Golden Week Tour

Early May is a big National holiday in Japan called Golden Week. It is a combination holiday involving constitution day, greenery day and children's day. If you are interested in more info about these days, check out this wiki (then you will know more than most Japanese people about these holidays because anyone I asked told me they weren't sure what the meaning was, but it was a long holiday).

Almost everyone in Japan goes somewhere or takes a day or two off to celebrate this holiday. Shawn and I joined another couple of friends (guy from New Zealand and his wife (Japanese) and their son) and did a tour of Southern Hokkaido. They own a car and drove us all over and showed us around.

First stop was a nice townhouse/hotel place in the forest in the Sahkotan area. This side of Hokkaido faces the sea of Japan and if it hadn't been brutally cold and windy that night, our BBQ on the beach would have been much more enjoyable (the hotel didn't have an area that allowed BBQ and we had meat that we needed to cook so were forced to brave the wind and cook the meat). After dinner we enjoyed a few drinks and a nice onsen in the hotel.

Our cold BBQ.


The Japanese coastline is re-inforced with concrete everywhere you look.


The next morning we headed across Hokkaido towards the Pacific and enjoyed another BBQ along the way at a nice river. We were glad to have the BBQ because the smoke kept away the swarms of biting bugs that were there. We all managed to get a few bites but the sun was nice and warm and we were hungry so stuck it out. After lunch we continued on to Onuma Quasi National Park where we stayed in a B&B.

Our riverside BBQ.



I have no idea what Quasi National Park is supposed to mean, but my feeling was that it meant they would protect the ecological integrity of this place so long as there wasn't something economically intriguing enough not to do so. Onuma is a big lake that is at the foot of a stunning volcano called Komagatake Yama. After waking up and a nice breakfast and check out, we rented bikes and rode around the lake (14 km trip). The weather was fairly nice, but low clouds meant that we didn't get to see the nice views of Komagatake as we made the trip. There was a nice camping ground on the lakeshore so we hope to return some time this summer to spend a night there and maybe hike the volcano (not active any longer, don't worry mom!).

There are also lots of nice walking paths around the lake and arched bridges connect the small islands along the end of the lake. Here's us on one of the bridges.


There were also heaps of fishermen sitting on specialized platforms. They baited their hooks with mashed potato (seriously, they had to replace the dissolved bait every couple minutes) and didn't use a reel, just yanked the fish up onto the platform before releasing them. They were well equipped and entertaining to watch.



We left Onuma and drove south to Hakodate, an important historical port as it was one of the first international trading ports. The influence of this can definately be felt in the city as there are many churches, lots of park space and even a citadel in the center of the city. On our first night we took a trip up to the top of the tower that overlooks the star shaped fort but because it was pretty dark we didn't see much. It was raining that night so we grabbed a bite and took shelter in our hotel room for the rest of the night. Our friend and his son had a bad reaction to the bug bites from the prior BBQ and their legs were swollen so too much walking wasn't in the cards anyway.

The next morning we took a nice walk around the star-shaped park called Goryokaku (click here for more park info). There are about 1600 cherry trees in the park and while we were there most had already dropped most of their blossoms, but there were a few late hanami (=cherry blossom party) on the go so the atmosphere in the park was fun. Here are a few shots of the cherry petals that had fallen. This is definately a place I would return to have hanami if we were here next year at this time.




Next we took a drive up to the top of Hakodate yama (the mountain overlooking the city). It was a very windy day, but it was clear so we got a good view of the city. We couldn't see Honshu but I was told that on clear days you can see the north end of Honshu from the lookout. Before leaving town to drive back up to Sapporo we stopped at the dockyard area of town to eat lunch at a nice restraunt and brew pub there.


The drive back from Hakodate is short (only 250 kms) but as is typical in Japan, it takes a long time (around 6 hours of straight driving). I can't really explain why driving here takes so long, part of it has to do with low speed limits and I guess that there are a lot of stoplights along the way... but we took the toll highway... so that can't be the whole story. It has been the case no matter where we have gone though, short distances take a very long time to drive. At that rate it would take months to drive across Canada.

