Let It Snow

This is the type of scene I was hoping for. In Sapporo on the north island of Hokkaido and the snow is flying. The air is full of light, white flakes. Not too big that they’re wet and sloppy. Not too small that they’re icy bullets pelting down from the sky. But those perfectly sized flakes that drift down from a grey sky, meandering in the quiet air, in no hurry to find the ground. Call them goldilocks flakes. It’s as if the neon streets have been thrust into one of those Christmas balls and someone has shaken it just perfectly so that the white stuff saturates the air.

I came up this way, drawn by my northern instincts, in search of the Japanese expression of winter. I arrived here the night before last and the snow started promptly the next morning. And as if according to order. It started out big, wet and sticky. After a brief dash from hotel to train station, I looked like a walking snowman. Cold and wet, but you couldn’t wipe the smile off my face.

I love the winter. Rain gets to me. But I could take snow and cold forever. The refreshing feel of cold air tugs at something innate. Maybe it’s the nostalgia of childhood memories, but winter feels like home.

There’s something comfortable about this city. I’ve hardly been here at all, but it feels very different from Tokyo or Kyoto. And not just the weather, though that may be the root cause. The sartorial landscape (that one’s for you Vince) is varied and somewhat reminiscent of home, though in a more elegant way. Less English speaking, but the people are as warm as I’ve found anywhere. And a noticeably mellower pace. I could spend many content days here, hunched over a steaming bowl of ramen, watching the sky empty on the streets.

Unfortunately, time’s a bit tight. So after touring the surprisingly impressive botanical gardens (only the green house open), I hopped a train for a cross-country jaunt to the island’s north coast. The trip there and back took me through the rural countryside, blanketed with a virgin layer of the season’s first snow. On the way there and back, I couldn’t get over the familiarity of the winter scenes. If the rice paddies were swapped for hay fields and the signs translated to English, I would have sworn that I was on the Highway 16 headed from Smithers to Houston. I’d traveled over 7,000 km to end up in Quick.



For reasons of time and season, I’ve only managed a small taste of what Hokkaido has to offer. I feel like wine connoisseur, given just the slightest sample of a deep, rich, and complex offering of sweet nectar. Sold as I am, I must delay the full bottled rapture.

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Harajuku Girls

Circumnavigating Tokyo on the Yamanote line, the fashion is an analogy of Japanese culture. The dress is uniformly conservative and homogeneous. Men wear business suits. Young women wear skirts with high socks. All very well dressed, but with little variety. A young man with wild hair or a hip-hop look adds the odd bit of flair. These stand out like pale stars against the otherwise uniformly dark sky.

By comparison, the Sunday crowd at Harajuku is a brilliant explosion of fireworks. Every weekend, girls (and a few guys) from the areas surrounding Tokyo ride into the city and converge on Harajuku station. Once there, they emerge like butterflies from the cocoon. The outfits are vast in variety, fulgent, and exquisitely intricate. “Gothic Lolitas” and visions from an anime reel walk the street. It’s an amazing spectacle. A feast for the eyes.





Drawn to this flame is a motley crowd of locals, Japanese tourists, and gaiijin. I was just one of many confused and bemused westerners circling the scene with camera drawn. But we weren’t alone. Buses full of Japanese tourists (yes, they have them too) stopped on the bridge to take it all in from behind tinted glass. Several older Japanese men prowled the scene, asking the girls to pose for their cameras. I couldn’t tell if they were serious photographers or just creepy old men.





Also attracted to this feeding frenzy were others seeking to capitalize on the confluence. A train of vans, painted with slogans and blaring propaganda, stopped to evangelize to the crowd. A man paced back and forth with a UFO adorned flag emboldening everyone to “Welcome E.T.” A peaceful young man held a large sign advertising “Free Hugs”.





Through it all, the girls showed an odd combination of exhibitionism and shyness. I sat along the bridge for a couple of hours, observing the scene and wondering. Why were these girls here? What drove them to this audacious form of expression? And what were they expressing? Doubtless, this was statement of individualism. These girls not only stood out from the crowd, but they also stood out from each other. But there was also a palpable sense of community and belonging. The girls arrived and remained in pairs. They greeted each newly arriving member with gleeful screams and hugs usually reserved for long lost friends. Maybe living in the less cosmopolitan outskirts of the city and alienated in their own communities, they found here a longed for sense of belonging. Many of the girls, underneath their elaborate plumage, didn’t meet the societal ideal of conventional beauty. So maybe this was a way of receiving attention not otherwise afforded.

