Sapporo - My Second Home

Back in Sapporo, I had about a week or so to relax and recover (T-chan and L-kun stay on for another almost month after I return to cold old Adelaide). The weather in Sapporo in spring can be pretty hit and miss (mostly miss) with the snow turning dirty, and the weather turning wet (but still cold).

The snow in the mountains surrounding Sapporo is rapidly disappearing, with the signs of green very slowly appearing. Unlike in Australia where summer means brown, and winter green, it's the opposite here. Once the white blanket of snow starts to melt, it leaves a fairly desolate brown landscape as the vegetation slowly remembers summers warmth.

For me, Sapporo also means family time, and for L-kun that means parks. 

We had a look at a new garden park, Nakajima Kouen, in the city... which is one of Sapporo's date spots. At this time of year, it's pretty cold.

And about the only dates that are going on are between couples that have seen quite a few springtimes themselves.

There are however the first signs of a beautiful Sapporo spring appearing.

But the ominous vestiges of winter remain, and the ever present karasu (crow) lends an eerie punctuation to the landscape. 

Even though Sapporo is a big city (5th largest in Japan), it has been hit hard in recent years due to the slow economy... and with the recent events, times are getting tougher. There is a steady resilience to the people that is born from the cold depths of a Hokkaido winter. 

We went to Otaru on our way to Niseko... Otaru is the nearby tourist city that is especially popular with China and Korea. It's famous for it's canal system, it's glassworks and it's music boxes (and progresively for it's wine industry of all things).

And whilst it would normally be thriving with tourists, today it was like a ghost town. The tourists have stopped coming, scared off by the tainted Japan brand perhaps, but whatever the reason it spells a hard spring ahead for the city that depends on tourism... even though it's so far away from Fukushima.

Maybe a musical (belated) Christmas wish is for common sense to prevail, and for normality to be returned. 

In the 8 trips to Hokkaido that I've made, it might be surprising that I've never been to Niseko, or little Australia as it might be known. Come winter, the population is overwhelmed by Aussie skiiers. The season is still open in Niseko, though the snow quality (that is  one of the reason for it's popularty) is well and truly gone. We stayed at the Prince Hotel in Hirafu (Niseko) which has the one advantage of having not only a large public onsen, but also private onsens in the hotel rooms. A great way for a family to enjoy an onsen together (and this was our son's first experience - and he loved it).

The other advantage is some good views of Yotei, Hokkaido's Mt Fuji. Like Fuji, Yotei can be a little temperamental in showing itself... especially on a gloomy spring day. It's form however dominates the scenery for many 10's of km around. 

Whilst it's possible to climb Yotei, it's not actually a ski mountain itself, and perhaps it would take a brave person to attempt it's hazardous slopes.

We were happy enough to be a little less adventurous, taking to our sled in the pretty wet snow. Whilst the quality might not be there, it's still a fun opportunity to enjoy the snow together with our family. Something that's not so easy in Adelaide. 

We were originally going to combine the trip to Niseko with a trip to the Shakotan Peninsula - however, a high temperature with L-kun put paid to that idea. Something for next time... when the weather is nicer.

So as my days in Sapporo, and Japan, come to an end, I have to say that it's been a great trip - although it started in slightly stressful conditions. Despite the constant media attention on the negative, the great things about Japan are still there for the enjoying. I'll post more complete accounts on my other site as I get to them (I'm stilll posting about 2010, so it might take a while however).

PS - it looks like Qantas have now resumed their normal (reduced?) flights to Japan... so I should be good to go tomorrow lunchtime departing from Sapporo to Tokyo to Sydney to Adelaide. A quick hint - we discovered the joys of taking an international connecting flight (QF81) from Sydney to Adelaide which means that you don't have to clear customs in the tragedy that is Sydney International Airport.

 

3...2...1...Liftoff! Japan Here We Come!

Well today we can sort of rest easy. We just confirmed tickets for our next (eighth) trip to Japan coming up in a few months. This will be a big trip. T-chan's brother H-kun will be getting married... and we're off to Tokyo (and of course Sapporo) for the big occasion. Actually, to be honest, this is earlier than we had planned to return to Japan, but... weddings pretty well take precedence over everything. It's funny that whilst the world in many ways is shrinking at an unimaginable rate (electronically at least), the reality is that it's still not as easy as we'd like to travel from Adelaide to Japan. Nowadays however we can do most of the bookings entirely on-line (except stopovers). On our last trip (which I haven't blogged about yet on my other blog), we did a stop-over in Tokyo, this time we're doing a completely separate booking (so I will be meeting T-chan/L-kun and her parents somewhere in Tokyo)... hmmm... this is embarrassing to say, but it will be my first time travelling anywhere inside Japan by myself - except to and from from Sapporo! 

So... what does that have to do with rockets? Well, I have to say that this trip feels a bit like a rocket journey... into the unknown.  And it's also very last minute. Even though we've known about the wedding date for at least 3 months, we've just been distracted by so much going on - not to mention Christmas and New Years... Anyhow - we've got the hard part done (getting into country). Now we just need to organise what happens when the rocket lands!

And this time, it's lead by our courageous captain, L-kun, who has been telling us over the last few weeks (but increasingly) that he wants to go to obaachan and ojiichan's house (Japanese grandma and grandpa's) to play in the snow - and go to Disneyland at the same time. I'm not sure he really understands what months means... When I showed him where we lived, and where Sapporo was on GoogleEarth, he knew that we'd need to get on the plane to go there... but that we could do that anytime. If only life was as simple as jumping on a rubber bubble to launch us across the world.

As an aside - rockets are one of his favourite games at the moment (thanks to Santa), and whilst we've recently re-located launches to the nearby park (a few too many rockets landing on our neighbours roof) it's still a source of great enjoyment for L-kun. It's a simple enough process.... even a 3yo can understand. Generate a rapid pressure imbalance in the tube that connects to the foam rocket... pressure gradient overrides friction... and gravity... and it soars into space (well... perhaps not quite space... but high enough to land on our neighbours two storey house). In other words, jump on the bubble, rocket takes off! The beauty of a child's world is just how direct and obvious it is.

This rocket was definitely one of the great Christmas presents Santa has brought. Cheap, fun, and NO batteries required! It even has some educational value (with some explanation from a handy parent).

By the way - the back yard's looking a little chaotic as we've been trying (with some success) to repair the lawn from many years of drought...This year has been far from typical of the summers of late. We've had quite a bit of rain, and it's generally been very cool (except for the very occasional high 30/low 40 degree celsius day... note: 40 degrees Celsius = 104 degrees Farenheit). Having those sorts of temperatures plays havoc with most plants... and people too.

Speaking of temperatures and snow... here's a look out the window of T-chan's family home earlier today (from their webcam)... and yes, that's ojiichan out the front shoveling snow. And that's a fair bit of snow to be shoveling. In Hokkaido they have a word for snow-storms that come through and dump this sort of snow... fubuki... and it's been fubukiing snowing over the last few days persistently. Fubuki! Under those conditions, you have to shovel the driveways repeatedly to avoid them getting buried... and that's even with under-driveway heating which is not unusual in Sapporo.

 I feel sorry that our trips haven't been in winter for too many years now as I would always be out there helping. It just goes to show you that whilst snow is great fun, when you get a lot of it, it can be a right-royal pain in the.... ahhhh sooo, that's a very good reason to get L-kun muscled up ready for January holidays over to Japan to help out. Now to work on some upper-body strength to go along with his rocket-powering legs.