk of 30minutes, a metro of 20 minutes, a bus of 38 minutes… So almost like we popped into somewhere like Saarijärvi from Helsinki for the day, only to discover that what we wanted to see was closed. I didn’t let it bring me down, we did get to see the amazing Hokkaido countryside and the neverending mountains with their green covered hills. I stumbled on a great field of something yellow as well – for me, the trip was paid with that one picture there… And the Ainu museum had huts outside, so we could break laws and scout the Ainu toilets.

The Ainus took baby bears when they were little, raised them in cages and then killed them for food. However, my husband tells me that you can’t really eat bear meat because of some of the insects or whatever that live in their skins… This was however not the only way of their food gathering. They had efficient fishing methods like nets and spears and on their spare times they embroided all these incredibly beautiful patterns on their skin coats and furs. Maybe I was an escimo in a previous life, I find this all very fashinating. We were looking at the Japanese fish movements in the northern seas the other day and stumbled on to the fact that if the Ainus and other Northern people really went fishing as far as it looks, they must have found America… Also I find fashinating that there is no other conversation about any other continent in the world to be found except America.

Our legs were numb by sitting in a very smallish place for two in a bus to Sapporo station from the middle of no where where the Ainus were not at home. So we decided to use our last two hours to make an effort to check out the Sapporo beer factory and the gifto shoppus that were attached to it. By the time we walked back to the station (which btw is about the same as Kyoto station – fucking huge and complicated to find anything in it), we had a fast Ramen dinner before our train back to Hakodate.

Today’s learned lessons included: Sapporo is the capital of Hokkaido, 2 million people living in it. I enjoyed my short visit there, but very much the same as on my first visit to Japan – I like Hakodate better than Sapporo, like back then I liked Nagasaki better than Kyoto. I still stick to those principles. In three days my husband and I have decided that Hakodate is an excellent city where we’d both very happily live in. Plus, we live much more cheaply here than back home. Lunch today was 6euros each. Dinner was 5. Taxi home from station was 5 pounds… Makes you really think – what kind of places are London and Jyväskylä, if even Japan is cheaper.

Day 9/63 of the RTW

We’ve been in Japan for ten days. Doesn’t seem like, but so it is. Today was our extreme Hokkaido sightseeing day. In the morning after well deserved sea chicken (tuna-mayo) onegiri (ricecake) breakfast, we head for the hill. There was a couple of shrines, a statue of samurai and two churches, one orthodox, one supposedly christian. The Christians were having some sort of Sunday morning shindig, in which they played very gay songs, including the jungle song from Lion King… Good way to start a day.

It was looking like a rainy day at that point, so we had museums planned. We got to the previous Russian consulate, in which, in a very Japanese fashion, you can dress up into a russian woman… This meant BIG dresses and hair extensions with tacky jewelry and your picture taken with the reluctant husband collection who try to hide when the Barok concert is going on in the main hall… Quite amusing as it was, I felt like I was not here to see what the Russians are like… I can do that back home!

Next was the British consulate… The tat shop sold tacky tea cups and London tea shirts. This I can do even easier at home: Next! We had lunch at the harbour in a Viking restaurant. I am pretty sure that the selection of food had nothing to do with the vikings, but it was one of those ‘all you can eat in 60 minutes’ deals… The selection was awesome for a Finn as you can imagine. My favourite was calamari stuffed with rice while my husband happily showed down Japanese curry down his throat. There was tons of different kinds of scampi, prawns, tentacles, octobus, you name it… And sushi as well. I was quite a happy Finn after this fest.
After lunch our mission lead us to the ‘Ainu’ museum, which is a museum of Northern people on the area. This means basically the escimos of the northern islands. I don’t know why but I find these people utterly fasinating. Their patterns of clothing decorations are their very own, they are no Japanese, Nore Chinese, Nor Russian. If I were a historian, I think I would probably do research on the Northern cultures. Somehow those have always facinated me… There was a wooden tray been sold in the gift shop, but was not mad enough to pay 120 euros for it, however cool it would be to have an Ainu plate at one’s home…

Museum number one after lunch was quite dull. We have so far figured out that if the Japanese call something ‘a memorial hall’, it means ‘like a museum, but we’ve ran out of things to show’ so there is probably a video, some posters and possibly some chairs to sit on… In any case, at this point we realised that we were just going to do the whole Hakodate in one day and head to Sapporo tomorrow.

