Adventures in Japan

Day Today: Pictures Later

Yeah.

Day the Rest of Our Lives: Canada

This will not be broken up into days, because this is a blog about our adventures in Japan and seeing as we are no longer in Japan this log is pretty much done but Japan is in us now. So if Japan is always in us now, then we will always be in it. Or maybe not, I didn't pay too much attention during my logic classes.

But these are our thoughts as fresh off the plane re-inductees into Canadian life. Saskatchewanian life.

Dear god this place is big and flat. The sky goes on forever, there is a depth to everything that we had forgotten about.

The nights are colder than I remember. Not cold. But an overshirt is never a bad idea.

Lumsden beach is still one of my favourite places in the world.

The food is big in size and flavour (except for airport food, the most money I've ever paid for the least flavour), the beer is better than we remember.

Umeshu is loved by everyone.

Nathan and Crystal's wedding was a great. And a great way to get re-acclimated. Perogies! Caesars! Country and Western music! (seriously? Honky Tonk Badonkadonk? Really?) If someone could somehow harness Crystal's energy we would never ever have an energy crisis ever again. That girl is amazing!

Our tiny Japanese stomachs took way less time adjusting to North American serving sizes than we would have liked.

Puppies are cute.

Puppies are not cute when they pee all over the place.

We've seen hot, still days (perfect for a wedding on a beach), thunderstorms, driving rain, beautiful sunsets, lovely sunrises and all sorts of other weather. None of it sticky.

Less than a week in and I've already been visited by folks wanting to help me better understand the bible (It is never the bible though, it is their bible). They never give me a satisfactory answer vis a vis their policy on zombies.

A note to the people in Japan: I have a copy of Rock Band for PS3. I just need to get a PS3 now.

Pop music is so much better when you can't understand the lyrics.

PEROGIESBACONSTEAK!!!

Day Done: So Long and Sayonara Sapporo

This is it. The last day. And a very short day to boot. Wait. No. It was a very long day. With not enough of it spent in Japan. And most of that Japan time was spent either in or on the way to airports.

We got a nice early start, because we only had e-tickets and for some reason could not check ourselves in over the web. Still got decent seats from Sapporo to Tokyo. But couldn't book our seats from Tokyo to Toronto, or get our luggage checked through. So a little more bother than we had wanted, but still no worries.

In Tokyo we managed to grab some emergency exit seats (hello legroom!), cancel our phones (with slightly more drama than we would have liked) and pick up a few more souvenirs before catching our flight. Seriously, we didn't ever stop moving.

Which really sucked for me. Because at some point whilst I was sleeping the night before soemone replaced the inner workings of my foot with napalm. Ow. And I couldn't lag. Our flights were too close together to dawdle.

So my lower right side was in pain. Or maybe all this talk of, all of this dwelling on the pain in my foot is just symbolic. I'm writing about the pain in my foot, but really I'm talking about the pain of leaving this amazing country. But I don't want to sound like a big baby. Too manly to mention how damn near everything is moistening up my eyes (damn you vinyl cafe and your gentle pulling of my heart strings! Don't you know of my delicate state?). So instead of dwelling on the sadness of the situation, I expound on pretend podiatric pain. Subtle, eh?

Except no. My foot really, really hurts. Leaving sucks, but so does my foot.

The plane did not suck. Even though it was Air Canada.

But Carla spent scads of time making sure that we were going to be flying on the newest of the new. And it paid off. The seats were comfy and they all had their own entertainment units. And our seats had legroom to spare. From time to time Carla would stick her feet straight out and wiggle them. And giggle. And I think the altitude had some kind of healing properties. My foot felt much, much better.

The free booze was a delightful bonus.

And the entertainment options were a perfect balance of stuff we wanted to see (Charlie Wilson's War) and stuff that would put us to sleep (10,000BC). We wanted to make sure we had enough sleep to make it through a full day in Toronto.

We kinda sorta did. Make it through the day. We stayed in a hotel near the airport but nothing else. There was nothing to do but notice how annoying it is to understand everything on TV. And how big serving sizes are and how much everything costs.

We missed Japan before we left, now we miss it more.

The Post That Ryhmes With Fun

Yup. Back in the Queen city. Landed and safe and decidedly non-corpsified. And playing with a pretty puppy.

A Quick Note

I had wanted to be done with the blogging before we left this country, but my words aren't working right now. Sorry.

We have to catch a plane in a few hours, so I reckon we should get some sleep.

The last day and a half of blogging should hopefully be up within a couple of days.

And we will be landing in Regina around 10 am on Thursday.

Good night.