I’m no anthropologist, so I don’t know. And I probably couldn’t understand anyway. But whatever the cause, the effect is a unique and curious bit of counterculture. Another beautiful idiosyncrasy of Tokyo.






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It's a Small World After All

It is a small world after all. At least for those who have a Japan Rail pass. Though not cheap in absolute terms, the JR pass is a relative bargain compared to paying as you go. And it gives you access to an all-you-can-eat buffet of the wonders of Japan.

It’s common knowledge that Japan has an excellent rail system. But once you’ve had the chance to use it, you realize it’s nothing short of amazing. The backbone of this sprawling beast is the Shinkansen (Bullet Train). Traveling at close to 300 km/hr, the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Kyoto takes under 3 hours. That’s about how long it takes to get from Vancouver to Whistler if there’s a bit of traffic. With unlimited access through the rail pass, my next trip to Kyoto, Nara, or Hiroshima will probably be a day trip from Tokyo. That’s like doing day trips from Toronto to Montreal.

Once off the Shinkansen lines, things do slow down a bit. But it’s still undeniably impressive. Today, I headed up from Tokyo to Sapporo on the relatively remote northern island of Hokkaido. I left in the morning and arrived in time for an early dinner. That’s the kind of like heading from Vancouver to Whitehorse within a work day. This trip involved a Shinkansen ride to the north end of Honshu, another train through the Seikan Tunnel (the world’s longest underwater tunnel at over 53 km), followed by one last leg up to Sapporo. The time between one train arriving and the next departing was never more than 15 minutes. But everything runs like clockwork and the transition is nearly seamless. Just enough time to grab a bowl of noodles and head out again.

The accessibility is phenomenal. There are hardly two points in this country that aren’t less than a day’s travel apart by train. And with a JR pass, you can ride to your heart’s content. On Sunday, Dorian was feeling sore from a lot of walking, so he decided to just hop on a Shinkansen, ride up Honshu and then come back again. A Japanese person would have paid hundreds of dollars for that same privilege.

Seeing this paragon of efficiency, it’s hard not be embarrassed by the poor effort delivered by B.C. Transit, B.C. Ferries, and the like. We’re still in the dark ages. My hat goes off to JR.

The Happiest Place In Asia

Japan is a land of contrast. And when in Rome, as the saying goes, one must do as the Romans. So after spending 2 days in Kyoto, the cultural heart of Japan, absorbing the expansive Shinto shrines and austere Zen temples, it was time for a change. A shift of modes and times. You’ve just spent 2 days enjoying the cultural wonders of Japan. Now what are you going to do?

Go to Tokyo Disneyland of course. What better way to experience another country than to invade that most audacious of American “cultural” exports? Seek to understand a person by studying the mirror they peer into. It’s the kind of subversive guerilla tactic that would make Hunter Thompson proud. And hey, it’d be fun.

On the way out, we were trying to rectify the position of Tokyo Disneyland within the pantheon of happiness. Disneyland is supposed to be the Happiest Place On Earth (HPOE). But by our count, there are a few such places in California, Florida, France, and Tokyo. We quickly ruled out Euro Disney (even Disney seems to have no illusions on this one), but that still left a few. Does the title of HPOE pass from park to park as the sun crosses the planet? Is it “The Happiest Place On Earth Between 1 AM and 2 PM Greenwich Mean Time”? But that would overlap with some of the other parks. That won’t do. The perils of globalization. In the end, we settled on “The Happiest Place In Asia.” I’m sure there are some who would argue that. Hmm, I think I’d better let this train of thought die right here.

Moving right along. It’s obviously a gross generalization, but Japan loves America. Icons of American popular culture are everywhere and they’re worshipped with zeal and money. So it should be no surprise that this has been the most visited theme park in the world. And sweet Jesus, it didn’t take long for me to believe that.

The crowds were ridiculous. Only in a country as orderly and patient as Japan could this work. Every ride had a lineup estimated at between 60 and 150 minutes. The women’s bathrooms looked like electronics stores the night before the PS3 was released. The popcorn stands had about 300 people lined up to pay 800 yen (about $8 CDN) for a commemorative pale full of flavored popcorn. And the lines didn’t shrink all day. I kid you not, there were still that many people waiting for popcorn at 8:30 p.m. I had to wonder what sort of “special seasoning” they were using.

