Sapporo, Japan - Saturday
It's the last day of April and it's winter in Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan's islands - a sparsley populated wildnerness area (in contrast to the south) filled with active volcanoes and onsen (hot springs). The sun was shining in the seaport of Muroran on the southeast side of the island. Across the wide bay, a snow cloaked volcano stood sentinel. It seemed to be floating in air in the early morning mist.It was a two hour drive to the capital city of Sapporo - only 1 1/4 hours by train but more expensive that way than the cruise line arranged shuttle bus (that's an anomaly). Trees were bare of leaves and the landscape was brown as we bused to Sapporo. Patches of snow lay in protected crevices here and there from a snow fall just three days ago. Mountains ring the area covered with white shawls of snow. Cherry trees are not expected to blossom until the middle of May, six weeks behind the south but we saw one maverick magnolia just starting to display a few petals.
The same happy and friendly spirit is prevalent with the people of Hokkaido and it is so lovely after the dour 'Vladivostockians'. I will miss the Japanese very much; with all our travels we have never encountered such a welcoming and helpful people.
The wind was keen in the morning as we set out on a walking tour of Sapporo. It's a clean and modern city with lots of department stores and restaurants, a wide boulevard - flower beds overflowed with multi-coloured pansies and the grass was green on the park-like median. Streetside vendors were selling corn-on-the-cob for 300 yen and it smelled marvelous.
I bought a bento box of mixed maki and tofu pockets in the basement of Mitsukoshi and found a bench in a corner where several elderly ladies sat to rest. They chattered at me in Japanese and smiled a welcome as I took out my chopsticks and tucked in to my sushi. Not able to understand each other, we did the usual head bobbing back and forth with lots of smiles.
One floor lower is devoted to sweets of all types - the most artistic and delicious looking pastries I've ever seen. There were sample plates at many of the stands and we tried them and relished them. I bought one little 'kiwi' shaped delicacy for later - made of green tea and bean paste, I believe.
Sweet-faced, aproned ladies at tea stands prepared and served us fresh green tea - macha, the powdered tea and some made from the fragrant green leaves. We sampled several with lots of bowing and unintelligible chatter accompanying it. When I purchased some to take home with us, they taught me how to make it - one soup spoon of the leaves to the small teapot which serves two in those tiny little handle free cups. Our purchases were wrapped with such care and we finished with more bowing and 'arrigatos' from both sides.
Hokkaido was our final Japanese destination. This was realised with sadness having decided Japan ranks in our top 5 countries of the world and it's number 1 with regards to the people. It was time to use up all the change we'd accumulated - the smallest bill in Japanese currency is 1000 yen ($10 US) so we'd accumulated quite a bit of change. We bought a half a dozen Sapporo beer and half a dozen of our favourite lemon drink, CC Lemon. We buried the beer in the bottom of our day pack and the crew didn't take notice of it when we returned to the ship.
Sayonara Japan!
posted by O'Leary @ 6:03 PM
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