The Last Full Day In Japan: Sapporo and Otaru

Everything today had an extra layer of crispy sadness. 'This is our last trip on a JR train.' 'This is our last soft ice cream cone.' 'This is our last sunset.' And so on.

We really don't want to leave. It was kind of exciting when we left Canada lo those many years ago. Because we knew we would be back. But this is slightly less concrete.

We will be back, but a lot of people will have left by then. It will not be the same.

I had all kinds of lovely and poetic turns of phrase running through my head today, things that would be lovely to see on this very page.

I could remember, maybe, but I don't want to. I don't want to think about it.

I'll just think about what we did today.

We went to Otaru today. It has glass and canals. There was one stretch of the canal that was particularly scenic. You know how I could tell? Not because I said aloud, "This one stretch of the canal is particularly scenic." because I didn't. But I did see a good dozen arteests painting that small stretch of canal. That is in addition to other arteests selling their wares, mainly photos and pictures of the canal.

All the pictures and photos looked nice though.

The other thing that Otaru is known for, as I mentioned above, is their glassware. I could not say for sure, as I did not see any of it. My foot and leg were feeling quite awful and I did not want to slow Carla down. I like glassware. Carla likes glassware. And not just shotglasses.

She kept sending me texts about how lovely the glassware was. She was incredibly taken with a lot of what she saw. She is not all that easy to impress, so I have to say that the glassware there is super duper.

I also cannot tell you if the locally brewed beer is any good. It was just too expensive, so we did not partake.

Instead we went home and watched some crazy Japanese TV. For the last time.

Day Next to Next to Last: No Offense, But We Dont' Want To Leave

We wanted to go to a scenic nearby town. But we got lazy and did not. Maybe tomorrow. Instead we did some more poking around Sapporo. There were a lot of parades going on today.


But not big, fancy parades. Small parades, they had to stop tor traffic. But there were tonnes of them. It was odd.


We wandered around the shopping district and the night life district and up and down many many covered arcades. Always coming across another parade or two.


Somewhere in there we stopped for lunch. Sapporo is known for its soup curry. As soon as I heard that, I knew I had to try it. Carla was much more wary. To her soup curry brought to mind really watery curry. But I talked her into giving it a go. Actually, I think this sign is what finally turned the tide.


And the soup curry was delicious!


I don't know if you can see it all that well, but there is a quarter chicken in my soup. And half a potato, half an egg, half a green pepper, a giant wedge of pumpkin, a giant wedge of carrot, some eggplant, and some corn and cabbage. Patrons are given the choice of how spicy they want their curry. I chose the hottest option. I was sweaty and numb by the end of lunch.

My foot feels numb almost all the time now. Unless I try to walk on it. Then it hurts.

It hurts bad. So bad that I am actually taking pain killers. I never do that. I am a Lukiwski, we are stupid pain magnets. I threw myself down a flight of stairs 28 times. My brother fell off the roof of a house. My father got hit in the face with a baseball bat. My uncle got pummeled with a phone. Said phone had just been ripped out of the wall. This is my heritage. This is what we deal with. We shrug it off. I tell you this to impress upon you how much my foot must hurt.

The painkiller helped a little. As did the all-you-can-drink at the izakaya. The drinks were good and plentiful and so was the food. Here is a picture of me enjoying the food.


This is a nice picture of our hotel.

Day As Old As I Am: Holy Cow! The Last City! Our Journey Nears Its End! Sapporo! They Make Beer!

We got up nice and early this morning so that we could catch the first train to Sapporo. We didn't reserve seats, so we wanted to make sure we got some. We did. With plenty of time to spare. I used that spare time to go and get some pictures of the fish market, seeing as it's right next to the station.


It wasn't as photogenic as in previous days. Not as many giant crabs twitching on scales.


If only I had managed to drag my butt out of bed a couple hours earlier, I would have at least got some shots by the light of dawn. That is some nice light, that.

We nodded right off, once the train started moving. We nodded off in a sparsely populated train carriage and awoke near Sapporo in a quite crowded one. Popular place Sapporo, I guess. Fifth largest city in Japan, so they say.

Our hotel is just across the street from the station, so that is handy as all get out. My foot likes handy. Heck, everything from the knee down. The pain is spreading. That can't be good.

But foot pain or no, there's a city to explore.


A couple of our guide books mentioned that the botanical gardens in town are worth a visit. We disagree. It was boring, poorly laid out and not informative.

The Sapporo beer museum was the exact opposite. And I'm not saying that just because of the cheap beer. One of the cute girls at the front desk could not wait to help us out in English. None of the informative signs were in English, but there were so many pictures, and it all flowed so well...