Japanese people are amongst the most courteous and considerate you’ll ever meet. But they still haven’t shaken that Asian penchant for pushiness in crowds. I guess it’s inevitable whenever there’s such dense population. Maybe they’re not pushy and we North American’s are simply spoiled. But I just can’t accept that using your infant child and his stroller as a battering ram isn’t a violation of natural law. Or that it can be deemed anything but rude to drive your grandma’s wheelchair into the back of someone’s calves.

This all reached its crescendo following the fireworks show as the massive crowd headed for the gates. Apparently everyone had the same idea as us and decided to hit up the gift shops on the way out the door. There were so many people crammed into these shops that you could hardly move. Getting to the back of the shop was like trying to fight your way to the front of a mosh pit at a rock concert. And somehow through this melee, people managed to clear the shelves like piranhas stripping a cow’s carcass. I’ve never seen such zeal to part with the contents of wallets. That famed Japanese consumerism.

So the day ended up being an intense trial of patience. I wonder if it’s occurred to the Zen masters of Japan that this could be an excellent training vehicle. If you could survive a day at Tokyo Disneyland without at least once harboring thoughts of bloody murder, enlightenment would be a snap.

Now, I don’t want to make it sound like it was all bad. We did manage to have a good time. Some highlights were hearing Zippity-Doo-Da sung in Japanese, plunging off of splash mountain, seeing gleeful teenage girls ask to have their photo taken with Aiden as if he was one of the Disney characters, and watching the Christmas version of the Electric Parade. Good times but by the end of the day, all three of us were sore, exhausted, and ready to drift off into never never land.

On the Road Again

It seems very strange that as I began my trip, I couldn’t get my internal radio off of the country channel. Nothing seemed to rid my head of Willie Nelson’s voice singing “On the Road Again”. It makes no sense. I’m going west, true, but so far west that it’s east. What does this country song have to do with going to Japan? I struggled to figure it out, but eventually just let it go and sang along. Maybe it was God making a request for Karaoke night.

So I’m off to Japan for a little under 3 weeks. Aiden’s been studying in Tokyo for the past semester and Dorian will be passing through on his way back from Thailand. No real plans, just some time, a place to stay in Tokyo, and a rail pass. We’ll see where it takes me.

The flight over was exceptionally smooth, despite being with Air Canada. I’d managed to snag an emergency exit seat. The difference between a normal Air Canada seated coffin and the 10 feet of legroom I enjoyed is indescribable. Night and day. So I stretched out and worked my way through 8 hours of the second season of 24. A great way to start a vacation.

Arrived here in Tokyo around 3:40 pm local time. Riding into Tokyo from Narita was a strange experience. The visual reminders of taking that same trip 3 years earlier were stronger than I’d expected. The rice paddies squashed between clumps of modernity. Row after row of bicycles. Massive transmission towers silhouetted against the dying blue of a fading sky. The tightness of things. What struck me more than the familiarity of these images was the vastly different perspective I’d brought with me. So much has changed in my view of the world since that last ride into Tokyo. Like looking at a yearbook and seeing all those things that were invisible to you in high school.

Aiden met me at the station, then we dropped my stuff at his place (which may just make the Guinness Book for the world’s smallest elevator). From there, we headed out to meet Dorian at La Qua, a massive complex near the Tokyo Super Dome that has, among other things, a big onsen. If there’s any cure for jetlag, it’s the soothing, warm, mineral rich hot spring waters of an onsen. It was wonderful to unwind and catch up with my two brothers. As we relaxed together, I was reminded of the words below, which express the feeling far better than I could.

To My Brothers by John Keats

Small, busy flames play through the fresh-laid coals,
And their faint cracklings o'er our silence creep
Like whispers of the household gods that keep
A gentle empire o'er fraternal souls.
And while for rhymes I search around the poles,
Your eyes are fixed, as in poetic sleep,
Upon the lore so voluble and deep,
That aye at fall of night our care condoles.
This is your birthday, Tom, and I rejoice
That thus it passes smoothly, quietly:
Many such eves of gently whispering noise
May we together pass, and calmly try
What are this world's true joys, -ere the great Voice
From its fair face shall bid our spirits fly.