Dreams of Snow - Part One

Dear friends,

it has been almost a month since we returned from Hokkaido - the island of ice and snow. And there is still so much to write about! The reason why it took me so long were the final exams and papers, and the subsequent drop in motivation once the semester has ended. Now my spring holiday has already started and I am ready for new adventures. But before that, a reflection on the old ones is due.

So what is Hokkaido?

It's not only a well-known sort of pumpkin. The Northern island of Japan is the largest one, but holds only four percent of Japan's population. In fact, Hokkaido seems to be populated by snowmen.

Big snowmen...

...improvised snowmen...

...cat-eared snowmen...

...kawaii snowmen...

...shocked snowmen...

...snowman families...

...drunk snowmen...

...edible snowmen...

... and our very own snowman. May I introduce to you Toshiaki Junior? We built him with our own bare, freezing hands amongst volcanic steam and gaping gorges, to leave a mark in this great big white world on our last day here:

But let's start from the beginning, and find out how the journey led us to where little Toshiaki (hopefully still) brevely stands, and where he got his name from.

Day 0: Arriving in the winter wonderland

On January 2nd, after one day of furious resting and packing into the new year, Alizée, Tharshi and I left Tokyo via plane for Sapporo, the capital of Japan's biggest prefecture. In the evening, we arrived in our large, comfy house* where we would spend the five days in the city. We had two floors for ourselves, the first of which consisted of a large living room including a kotatsu (Japanese style low table with heating), a gas heater (very important considering the biting cold outside), a TV (which was our main source of entertainment in the evenings) and a kitchen. On the upper floor, there were plenty of tatami mats and bed clothes, so that actually a dozen of people could stay there. 

If you are wondering about the TV and whether Sapporo has nothing else to offer: First, Japanese TV shows (prank shows, comedy, talk shows, game shows, drama...) can be utterly entertaining and hilarious, even if you don't understand a thing. One participant who has been a victim of the most cruel pranks is Kasuga Toshiaki: bodybuilder, comedian and our favourite TV star of the week. He even has his own anime character!

Second, everything closes around 5pm here, unless you go to a bar or restaurant to spend the night. For poor students like us, staying in the warm, enjoying treats and experiencing Japanese culture in through a screen is the more affordable option. 

Once we've figured out how the heater works, even the huge piles of snow outside our window couldn't scare us anymore.

Day 1: Crowds of believers and animals

On one of the three first days of the year, most Japanese people visit a shrine or temple of their choice to pray for a healthy and lucky new year. We decided to do the same - or at least watch others do it - at Hokkaido Shrine next to Maruyama station.

Maruyama Park

Upon exiting the subway station, all we had to do was to follow the masses towards Maruyama park, where signs led us further to the shrine. As stated above: While having the largest territory of all the Japanese prefectures, Hokkaido holds only 4% of Japan's population. It felt like all of them were there on that day.

The food market where we tried delicious pumpkin dango (three small balls, normally rice cakes, on a stick) and hot chocolate

Maruama Park also holds another treasure: The Maruyama Zoo. Because it was apparently one of the top destinations in Sapporo, we decided to give it a try. Sadly, we arrived very late and only had around two hours to explore the rather large facility. That's where we learned that all the good things close by sunset in Sapporo, probably sticking to ancient traditions of its natives. 

The zoo itself had a great diversity of animals, a petting farm, and a small museum. We wondered in the beginning how species that are not used to the cold can even survive here, but they actually have special warm theme houses.

On our way to the zoo

Monkey mountain

Eating snow?

Snow-white bear playing with snow

His relaxed attitude can almost make one envious

Despite the rush and while we wished to have more time to spend at each enclosure, we really enjoyed the zoo and its cute and lively inhabitants. As a method to escape from the cold, we decided to end our day exploring the Sapporo Factory shopping mall.

Christmas or New Year's decorations? Anyway, it was beautiful in there

Outside the mall

Day 2: University and beer tasting

Being the curious future academics that we are, Hokkaido University also intrigued us. In fact, we wanted to visit Sapporo's Botanic Gardens, but New Year's holidays did not seem to be over and the gardens were still closed. So we paid a visit to one of Japan's Imperial universities and discovered a few other sights on our way:

Sapporo's former Government Office building

A traditional Japanese house open for visitors - we did not really figure out what or whose it was, but a nice spot for photos ;)

We found out that the university's first president was the American professor William S. Clark, and the motto is "Boys, be ambitious!" - apparently his words of farewell when he left Sapporo in 1876. Do we need to say more about gender equality during that time?

 

Agricultural College - the origin of Hokkaido University

Can someone explain this?

Curious exchange students can't leave an academic institution without trying the food. Surprisingly (or not), the cafeteria's meals looked exactly the same as at Keio, even though this one is a public university.

With good food comes the appetite for a good drink. Although we all assumed something different under that term, Sapporo is famous for its brewery and one of its main attractions is the beer museum.

Admission to the museum is even free, if you don't participate in a (Japanese language) tour. Instead of showing the actual brewing process or facilities, however, countless posters and a short movie explained the history of this brewery. Guess where the first brewers here learned their craft?

