JAPAN

WHY WOULD ANYONE HEAD NORTH ON A DAY LIKE THIS?

Finding myself with a conversational negative balance today (I spoke no recognizable English to anyone, and what English I did speak can only be classified as minus-English. Just as an example: “time! time next train Sapporo! Next, 16 clock?”), I decided to indulge myself here on the blog. Since “the blog never lies,” I mustn’t create fictionalized persons. Thus, the conversation is between myself and myself.

NC: So what did you do today?
nc: I took the train up toward the northern part of Hokkaido.

NC: Don’t you have enough train travel in your weeks in Japan just to get you places you need to be?
nc: I have a rail pass which entitles me to unlimited train travel. I am nowhere near ‘unlimited’ yet. A Pole never passes up a freebe. Besides, it felt cold in Sapporo – too cold to just walk around like I did yesterday.

NC: Wouldn’t it be even colder up north?
nc: I did not think of that when I studied the train schedules.

NC: How far north did you go?
nc: About 2.5 hours and two separate trains’ worth of territory was covered each way.

NC: Five hours total? You are nuts. There must have been something special to see up there?
nc: I went to check out a village. Actually it was somewhere between a town and a village: I could walk it’s circumference in about half an hour.

NC: Was it stunning? Is that why you went?
nc: I vaguely recalled reading somewhere about it, but I could not remember why it was so special except that in the summer they grow flowers around there. Was it stunning –well, I have never been to Alaska, but this is how I imagine an impoverished town or village deep in Alaska would look like, right around the month of March (desolate, deserted, scruffy and gray).

NC: Sounds thrilling indeed! Highlights?
nc: Watching the youngest children returning home from school in the afternoon. Their features were very much Hokkaido features: dark, pronounced, with not a small trace of Ainu. Beautiful smiles (photo doesn't do them justice!).

NC: Low points?
nc: Where do I begin? I think three words would summarize all relevant points: it was cold. This village (called Biei) is at the foot of a mountain chain, and the mountains were completely covered with snow. Not a single bud had broken through any of the trees in town. I had wanted to borrow a bike (apparently it is possible to do that) but thought that I would not last more than a quarter of a mile. I was warmly dressed, but the wind was piercing.

NC: When you figure out how to post photos, do let us see the snow-covered mountains.
nc: That I wont do. I don’t know enough about the camera yet (it is less than a week old) to figure out how to create contrast where non exists: today the sky was gray-white, and the snow-covered mountains were white-gray. You would have been viewing basically a picture of mixed whites.

NC: Any other thoughts on the outing?
nc: Yes. I am glad I went. Just taking this little one-car train for the final stretch was cool: people were traveling home with groceries bought in bigger towns. I imagined what it would be to live there year-round. You’d have to be pretty resilient. Oh, and BTW, when I came back to Sapporo, I found that it had been (still is) raining. I didn’t have any rain up north—I felt rewarded for my efforts to move myself out of the comfort zone of this city. Then, when I got back into town I did a first: I went to a Starbucks and bought myself a steaming latte. I’ve never felt so decadent. But you’ll be surprised to hear that I have yet to turn on the flat-screened TV in my room. No CNN to date. So if the world turned up-side-down in my absence, I wouldn’t known (there are no English newspapers in Sapporo news stands so I don’t even know what the headlines are, and no, obviously I haven’t been reading CNN.com – haven’t you been paying attention to my computer woes? I rarely can get a connection).

NC: So, are you having fun yet?
nc: But of course: the days are full, so full. Every minute explodes with something interesting and new. That is the essence of being elsewhere, isn't it?
Now can we go back to being one? I feel I'm bordering on the insane here.