And they had the cutest set of dioramas dramatizing the beer creating process.


It all starts, as most everything does, with a wise old man in the clouds.

He provides the people below with the malt and the hops and, most importantly, the scientific know how to combine it all together.


The people harvest their crops and grind them down and combine it with fresh pure water.


And an angel sprinkles in some magic powder.

The beer is ready to be shipped.

Sexy beer party!
People with Elephantiasis not allowed!


After the cute beer creation models, there awaits a circular pathway down to the next floor. It is circular because it encircles a great big... device of some sort used in the process of the making of the beer.


Then you walk through the hall of stuff.

The hall of stuff includes such things as: beer action figures, posters, coasters, bric a brac.


And a collection of different sized beer cans.


There is some stuff after all that, but the next things of note are the gift shop and the tasting area. All kinds of crazy beer related snacks in the gift shop.

The tasting section is not just for the tasting of beer. They also have gelato.


This is the gelato I ordered. The light colored gelato is dark beer flavoured. The orange stuff is soup curry flavoured gelato. They were both tasty, but the curry gelato was tastier. Loved the cinamon-y aftertaste.

After the tasting we just wandered from one converted red brick warehouse to another. Lots of souvenirs were looked at. Lots of walking was done.

This is our hotel. We watched some TV in our hotel room. We watched people watch a video about a sad little monkey. I am really going to miss the television in this country.


After that we stepped out to catch the new Indy Jones movie. My quick review: an enthusiastic meh.

A Full Month In: More Hakodate (and Surrounds)

They have been calling for rain for a while now, but I don't know if it is ever going to show.


Today was glorious! The cloud covered mountain from yesterday? Clear as that really gross tasting Pepsi from years ago.

We took advantage of the weather and went hiking. There is a town near Hakodate called Onuma that has a couple of hiking trails. We hiked a couple of the couple. They were nice hikes. Plenty of green, plenty of blue, plenty of bridges.


Onuma, the town, is in the middle of two lakes - Onuma lake and Konuma lake (which are actually the same lake, but let's not go into that). There are numerous little land masses in the middles of these lakes, most of them interconnected by a series of bridges. Makes for lovely walking.


Shame then that my right leg ain't much for walking these days. It's not just my ankle that pops now. Something in my calf, a tendon or some such, snaps and twangs on occasion now too.


Even with the escalating pain in my leg, we had a good time in Onuma. We had wanted to go to Toyoko to hike around as well. But getting there and away is a bit of a bother. Don't know how all them world leaders are going to do it.


I leave you now with more pictures.

The Big Three Oh: On a Date in Hakodate

It doesn't matter that we didn't get to eat any scallops (other than in ice cream form)yesterday, we got our fill today. Starting with breakfast. Today's breakfast viking may well be the best all you can eat breakfast we have had in this country. It had scallops, for goodness sakes! How can you have a bad day when it starts with scallops?

We like scallops.

Carla doesn't like boats. She is not a fan of most transportation choices that aren't her behind the wheel of a car she doesn't hate. But she especially doesn't like boats, in that she doesn't like what boat rides do to her stomach.

Which is why we did not ride the ferry between the main island and the North island of Japan. We took a train. A train that goes... under the sea. Take it from me: not all that exciting. Just black, black and more black out the windows for around an hour.

We arrived in Hakodate with enough time to drop our stuff at our hotel and catch the last little bit of the daily market. The guide books say it goes until noon. The books, as ever, lie. I don't know if that market ever closes. It may be busiest in the wee hours of the morning, but it ain't ever dull.

Massive crabs everywhere. Tiny squids. All sorts of wet everything. Everywhere. Most of it still moving, having not met with the business end of a claw hammer yet.

But, even with all this seafood undulating around us, the place did not smell bad. It smelled downright delicious in parts. Like the part where we lunched. Just a little place: a couple seats and a counter. And a grill outside. And a tank next to it. You order two scallops, they reach into the tank, pull 'em out and grill 'em up for you right then and there. With a little assist from a blow torch.

You know what scallops are? Butter of the sea. You know what goes good with 'butter of the sea'? Real butter. Real butter covering corn and potatoes. With local beer to wash it all down. Hokaido (the North island we're now on) is known for a few things in Japan: seafood, milk and milk products, corn and potatoes. It think we are going to like it here.

After lunch we hopped on a tram to the museum of Nothern people. Hokkaido has been home to humans long before it was known as Hokkaido. Since long before it was a part of Japan. The folks who lived here are known as Ainu. I didn't really learn much about the Ainu from the museum devoted to them. They fished a lot. They ate a lot of gross, fish related food. Most art does not depict them in a favourable light (the women are only slightly less hairy than the men, and they all have claws where their nails should be).

