Ah Hokkaido! My old stomping ground. It felt reassuringly familiar to touch down in ye olde Chitose airport. I got sniffy with sentiment to see the giant banners of corn all over the place, and the Royce's chocolate covered potato chips beckoning from the displays of other equally as random goodies. It had been quite the journey - as usual.....Gotta cut down on all the crap I carry around - seriously, this time I mean it. It's all very well waving 'ta ta' to it on the conveyer belts at airport check-in, or loading up the old airport trolleys. But seriously, I think I'm going to get that old-lady-from-the-rice paddies look if I have to trudge another step with my snowboard on my back. Did I mention that it's the worst think about train travel - the luggage lugging? Surely I did, I'm pretty taken with that complaint.
The morning started unexpectedly. It had been snowing all night. But, instead of feeling gutted we were missing the Tazawako freshies, we decided to get up extra early and get up to that mountain - for one final hour of snow joy. So, as we left at 8.30am, we asked the hotel shuttle to come and pick us up from ski mountain instead (with all our stuff that we dumped in the lobby), and take us to the station, in time for our 11am train. In some other country, this foolhardy scheme would have ended in disaster (bags would be forgotten, the shuttle late, the child care lady would be having a lie in thinking her only clients had left the day before) - but in Japan everything always runs like clockwork - so the risk was minimal. This is another example of where the 'always pack the night before' rule comes into it's own. We were organised. It used to be rare. Now it's more likely. I like now.
The childcare lady was not only 'up at at 'em' - but also utterly thrilled to see the girls (she was actually in the office laminating poster sized pictures of them to stick all over the childcare wall.....I told you there's a fee for that lady.....). So thrilled, that she agreed to have them, for free, 20 minutes before the usual time. For such a kind gesture, I realise this may come as a little cruel - but she can't understand English and is almost certain to never read this....Well, she sort of looks, and acts, like a kind of over-sweet evil witch, who lures children in to her room, by cramming it floor to ceiling with more toys per square inch, than I have ever seen in my life ( far, far more than a Toys R Us warehouse in America). Then, while they have their day time nap, she draws vials of their blood to wash her face in. I checked for prick marks.....nothing obvious.....but she could be clever about it....remind me to check between their toes.....
Anyway, whatever, have their blood - they're young, they've got enough time to make gallons of the stuff (hey, if it really works I might try it myself) - just as long as I can get out on the snozza as quick as possible. Remember what I said about hiring the old groomer to run you up a now closed ski resort? Well forget that - this was an whole operational ski resort - for only five bucks - with only ONE other person on the entire mountain, besides us, when we got out there. I was pretty keen to jostle him for first lift - but I was reminded by Chalks to show some local respect. Fuck that, I'm an Aussie - let me at those freshies oy oy oy.... OK, so I showed respect, I'm much to gutless to really jostle someone in the line. I just politely waved him on with a "
Dozo" (please go ahead), and perhaps even more pathetically, attempted some kind of bow. Apparently Western people look like chickens when they try and do the Japanese bow because we just stick out necks forward or something. Don't do it - it cheapens you.
So the goods times were ever so briefly had. But at least we didn't feel like we'd been ripped off by mother nature when we had to bail from good old Tazza.....Going back next year, for sure.
The trains trips were uneventfully relaxing. I put this down to the greatest sticker sheets I have ever been so fortunate to purchase. Usually a sticker sheet last two minutes 30 seconds. All are peeled and immediately stuck on a bit of paper - game over. Next activity please. But not these little beauties. They lasted three train trips, and an hour and a half flight. There is a lot more life in them too. I am going to find more, and fill my suitcase with them. But dole them out slowly. The appeal must not grow stale. Basically, they are a little pack that consisted of four sticker 'girls' - with cute Japanese names, and a million sticker outfits. You can stick many different outfits on and off the girls, and they don't lose their stick at all. Bloody cool. I must admit though, I tried similar ones last year, and they copped the usual peel and stick treatment. But this time, with another year past, the girls were all over them. I was hoping they'd fall asleep so I could have a go - I love that kind of thing. But sadly they were transfixed (I might go get them out of the bag when I finish this entry - I just know that "Rina" would look great in the pink tartan skirt and jacket with purple ice skates...)
With pinpoint precision and determination, Valentina dressed and redressed her girls for a variety of different occasions; shopping, a party, the beach. All outfits were co-ordinated with matching hats and accessories. When she grew tired of this, she made a "dress tower" on one sticker girl with every single outfit (it was pretty high), and then re-stuck them back on the sheet and started again. Cordelia had a couple of outfit changes for hers, and then just got really involved in making a story about the sticker girls - they were being blown away in the wind, there was a creature, they went to the dog park etc. So funny to see the way the exact same things leads to two very different games.
Stickers on the ready, we travelled to, and then flew out of, Sendai. I was interested to see what it looked like since the tsunami ripped through there. I didn't realise the airport was so close to coast, which would explain the jumbo jets being washed away. It's pretty full on. There are a lot of new buildings, barren fields, piles of debris, rubbish, and spanking new houses. But although, you can rebuild structures and things start to look back to normal, you can't rebuild the trees. They give away what happened there just over a year previously. Many of them still stood, but were completely bare up their long trunks, right until the very top, where they were as bushy as they should have been all the way to the ground. The long lines of them everywhere- some on unnatural angles, and some bent and twisted- showed where the water had come up to when it hit that part of the coast. It was hard to tell exactly how high - it looked like it was over the height of a two story building though. From the air, you could see more of the tsunami's crushing legacy, A brown swath of nothingness stretched along the coast, while the damaged, and now unused, land below was littered with piles of wood, machinery, and now a few new building sites.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/03/13/world/asia/satellite-photos-japan-before-and-after-tsunami.html
So as I said, here were are now in Hokkaido. Asahikawa to be exact. Our first largish city for a while. As we drove from the station in our taxi I was reminded how it felt to live in a city completely encased by snow for many months of the year. Where the streets don't thaw, and you get used to driving and walking on ice. I remember, I used to have a pair of boots with spikes on the bottom for ice gripping, which you could flick down flat when you went inside. I never did as the Japanese girls do, which is wear mini skirts, bare legs and stilettos - even though it's minus 10. Those sharp heels really dug into the ice well though - you've got to give them credit there. Often a high heel in Japan will turn up in the most unlikely place - minus 15 degrees, bushwalking, the beach, hiking Mt Fuji....sometimes you've just got to work it I guess....
That reminds me - sticker girl 'Asami' would look amazing in sticker stilettos and a mini..., I can create her Japanese winter look while I eat my choccy chips.....gotta go.
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