Quick trip back to the hotel and then off to the great, huge pentagon fortress on the other side of the town. Hakodate has a good system of trams, so we took one of those. There is a tower looking over the pentagon, which all and all was a great experience, even if it was just a view and some gifto shoppus. I bought some samurai tat to be sent home and came to the conclusions that some things *are* too huge to fit even to my wide angle lens. Perhaps I will get a fisheye sometime…

We also visited the actual fortress and the park that is in it, and the museum of Northern seas that was next to the tower. Museum of Northern seas was great value for money: Real stuffed Polar bear, Valrus, Seals, Fish… You name it. My previous surname had the word ‘Kuutti’ (means a baby seal in Finnish) in it, so I am always overly enthusiastic about seals. They are so cute!
Sun was going down when we reached the Hakodate station and I finally got my two weeks rail pass. We bought tickets to Sapporo for tomorrow morning at 8:30. It is three hours one way, but as it’s not costing us anymore money, I thought – why not? It’s unlikely that I’ll be in Hokkaido very much in my life. If not at all after this. Even if my husband and I bought thought that we’d happily live here. I think Finns would be happy to visit – it’s cool enough and there’s not as many people as in the southern parts of Japan… Who knows, maybe one day.

Day 8/63

My husband and I left my family memebers to Tadotsu and took the morning train to Takamatsu. From takamatsu, we took the bus to the airport. I was looking at postcards in the gifto shoppu when I saw a familiar face: You know how in the middle of a crowd of Japanese, you are not sure if you recognise someone or not and you question your capability to know if it actually is someone you know, or just someone who looks exactly the same as someone you know… This was one of those cases. This time I was right: It was Kawashima sensei, who was on his way to Tokyo on a seminar and came to talk to us briefly on the way. Kawashima sensei visited Finland back in 2001. I think I’ve seen him since in Paris and perhaps also in Italy… Time does fly by.

I slept through most of the legs of our flights, there was a case of turbulence between Tokyo and Hakodate, but I didn’t really let it worry me too much. At Haneda airport, the toilet boots have got their individual screens that tell you what is on sale… I wonder if the squatting toilets also have those and do people hang out in the boots more because of them… Japanese are obsessed with toilets. Even the hotel toilets start their own theme songs or water sounds to cover the possible noises one might have in the toilet. I may not be completely happy with someone listening on me to pee, but for god’sake, it should be a natural sound!

We were the only Gaijin (foreigners) in the plane as can be expected and as we landed on Hokkaido, I immediately thought this was going to be a very different experience from Shikoku… For one, no vending machines at sight. Obviously less need to drink up, when it’s colder. For two, the weather was seriously colder. We digged up our long trousers, socks and even rain coat. I was happy that all these big items we carry around are not going to be just luggage. Plus it’s seriously easier to do power sightseeing in a colder weather.

Our hotel, the Chisun Grand is near the harbour, close to the cable car that takes you to the mountains. We can see both the sea and the mountain from our window. As you probably have also noticed, the room provided us with a long lost internet connection, which meant that I could seriously upload some pictures. There is a coin usable washing machine and “Lawson” the seven eleven at the corner. This supermarket sold gorgeous packed sushi, anime magazines and even stringy cheese. I felt like I had entered a comfort zone in our trip. Trip advisor said that Chisun Grand is a little bit away from the action, but our smallish walk to find dinner showed that it’s actually very close to everything, there is even a statue of a Samurai on our street. Hurrah.

We had weird curry noodles for dinner and walked around town in a small rain. The feeling that my husband got was that the town was a little sad, it has got a lot of western looking buildings, but not really a lot of people around… My feeling however was, that this is a home away from home. Climate, the limited amount of culture, the small town feeling – these are all what I feel is home. What can I say: I’m a nothern girl.