Glass Blowing, Sealion Tricks and Fairies

We have been to Otaru before when mom and Meg visited, but when our friends planned a Sunday trip there, we decided to join them. This all happened a few weeks ago now, but I am pretty behind in blogging and I am finally now getting these photos off my camera.

We enjoyed Otaru last time we had been there, and this time I had my mind set to visit the aquarium there. The photo above is the Hokkaido mascot holding up me as his catch - this photo's for you mom! The character's name is Marimokari. He is an algae ball - and has algae balls... It is a special species of algae that lives in some lake here in Hokkaido and this mascot is everywhere you turn in this place. I guess his "physique" has something to do with health and longevity...?

Anyway, we wandered the streets for a while in the morning. Shawn stopped in at the local glass blowing shop and tried his hand at blowing his own glass cup. Otaru is famous for glass crafts and you can buy all manner of beautiful unique items there. Shawn did really well, under the attentive assistance of a couple of experienced glass blowers. In the second photo below you can see that the girl on the left is really impressed with Shawn's skill!




For lunch we hit a sushi shop, another Otaru speciality. We stuffed ourselves on incredibly fresh fish before continuring on to visit an historic home in the city. One of the friends who came with us is Japanese so she was able to help us with figuring out directions and plans. It makes such a difference being with someone who can fully understand their surroundings, instead of us who understands about 75% and guesses (often wrongly) at the other 25%.

After the historic house tour, we stopped at the aquarium. To our surprise it was a really great place. They had excellent displays of local fauna including really well presented invertebrate displays (my fave). They also have a large collection of marine mammals - seals, sea lions, walruses, and dolphins. All of the mammals and the penguins are trained and perform daily shows. We arrived there later in the afternoon so we missed some of the shows and it was raining and cold once we arrived so we definately want to go back on a warm sunny day to take it all in again. Of the shows we saw, we were most impressed with the massive sea lions who climbed a huge ladder up to a high diving board, made all kinds of noise once up there, then dove off!!!! No kidding, here are some photos. This diving board was really high, and that animal was something like 800 kg (that's 1760 lbs)!!!





We unfortunately didn't have enough time there to see all of the displays but we thoroughly enjoyed what we did see and can't wait to go back. After the aquarium we went back to the downtown area to track down some grub. We ended up at the Otaru beer factory, an old warehouse on the canal that reminded Shawn and I of the Canoe Club in Victoria. They served great food and excellent beer (our current local favorite) and even had live music that came on half way through our meal. The band was mostly wind instruments and a bit of drums and singing and the band members wore weird flowing hippie looking pastel-coloured outfits. They looked a bit like fairies or something. It wasn't music that I would go back for, but a performance during dinner was nice.

When the band came on for their second set, they did an interactive stretching and low impact excersice routine. They had the crowd doing warm up excersices then lead everyone in more involved dancing and a congo line. We played along (how can you not when you are the "foreigner table" stuck right in the front of the stage). So we ended the night with a belly full of good food doing the congo line around a warehouse with fairies. Perfect!

KY and the BJ

Japanese love to shorten words and use acronyms. These creative words became a source of some good jokes and fun during "English Conversation Hour" hosted by yours truly, to help the students work on their spoken english skills. Here are a few of my favorites.

The BS News is a national news show aired on NHK.
I have mentioned this one before in a prior post (click here to read).

B.J. is the Japanese basketball league.
"He plays for the BJ doesn't he?"

K.Y. is a word to describe a person who doesn't know when to keep quiet or how to act in a given situation.
"That person really needs K.Y."

It certainly lightened up the mood in the room as I tried to explain these concepts in English to them. I laughed out loud lots as you can imagine. At the end, one of the students made a point of noting to everyone how strange it is that I laugh so outwardly. I asked him if he didn't find this funny, he said no, that he found it very funny but is able to laugh "inside" at these kinds of things. He found it strange that I don't have that ability.