Hokkaido - Day 6 - Solitude

By day 6 we were getting tired and we technically had 2 days left on leave. In the back of my mind I had an idea of what I'd like to do, but I thought I'd leave the choice up to Mark. Turns out he had pretty much the same idea. I was all for making a dash straight back to Zama in one semi-epic car ride. Mark agreed, but he had one more stop he wanted to make. I started adding up hours and quickly came to peace with the idea that I probably wouldn't be sleeping for at least 24 hours.

We started from the lovely hamlet of Otaru and made our way South toward our Ferry with good speed. Along the way we found a nice lake with an island in the middle. Anything special about this place other than that? Not really, but it was a lovely morning, we had a little bit of extra time, and why not? Got a few good pictures as you can see in the last of the Hokkaido flickr sets, but really it was a quick stop on the way to our watery transit.

We booked passage without incident and still had enough time to grab some lunch. So what did we find? An Elvis hamburger joint of some kind. That picture on top is the mural on the outside of the building. As you can see, lots of 50s type nostalgia stuff, but it's American 50s type nostalgia stuff. Why? I don't know. I guess we had the most interesting pop/crap culture going on at the time. Inside was not just general 50s though, it was all Elvis. Seeing some of the pictures of him in his uniform got me to thinking about Elvis' military career and what kind of sham it shaped up as. I didn't think too hard though. I just can't be bothered to care much about him to be honest. Then came the menu.

How hard is a hamburger, right? When there's about 30 varieties looking back at you it gets a little tense especially when you can't really read what you're actually buying into. By now I can read this and that, for instance I know I like miso flavoring on a lot of things and I know how to read that. So I ended up getting something called a miso kujira burger. When it was delivered to the table and announced Mark filled me in, "whoa, you got the whale burger?" As if it was on purpose. Anyway, I've long since consigned myself to eat almost any strange thing that comes my way and really whale is not that much of a stretch. It is a little odd in that it really does taste like an equal mixture of beef and fish but after it's been fried up and covered with a nice miso sauce it's not that exotic anymore. It was good, but I'll probably steer clear of kujira in the future if given a choice.

After we had our ferry trip (as boring/interesting as it was last time) we entered into one of my favorite sections of travel for our trip. As was said before, most of our travel was on toll roads and larger highways. Mix that in with a few dirt roads and you've got pretty much all we used. This section of the trip was a nice seaside drive through a lot of small towns. Before you start thinking of any picturesque sort of Prince Edward Island images in your head, know that these towns were all rough edges. I'd say that they had seen better days, but I'm not sure they had. These places were thoroughly used and decisively lived in but that gave them a real "Downeaster Alexa" quality that made them shine through the grit and grime and merge into the majesty of the idea of the rocky coast.

Before long we turned off the road and headed for Mark's last stop, Osore-san. I won't go into too much detail on what it is (it has a lot to do with communing with the dead and making offerings to spirits and such), but I will say it was a neat place to visit from an aesthetic point of view. For almost all of our trip thus far, we were blessed with perfect weather, but as soon as we got back to the mainland we started to get some cloud cover. By the time we got to Osore-san, it was downright gloomy. Perfect for a place like this. Combine that with an overpowering stench of sulfur in the air (seriously, I've never experienced natural sulfur quite like this) and it generates a very somber feeling in you. The landscape is full of volcanic rock, bubbling pools of sulfur water, statues, graves, etc. It gives the whole place an otherwordly feel and I guess that's sort of the point. So anyway, we spent some more time there and instead of talking more, just go to the flickr site. Using the common conversion you'll find 40,000 more words there.

That's pretty much it, really. We kept on driving to Aomori where we stopped and had dinner. Some very expensive Ox meat that we had to cook ourselves. Isn't ox just beef pretty much? If nothing else it's good like beef. After that late meal, it was my turn to drive. My job, get as far as I could without falling asleep. No problem. I enjoy driving at night when I'm well rested (I had napped a good portion of the day) and actually find that I'm more alert because you have to be. It's easy to zone out at 2 p.m. because you can see everything out there, all the traffic is moving the same direction, at the same speed, on the same road, with the same...zzz. See what I mean? At night it's like, oh my, I hope that sign didn't have anything too important to say, and, gee I hope there's a guide rail over there. I had the reigns from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. without incident. And Mark finished it up pulling into Camp Zama at around 7 a.m. Just in time to see everyone finishing up PT.

So what have we learned. Well, we've learned that a trip through Japan can fun, but that bears are fast and if you're not careful, and properly prepared, they can get you. But isn't life just the same way? Yes, you must be prepared and at all times careful or the bear of life can eat you up. But we can't spend our lives running from the bear. No, there comes a time when we must turn, face our destinies, and hug that bear. Yes, hug the bear of life with every ounce of courage and strength we possess, and as we face the gaping maw of the future, we must say, "life, get ready, because I've got my bear bells, and you can't stop me."

Sorry, I've been watching The Tick lately and thought I'd try my hand at a Tick-esque speech. They're kind of tough.

Thank you very much for sticking with all these entries. I hope you enjoyed reading them. They helped me cement some of the things we did into longer term memory and I'm glad. This will be a trip I think back to when I think of my time in Japan.