But their fashion sense was interesting. Native American meets Chinese meets African.

A small meander afterwards found us at a row of red brick buildings. Red brick buildings that used to be factories and warehouses and such are now shops and restaurants. We bought some stuff and enjoyed the walking around and the looking at wares.

Nearby, there is a hamburger restaurant.


Part of a Hokkaido wide chain of restaurants. We decided to give it a try. In honour of the G8 summit that is going on soonish in Hokkaido, they were offering a Summit burger. Carla ordered that. It looked interesting. The burger I ordered also looked interesting. And big. It was named the FuTo burger.

Japanese people love abbreviating things. But they don't do it the way North Americans do. Americans either reduced things to their first letter (USA! USA!) or get rid of all the vowels at the very least (mtn, st, etc,ntdsttsfmrc). You can't do that in Japan, all they have is vowels (that ain't true, but close enough to it), so they just ditch parts of words. That is how Pocket Monster became Pokemon. Sexual Harassment became Sekuhara. And foot tall (Fuuto Toru) became futo.


I ate a burger that was a foot tall. I knew something was up when they rang bells as they brought me my order. I finished it all, I'll have you know. That worries me. I'm getting fat. And old. Regina is going to kill me.

What was in the foot tall burger? A couple meat patties, a potato croquet, an egg, a lot of cheese and some veggies. Carla's burger looked way better: bits of chicken and shrimp.

But something in it may have upset her tummy, it was bothering her for the rest of the day. As did my foot, yet again. Another day, another new pain. My ankle has a cricity-crunchy thing going on inside it now. And it pops every three or four steps.

Which is why we got the transit day pass instead of just walking everywhere. That and one of the places we wanted to go to was the top of a mountain. Much easier to do in a bus than on foot. The view from the top of the mountain was superb. The view from the cafe at top of the mountain was even better: less wet and with more warm caffeine.

The weather today was a bit nutty. Rain had been forecasted for the whole day. It spat some big drops right around when we ate lunch and then it stopped. No more rain for the rest of the day. But the wind never let up. The wind blew away almost all the clouds and let the blue sky beam and sthe sun shine down. The only clouds that remained circled around the summit of the mountain.


Sitting at the summit, in the middle of the clouds was pretty cool. And pretty pretty. One minute you can see nothing but grey and the next lays the whole city out before you. Again and again. Never getting boring. But we had to leave eventually, the tourists were starting to overrun the place.


Great start to the last leg of our journey.

Day 29: The Big Cool Floats of Aomori

Before we get to the big cool floats, let me point out one other thing about Morioka that was kinda interesting.


This sculpture. It was all shiny and spiny. It spins, you see, that part is hard to capture in photographs. The sculpture saw us off from the bus stand.


There were no cool sculptures there to greet us at Aomori, but there was plenty of coolness to be found.

Y'see Theo, Aomori is known for its great big festival that features great big floats. Great big floats made of wood wire and paper. Lit from the inside. Dramatic, exciting, glowy paper floats paraded around on the backs of throngs of folks. With singing and dancing.

Sounds like a good time. If we ever come back to Japan (a more when-like if you will never see), we might have to give this festival a good looking over.

Japanese language lesson time!!!! Ao means blue (but also green, they have a word for green but it is not always used. Traffic lights in this country, for example, are called blue even though they are green). Mori means forest. Aomori means 'blu/green forest. Which is as good a way as any to describe where the forest meets the sea.

Lovely bit of land, this. I had some scallop flavoured soft ice cream and soaked in the view. Just be assured that for the rest of these posts, wherever we are staying is known for one variety of seafood or another. Today it is scallops.

Fishily refreshed, we set off for the floats. They keep a selection of some of the previous years' highlights in a little park outside of town. The park was nice, full of tall skinny trees. The sun was out, the sky was blue and they were playing festival music all throughout the park.


We looked at the floats. You should too.


Just please keep in mind that these photos are not a patch on the real things. So colourful, so bright, so dynamic, so awesome.


And big. I cannot imagine hauling these things around for hours on end in the middle of August. Blech. The music would inspire for a while, but if our time spent today is any indicator, that music can get old.

We ended our day in a street stall. Yatai, you may recall, is the name for such things. There is a small street in Aomori lined with yatai. All of them smelled delicious and looked inviting. A kind old lady dragged us inside her shop and we stayed there for around a hundred bucks worth of time. We ate and drank more than that, but that is all we were charged. And they were thoughtful enough to play American hip hop and show American movies while we were there.

The pain in my foot is moving up my leg, screwing around with my calf. In case you were wondering.