JAPAN

HOKKAIDO CRAB AND GREENERY DAY

Last night I went to dinner at Ebi-kani Gassen. It is a miracle that I found Ebi-kani Gassen. My Lonely Planet Guide writes this about it: “Ebi-kani Gassen (with an all you can eat menu) is among Sapporo’s many crab places. Its two locations are busy, informal and fun.” Then there is a general X type mark on an inexact map of the city. Okay, not a lot to go on, but I’ve seen worse.

I set out for what I think would be the right block and I find many eating places, none of them having any western alphabet sign in front. I ask. There is an art to this: you have to pick someone who looks like they would know about an obscure eating spot in this area. Bingo! It’s rare that I strike gold on the first try but there you have it: a Japanese man scratches his chin (literally) and his face lights up. He leads me to an office building with a sign that has the listing of all offices on its 14 floors. Then he points to some characters next to the 12th floor designation and says jubilantly: “Ebi-kani Gassen!” I thank him and head for the elevators.

I get in the elevator, push “12,” the door closes, nothing happens. I remember from my hotel elevator that the buttons at the top refer to "door open" and "door close" and so through trial and error, I finally get the doors to open. I am, of course, on the ground floor. A group of people join me and I am excited because maybe they will demonstrate what button to push to make the damn box MOVE. They press “4” and we move to 4. They get out. I have pressed “12” but I see that I am going back down to “1.” Lord, is “12” out of business? Is it special access only? Is it not Ebi-kani Gassen??

New people come into the elevator. I ask them in my fluent Japanese: “Ebi-kani Gassen?” They discuss this among themsleves with gusto and fianlly point to 12. We’re in business! But I show them that when I press 12, no light goes on (in my Japanese: press, shrug, press shrug). Ahhhh: they drag me out of the elevator and point me to another. Apparently this first one does not go up to twelve. The other does. Lonely Planet, do better! How is ANYONE supposed to figure all this out on their own?

At Ebi-kani Gassen I am given a sheet of paper and miraculously it has an English line scribbled on it: “all you can eat: king crab legs, snow crab legs, shrimp tempura, shrimp sushi, crab sushi, tempura shrimp sushi, egg custard.”

I am not a good “all you can eat” candidate. In the hotel, breakfast is included in my daily rate. There is an elaborate buffet, with egg dishes, Japanese dishes, meats, breads, rolls, you name it. I take a bowl of cereal and some fruit and drink my coffee and walk away satisfied. But this is a very specific to Sapporo “all you can eat” type of place. You are given a set amount of food that includes all the listed dishes. And you are given 90 minutes. If you finish what’s in front of you, you can request a repeat of all the crab legs. If you finish that, you can ask for another portion. Oh, and you are given all the beer you can drink in that 90 minute period as well.

This would not work in Wisconsin. Big people would come with big appetites and even greater thirst and drive these restaurants out of business. But around me, I see the usual lean Japanese people and they are eating rapidly, but sanely. I, too, work through my allotment and then wonder if I should ask for more. The Polish nagging little guy within me says “eat more! It’s free! And besides, it is the famous Hokkaido crab, the best in the world!” And so I order another round.

I come back to the hotel and collapse, with crab crawling out of my every pore. I don’t care if I never see another crab leg in my life! Had I spoken Japanese, I would have asked for a half portion, but can you imagine me taking that one on? Instead, I chose to gorge.

But that was yesterday. Today is April 29 – a national holiday: “Greenery Day.” It marks the beginning of Golden Week, where all of Japan takes off for vacation. Because there are three national holidays close together (Greenerey Day, Constitution Day and Children’s Day), most businesses are closed for the entire period – from April 29 until May 5.




For me, it is time to leave Sapporo. I am headed south to see one of the three natural wonders of Japan. When next I write, it will be from Matsushima. More on that later. In the mean time, I am including photo reminders that Sapporo isn’t all modern buildings and neon signs (photo 2), that space is always at a premium, thus the Japanese devise innovative strategies to not use too much of it (photo 3) and that since greenery can’t readily be found here on April 29 (too early), it CAN be found at the market (photo 1).

JAPAN

PEACE



This afternoon I took a train to the town of Heiwa (which translates as Peace). It is a town that is not in any conventional guidebook on Japan (I can’t even remember where I heard about it) and there is no reason to go there but for one building.

I had postponed seeking out this place earlier during my visit here, but as I am leaving Sapporo tomorrow morning, I felt it was time I went.

The building – an uninteresting, small, brick structure, is owned by “Hibakusha,” meaning the living victims, the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They have converted an upstairs room of the house into a sort of gallery. Graphic photos depicting injuries sustained by the people living within a large radius of the atomic blasts line the walls, and paintings express the horror of those events.

There are some 500 or 600 Hibakusha living in Hokkaido and I met one of them today.

I rang the door bell somewhat apprehensively, thinking that this would be too hard to do, especially without the protective shield of an impersonal museum.

An old man opened the door and he looked surprised to see me. Right away he said “Hiroshima, Nagasaki” as if to explain what was there, thinking that perhaps I had the wrong address. When I reassured him in my nonexistent Japanese that this indeed is where I wanted to be, he took me upstairs and unlocked the door to the room holding the small gallery.

He followed me during the entire half hour I was there. He stood quietly behind me every time I paused in front of a picture and he said nothing as I looked on. But I felt it to be a gentle and kind presence and I welcomed his company. It is not a place where you can stand being alone very easily.

In leaving, I hated myself for not having the language skills to say more than thank you, at the same time that I felt relieved that I lacked the words, because, after all, what can anyone say.

I thought about the two photos I posted earlier today of Japanese children, especially the one from Biai, where the little girl is holding out her fingers in the symbolic gesture that the Japanese use for peace. Peace, from her tiny hand, held to the camera. Peace. It’s only when I recalled her living form that I became uncontrollably sad this afternoon. She made the children of the black and white photos on the wall of the brick house wear faces and have names.

Under the postwar Japanese Constitution, the country has no active military. In the last decade the government here has interpreted the document to permit a military without weapons, to be called forth only for reasons of defense. It was decided that such a unit should be sent to Iraq, though only for ‘humanitarian’ reasons and without weaponry of any sort. Even this was though by many to be excessive.

Travel is such a happy series of events for me, but this afternoon I had to do that other part of it, I had to go back and examine a piece of history – not the political history, but the personal one, experienced by the common, everyday people, just like the ones I am watching now go through their daily tasks of shopping, taking children to school, riding trains to homes in small towns and villages.

An image of a happy little girl in Biei, holding that little fist for peace is the proper ending to this post. Let me reprint the photo, just to remind myself of her smiling face.