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.

More photos here