Hokkaido brewery was founded in 1876 and has ever since developed different flavours, labels and marketing campaigns. The latter were necessary because Japanese people were not really familiar with this strange barley and hops drink. The first bottle was worth 0.16 yen, or 20 portions of soba noodles - which was very expensive back in the 19th century. The Sapporo star has nothing to do with communism by the way - it is originally a symbol of the Kaitakushi who ruled over Hokkaido and owned the brewery once, can be found all over the city.

Cute little models show how the brewery looks like in detail, and what is done in each of its rooms.

Take a look at the first advertisements...

...and what they look like today. Notice a pattern? ;)

As Alizée pointed out: After the theoretical part came the practical one. Or the part where they make money. ;) For 600 yen, you could taste the three different sorts of beer Sapporo has to offer.

It all starts in this nice hall (notice the bottle lamp)...

...and then you are caught inside a beer glass

Once having gained the appetite, we had the opportunity to try Sapporo's most famous dish called Genghis Khan in one of the three restaurants on the museum's site. It is a sort of grill, where you prepare meat (especially mutton) and vegetables on a hot plate in the middle of the table. In Japan, this kind of food seems to be very popular - see sukiyaki or shabu shabu. Needless to say it was very good, although our clothes smelled like Genghis Khan for the rest of the trip...

Veggie variety with German fried potatoes... mmmh!

Day 3: How we broke our record on speed "museuming"

Another interesting and popular spot, a 30-minute bus ride away from Sapporo, is the Historical Village of Hokkaido. It shows four different types of settlements: An American-style historical town, a fishing village, farm village, and a mountain village. The buildings here are replica of houses from the Meiji era (mid 19th to early 20th century) and most of them can be entered. Which was a bit of a struggle because you have to take your shoes off - and this is not fun during hours out in the biting cold (-5 degrees), especially because the houses are not heated. But brave as we are, we made a lot of pictures from inside the buildings for you to enjoy. :)

The historical village entrance was a little hard to find - it is not this stairs covered in snow!

A government building

The governmental office

Who would not like to have a private shrine at home?

What people in Meiji period looked like

An old classroom in the boys' school building

What did they need all these pianos for?

Former pricipals of the school in the pricipal's office

Fisher's hut

There was even a chruch for the Christian minority of the village

Something familiar spotted

No Japanese attraction without a shrine

I love those tea places!

Fishing equipment storage house

What people ate - in the old university dorm

The local drink is obvious

You could play march music in this room and pretend to be a good loyal student and drummer - as I tried in the video:

The dorm rooms...

...have space for tea of course

The tickets for the Historical Village could be bought together with tickets for the Hokkaido Museum, which we also planned to visit. Unfortunately, we underestimated the time needed for the village and missed the fact that the museum closes earlier in winter - so we arrived there 25 minutes before closing time. Mission impossible? Not for us!

Hokkaido Museum entrance

The museum is divided into five different sections: a historical section on the creation of earth itself; one on Hokkaido's development; one on Ainu, Hokkaido's native inhabitants; one on the history of modern technology; and one on ecosystems, made especially for children. For the sake of time, we concentrated on the ainu and the ecosystems, and kept furiously taking photos (without reading the descriptions) for half an hour, until we risked being locked inside the museum (although this could be fun, remembering a certain movie). 

This guy, Naumann's Elephant, has been dug out almost 50 years ago in Hokkaido and is probably over 120,000 years old (well, the original skeleton is - this one is only a replica)

Ainu hunter robe and weapons

More...

...and more...

...and more clothing

Ainu shrine with all kinds of population (see also next photos)

Does this look familiar?

Sea cucumber - Sapporo's delicacy?

A train with real sound effects

Paper umbrellas

A normal daily meal in the 19th century...

...and a festive one

A little highlight for your inner steampunk

These traditional carvings were the first souvenirs sold to tourists in Hokkaido

Someone really loved bears

Welcome to the nasty reality of the ecosystems

So fluffy!

If this overview was too chaotic: You can find more information on the museum's website, where English explanations are lovingly provided for download.

While the museum workers prepared for the end of their work day at 5pm, it was a little early for us to go home. So there was plenty of time to go and see Sapporo from above - from the JR Tower, whose observation deck is located 160 meters above ground, in the mall with the same name.

With its 173 meters, JR Tower may be higher than the TV tower in the same city, but cannot compete with any other similar construction in Asia or the world

 The view from the 38th floor was definitely worth it. See for yourself and enjoy the view!

Here, you can even catch a glimpse of the mountains in the background, and the ski park at their foot

We ended the day with a delicious omuraisu - an omelette filled with rice, which comes with different sauces and sorts of rice - curry for example:

Because the mall had a cinema as well, we could use our time there to the fullest and even watch "Rogue One" in English. 

Speaking of watching: This was only the beginning, so watch out for the next post - part two of our Hokkaido adventures. See you there :)

* In case you are planning your own vacation in Sapporo: This is the place where we stayed. Highly recommended!