Hokkaido - Day 5 - The Beaten Path

It's almost silly to pretend this is still a current event in my life. We're, what...2 months past the correct time frame for a post like this? Oh well. On with the history lesson.

When we made our trip plans we wanted to go a little bit beyond the ordinary. That's why we chose our main destination of "the middle of nowhere" Hokkaido on days 3-4. What we found out on day five is that sometimes you really don't need to work that hard. Touristy places are usually like that for a reason; they're just that nice and just that easy. So while there's no feelings of disappointment in what we got out of our climb up Poroshiri dake, what we found at Daisetsuzan National Park was probably superior in most ways imaginable and a heck of a lot easier.

As I said before, we didn't really have this planned until we got in the car the morning of. We knew about this place and it wasn't really that far, but the final decision came as we were pulling out onto the main streets of Sapporo. Daisetsuzan is as centrally located on the island as Sapporo isn't, but then again the landmass of Hokkaido is on par with Utah so the trip out was only a couple of uneventful hours. Incidentally, driving in Hokkaido is very refreshing. I didn't do a whole lot of it, but since it's away from the traffic of the mainland and the country is so spread out, it feels a lot like driving on the nice highways of the states. My favorite kind of driving.

Toward the end of our drive we started a slow ascent. It is a large mountain after all. There's lots of hotels, restaurants, and gift shops on the way up, with varying degrees of quaintitude, but we only really stopped at the end of the line. From there, it was time to take the cable car. We were quite beat up from the day before and didn't fancy another long day of hiking. I thought during the ride up just how compelling transit by cable car is. For me there is no form of transportation that has such mystery and suspense around it. Or maybe I've just seen "Where Eagles Dare" one too many times.

Once on the top, the usual awe-fest begins. You look over here, an amazing view of Hokkaido from 10,000+ feet. You look over there, another amazing vista. You look back there, a still-active volcano. Alongside the path, mountain ponds lined by flowers and grasses. As per usual, the flickr set says it better than I can. Loads of seemingly random shots repeated ad nauseum, but you can be the judge on that I suppose.

If you look on those flickr pictures you can see that this might be the largest mountain, but it is still part of a longer range. The ultimate hike in the guide book is a 5 day trek along pretty much that whole ridge line. Sounds really cool, but a trip like that would be gruelling with a capital RUE, you know, as in rue the day. Maybe a trip like that could happen someday in my future, but I'm sure glad we didn't plan this particular trip at a certain point in my recent past. What we did see was enough. It ranks dangerously close to the top of the list of cool things I've seen in my life. And remember...I've seen the Turtle Island String Quartet live.

We were done with our excursion by about 2:00 p.m. or so if memory serves. The important thing is that the day didn't just fizzle out after that. It kept going and kept being interesting. First point of interest: before we got on the small roads leading away from the mountains. We found a spot where Mark said "y'know, I need to take another look at these mountains before we leave." Can't argue with that, especially when you're where we were. If you haven't seen the pictures yet, I'll sum up. Flowers.

Moving on to those small roads leading away from the mountains. We got on a road that we were pretty sure led to where we wanted to go. It might have been the right road, but it's conditions were appalling. Narrow, unpaved, unguardrailed, and generally ignored. This is a road by academic definition only. And it went on for a long time. About 40 minutes into it I began to wonder what would happen if, say...we happened to break down. A lot of walking is the answer, but which direction? It's about 15-20 miles back the way we came and an undetermined distance ahead. I don't like either option. Thankfully (great little car, that Toyota) we didn't ever have to choose. We broke through to the other side and continued on to our destination.

To be honest, we weren't that impressed with Sapporo during the summer. During the winter, sure, it's really cool, but in the summer it's too much like any other city you've been to. So instead of staying there again we went on beyond Sapporo to Otaru, a city on the Northwestern coast of Hokkaido. We got there around 6 p.m. or so and I have to say I enjoyed what I saw of this town. Wikipedia says it has around 150,000 people (really nice size for a town) and add to that a port city atmosphere with a nice riverwalk section of downtown and you have a hidden gem of a city.

A little reflection from walking around. Otaru is a port city that is very close to...anyone? Anyone? That's right, Russia. So while it caught me off guard it was not very surprising that we found a few Russian sailor types wandering around downtown doing basically the same things that we were. It struck me as a little bit odd how on guard these guys made me feel. Chances are these were completely normal guys enjoying a bit of time off before they got back to hauling crates, or swabbing decks, or fixing their nuclear wessels, or whatever the Ruskies are doing these days, but I just couldn't shake the stereotype that these were big scary Russian mafia type guys who were drunk and violent and ready to shiv me if I got too close. Completely ridiculous, I know, but these are the effects of the cold war. I didn't even have many formative years during the really cold parts of the war. The later 80s were slightly drafty at best, but even that slight exposure drapes the same mysterious and menacing cloak over Russia for a kid like me. I'd like to hear what some of the people that actually lived through it think of this stupid reaction of mine.

But back to some better semblance of reality. Mark said he knew there was a Youth Hostel in Otaru and he seemed to have vague directions, but Japan is not a place for vague directions, no matter how small and pleasant the town is. We spent a long time looking for the place but ended up finding a cheap little business hotel. Very small and...well, just very small. It didn't really feel like a hotel at all. I'm trying to come up with what it felt like, but I'm at a loss. In the continuum of things it was closer to "this lady's spare room she's letting us borrow for the night", than "a shady bed and breakfast". It had room enough to lie down, a toilet, and a shower. What else do you really need from a hotel anyway?

One last anecdote. We were still awake for a while after getting to the hotel. Might as well turn on some Japanese TV, right? Whatever. It's actually really fun to watch it even if you only have a slight idea of what's going on. Both Mark and I are big anime fans and it just so happened that we found a program that was doing (as nearly as we could tell) the top 50 anime heroes of all time, or something like that. A lot of them were kind of stupid, like all the sports heroes from a bunch of boring boxing/baseball/racing/whatever sports event of the week kind of anime shows, and a few of them were some of the other big names like Astroboy and Gohan? (one of those Dragonball guys anyway), but a few of my favorites made the list. Spike, from Cowboy Bebop came in right around 20-25. I suppose he deserves it, but there's really not a whole lot about him that really separates him from a lot of other similar heroes. What is it, really, that puts him on the list when Vash the Stampede (similar in most ways) from Trigun is not a contender? But, I'm glad to say that I agree with the number one pick. Lupin the Third. He's funny, resourceful, brave, and just in general hero that you can like and support 100% without the slightest reservations. He's even got one of the coolest theme songs you can hope for.

Thinking back on this day it is really hard to imagine that it contained all the stuff that I wrote up here. Then I think back to yesterday where we didn't seem to do anything at all except wait around. Funny how that works out.