Summertime in Hokkaido

Hokkaido, the most northern of Japan’s main islands, is known for its skiing and winter festival, rugged natural scenery, fish and beer (think Sapporo and Asahi).   I can’t speak for the skiing, but the rest is true.  Yet there is more to this island.  It is the most western in its architecture and urban layout.  And in early August, before the cold weather settles in, there are festivals and celebrations. 

Hokkaido’s western face.  As I traveled north from Tokyo, I saw fewer and fewer typically Japanese houses with their peaked tile roofs.  By the time I got to Hakodate on the southwestern tip of Hokkaido, the houses seemed to be entirely western:  box-like buildings made of concrete.  

The wide streets were laid out in a grid, not the  confusing Japanese style of winding streets within each ward.  When you think about it, the more western style makes sense.  Hokkaido is far from Tokyo, shoguns, and samurai, and was developed after the Meiji Restoration when western ways were embraced.  The western influence even extended to Hakodate’s fort, built as a star because that was the way Western forts were constructed.  The Japanese thought it a good way to defend against any western incursions.

Karen at the Sapporo Art Sculpture Park

Road sign in Wakkanai

The western-style towns were rather disorienting:  I didn’t really know what country I was in.  Sapporo, the most cosmopolitan of those I visited, could have been a low-rise Minneapolis, while Asahikawa and Hakodate were somewhat like midwestern small towns.  On first glance, Wakkanai, Japan’s most northern town, seemed like a one-horse town, with three long streets parallel to the sea and mostly two-story concrete buildings.  One, its shopping street, had signs was in both Russian and Japanese. (On a clear day you can see Russia from there.)   But we learned it actually was a reasonably sized fishing and ferry port.  The bright spots were Sapporo’s sculpture garden, Asahikawa’s park, and its new glass and steel train station, the transfer point from Sapporo for trains heading north to Wakkanai or east and south to the rest of Hokkaido.

Rugged Landscape.  I took a day trip from Asahikawa to see a bit of Daisetsuzan National Park, a huge area roughly in the middle of Hokkaido.  Serious hikers love it, for they can do what’s called the Grand Traverse, hiking for three days around not one but two active volcanoes in the wilderness.  Walkers like me can take a ropeway up to a vista near Asahi-dake, one of the live volcanoes.  There you can walk around five little lakes, enjoy the wild flowers, and see the volcano up close with its plumes of sulphur smoke.  I had fun watching the other tourists, particularly a group of serious photographers, each carrying a tripod and a satchel full of lenses, leaning forward into their cameras to capture the scenery.  One had a German bellows camera and another was using traditional black and white film in his camera obscura.

The end of the line in Wakkanai

My friend Karen and I took a six-hour train ride from Sapporo to Wakkanai.  It was quite something, riding through a wide valley of farmland, and then chugging along with the forest closing in on the track. As we traveled further north, deciduous trees gave way to stands of birches, the first I’d seen in Japan, and the much more plentiful firs.  We stopped at tiny towns seemingly in the middle of nowhere.  A couple of times we stopped in little stations, waiting for an oncoming train to pass us before continuing on the single track.  But generally we felt that we were traveling in a remote land through wilderness, untouched by human hands.

Giant "Queen Anne's Lace" on Reb

Mt. Rishi

We went to Wakkanai because I had read about two islands off the coast, one known for its wildflowers and the other has a perfect cone of a mountain that invites hikers.  We took a two-hour ferry to the first, Rebun, and started hiking towards a lighthouse about 2 miles away.  Again, the scenery was lovely – rolling hills, steep cliffs dropping to the sea, wildflowers along the path, even some giant flowers that looked like Queen Anne’s lace.  As we walked, we looked across at the other island, Rishiri, and saw the “cone mountain” through the clouds.  We would have done more, but Karen had injured her back months ago and the hike was causing her pain.  As we headed back to the ferry, the clouds lifted and we could see Rishiri’s perfect cone of a mountain in silhouette against the sky. 

Karen & me at the most northern point in Japan

Our most interesting experience, however, was a bus tour we took around Wakkanai up to the northernmost point in Japan.  On a cool, cloudy day, we wound our way up to a tower overlooking the town with a view out to sea, then slowly to the north past a wind farm, through rolling hills with cattle grazing.  It was big, empty space. And then we came to the point.  There we saw a number of monuments:  one shaped like a paper crane in honor of the lives lost on the Korean plane shot down by the Russians in the 1980’s, another commemorating the 500 million liters of milk produced in Hokkaido, and finally one marking the northern most point in Japan.  It was cold, grey, and windswept.  We felt like we were at the end of the earth.

Fish and beer.  Throughout this island nation I have feasted on fish, and Hokkaido was no different.   In Hokkaido, the specialties are crab, squid, and salmon roe, all fresher than you have ever tasted.

It turns out that Karen loves anything that is salmon.  When she discovered that our hotel in Wakkanai offered salmon roe for breakfast, she was in heaven.  Then she happened to look at the woman eating at the table next to her, her rice bowl covered in roe.  No longer did Karen need to confine herself to a tablespoon of the divine stuff; now she could ladle it on to her rice.  Her favorite meal was lunch at the ferry terminal at Rebun, where she had clear, translucent roe the size of large pearls with salmon over rice. She declared it the freshest, most delicious fish she had ever eaten.

At our last night in Wakkanai, we dined on Hokkaido’s other two specialties:  grilled squid (Karen) and boiled crab (me).  This was not Eastern shore crab with hard bright red shells.  Rather, it was light orange and hairy, with soft shells that you could peel open with your fingers.  But the meat was succulent, moist, and tasty.  Mmmm!

Not to be outdone by the fish, Sapporo was having a beer festival.  In Odori Park, the long park in central Sapporo, there was block after block of tents, tables, chairs, and vendors.  One block sold Asahi beer, the next Sapporo, the next Kirin, and way in the back with not a lot of people was Guinness.  In addition to mugs, each one sold a large “keg”, some miniature versions of large ones.  One was a clear plastic tube about 6” in diameter and six feet high.  It was quite a site watching a waiter carrying one to a table.  We had a beer and some snacks at the Asahi block, and then migrated to the Sapporo area before calling it a night.  There were throngs of people, all drinking and eating, some in deep conversation, all having fun. While it was loud, other than the four Aussie men sitting next to us, no one was raucous.  It was just a fun summertime festival.

Festivals:  The beer festival wasn’t the only one in Hokkaido.  Just as in the US, August is festival time in Hokkaido, for soon the heat of the sun will drop and the long winter will arrive.  I knew there would be a jazz festival in Sapporo when Karen and I were there, but not that one of the venues was in the little plaza in front of our hotel.  We got to hear hour sets of Latin jazz during our stay. 

Even Wakkanai had a summer festival.  As we walked out of the train station into drizzle after our six-hour ride through the wilderness, we encountered a two-block-long parade, with groups of men, then women and children, dancing and chanting to drums and flute.  Somewhere in there I saw a small ark-like “float” carried on four men’s shoulders.

 

And the next day there were fireworks!  We had just returned to our hotel after a wonderful fish dinner when we heard the “bang bang bang” of fireworks going off.  We went out of the hotel and joined three other people standing in the street, looking two blocks down toward the water.  There, between the boxy two-story buildings we could see the fireworks, one burst at a time of chrysanthemums, shooting stars, and other types.  And just like in the US, there was a final grand burst of several fireworks all at once.  What more could you ask for on a summer evening?!