This weekend Kuniko and I dropped everything and spent two nights and three days in Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan. It was a weekend of firsts: The first time either of us had been to Hokkaido, the first time we used the brand new Kobe airport, the first time I had flown domestically in another country, the the first time either of us had eaten some famous Hokkaido dishes.
I took lots of pictures, and you can find them all in the photo gallery.
Kuniko and I met up early on Friday and caught the Portliner tram out to the new Kobe airport, built on a manmade island beyond the existing Port Island. It was brand new – having just opened two weeks ago, and there were lots of people there. As it turned out, most of them were just looking around.
We fought through the crowds of people in the main concourse to get some snacks for lunch, and finally after getting through the line, and getting our tickets at the travel agent counter we walked through security without a problem (only two people in line!) and found a row of six gates with almost nobody there. We sat comfortably on some nice chairs and relaxed, while crowds of people milled around behind us.
Japan is an older country – there is a much larger proportion of older people here, most of them are retired with nothing to do. It seems coming out on the tram to walk around the airport and watch planes come and go is a popular activity. The airport is new, so I think that’s why they are so interested. As we left on the flight, there were lines and lines of people up on the roof and in the observation lounge watching.
The flight was a piece of cake and we landed just about 90 minutes later in snowy Hokkaido. From the airport we caught a train to Sapporo, and then we walked out into the snow and headed south to our hotel. We packed lots of warm clothes, and it was a good thing, because it was pretty cold when we arrived, around freezing. Walking helped a lot, but as soon as we pulled away from the main part of downtown, we found out that walking on snow isn’t so easy.
It was a challenge for the whole trip – walking on the slush, ice and snow that builds up on the sidewalks. Big stores cleared the snow in front of their entrances, but mostly there were big piles of snow, and depending on the temperature, the shade, and the foot traffic it could be very slippery. We never fell, but we had to walk slowly and carefully, and it really cut into our mobility. It got to the point where we would walk around the block and still save time by avoiding a direct, icy route.
The first night in Sapporo we were up for some fresh seafood, so we walked around until we found a promising sushi bar. We tried to track down a sushi place near our hotel, but instead walked into the love hotel and soapland district. I was surprised to see sex everywhere so blantantly advertised. Of course the same stuff is in Kobe and Osaka, it just doesn’t seem to be so in-your-face. Kuniko told me that because of the weather, people from Hokkaido have a lot of sex. It’s too cold to go outside and do anything else.
At the sushi bar we splurged and had some fresh local fish – and it was some of the best sushi I’ve had. We had lots of our favorites, and I drank Sapporo draft beer, and after about an hour we were out of there. From there we walked around taking pictures and moving to stay warm.
We stopped and split a bowl of ramen before heading back to the hotel, but it was a little disappointing – just the same old ramen you would get anywhere else.
The next day we checked out and hit the town again, this time heading for the station and past it to find the Sapporo Beer Museum. I had heard from a guidebook that it was quite an impressive thing to see, and the guidebook was right. We had a great time exploring and seeing a lot of the historical beer artifacts. At the end of the tour they had a bar where you could order half a beer for 100 yen (about a dollar) and you also got some beer crackers with it. You could try some beers that were only available in Hokkaido, so I enjoyed that. They also had some great old beer posters that were decorating an entire wall of the tasting room.
Next we headed to lunch for another Hokkaido-only item – Soup Curry. We ordered the dish and you could choose the level of spiciness, from 1 to 5. I picked 5, because most things in Japan are not spicy at all. This one was plenty spicy. I went through several napkins and three glasses of water trying to stem the flow of sweat from my brow. Granted, it was cold outside, and a little internal heat was nice, but it was really, really spicy.
After lunch we cooled down a little by walking through the grounds of Hokkaido University. Hokkaido University was founded by a guy named William Clark, who is famous (in Japan) for the phrase, “Boys, be ambitious!”. You see variations of this phrase occasionally written around Japan, so it was cool to see where it came from.
We checked into our hotel for the second night after that. I was a little worried about this hotel because we found it on the internet, it was really cheap, and we didn’t know anything about it. It turned out to be a very new hotel, close to downtown, and had a picture of a batty-looking woman on the outside with the claim that she was the president of the company. They gave some free drinks and a gift card, and the room turned out to be really nice. It was a big relief.
We rested our legs in the room for a little while, and then we were back out to try something new to eat. We went to a Genghis Kahn restaurant. What is that? I didn’t know either. It’s kind of like a yakiniku place where you cook your own meat, but the Genghis Kahn style is that you cook only lamb (ram, in Japanese) meat and vegetables on a skillet like hot surface. After we donned our bibs to prevent lamb juice from getting on us we ate like Mongols.
It was a very satisying meal, and as a souvenir later Kuniko bought lamb flavored caramels for us to bring back home. We tried them tonight when we returned, and sure enough – meat caramel. Pretty good, actually.
We did some souvenir shopping, getting lots of omiyage for everyone that we might possibly bump into, and some stuff for us as well. Then for dinner number two we found a Sapporo ramen place. The deal with Sapporo ramen is that it has corn in it, as well as a cube of Hokkaido butter on top. The flavor was delicious, as you might expect since it had butter in it.
Today we got up, checked out of our hotel, and then went to the station for some last minute souvenirs, and some lunch. I had sushi, and Kuniko had a bowl of chirashi sushi filled with ikura (salmon eggs) on top of rice. From there we caught a train back to the airport, and caught a flight back to Kobe.
As we pulled into our gate, the people who were going to clean our plane were lined up and they bowed to us as we reached the gate. I waved out the window and they all waved back and smiled. It was a great “I’m in Japan” moment.
Now we’re back home and we’ve divied up the omiyage to give to everyone. Tomorrow we’ll go back to work and distribute them – it’ll be fun, kind of like being Santa Claus.
