In anticipation of some B/C work in Niseko, we went to Takino Suzuran park in Southeast Sapporo on Saturday to try out snowshoeing. We caught the subway down to Makomanai and got on the same bus line that heads to the Geijitsu no Mori (art/sculpture garden). Takino is a Natonal-Government-run park offering various activities year-round. In winter there are XC ski trails, a tiny one-lift ski/board slope, a tube/sled park, and snowshoe trails. The snow as coming down pretty heavy in the morning. There was easily 10-15cm of unsettled fall overnight. The snowshoe and poles were free. They had pretty nice hardware – Tubbs shoes and BD poles!
The course was reasonable well marked with signs, but after all the snowfall during the week when few visitors were at the park, the line was not obvious. The girl at the rental counter said that the snowshoe area was “open”, so we could really go off-trail wherever we wanted and it was OK. The course went out around the sled park to an observation tower, then back past the astronomical observatory. The round trip took a little over an hour – not sure how far it was. I’m sure there are some secret snowshoeing techniques, but the key thing I learned was to not step on the tail of of your front shoe. That’ll put you on the ground really fast. The pole straps over the gloves make a quick transition to taking out the camera challenging. Uphill without heel elevators is also challenging. The overall effort isn’t too bad – I didn’t really have any aches and pains after the hour (the lighter the shoes the better?) – not sure how this changes if the snow isn’t untracked powder…
On Sunday, we caught a long-haul highway bus from Sapporo out to Tokachigawa onsen in East-central Hokkaido. The trip took around 5 hours. The bus course ran out on a toll road, then local highways, then back onto a toll road, roughly paralleling the train line that runs between Sapporo and Obihiro. The toll road is currently under construction and will eventually run all the way through. The Tokachi plain is a vast agricultural area. The city had farm equipment dealers from almost every domestic and foreign manufacturer. There is a sugar refinery, so at least one of the products is sugar beets. The altitude isn’t really high like the area around Furano (65m if I believe my watch), so conditions were warm and spring-like. Although not abundant in snowfall, it is supposedly cold and windy (Tokachi in the original Ainu language meant “Ten Winds”). I can attest to the windy part. It didn’t appear that there had been any significant snowfall for a month or so. All the remaining snow was windpacked into those layered patterns, or melted into exaggerated points. It did get cold enough at night to frost windshields and freeze puddles though, but during the day it was above zero centigrade.
After checking into the hotel, we went down to the riverside to see the famous hakucho (white geese? – didn’t look like swans). There were these and various migratory ducks like Mallards, brown-headed pintails, and some weird black duck that would go submarine and swim underwater. The visit to the windy riverbank demanded a visit to the onsen afterwards. The entry was crowded with slippers, so I figured it would be a full-house of naked men, but once inside, it didn’t appear that crowded at all. The water at this onsen isn’t chemically rich, but it percolates up through a subterrranean layer of decayed, peaty mvegetable matter that the local onsen association has dubbed “mool” (probably “moor” if you take into account romanaization issues). The water is dark tea brown and leaves the skin smooth. I would assume the peat would affect the water’s Ph but I’m not sure off the top of my head right now if that would be making it acidic or basic… The rotenburo was around 43C when I got in, but after about 30-minutes, came down to a more survivable 39C. The view was out over the river and the plain and distant Hidaka mountains.
Dinner was teishoku highlighted with a local beef sukiyaki and tempura made from local ingredients, including some kind of fresh-water fish. I got a Tokachi Beer “Mool Onsen Beer” brewed with some of that peaty water. It was a good, slightly hoppy lager. I don’t know how the moor water affected the taste in any way. The beer did a good job of knocking me out, so I didn’ have a chance to walk up the street in the cold wind to see the colorful hallucinatory light display that the town had set up in a fallow field.
The rotenburo was around 42C in the morning around sunrise, but it didn’t seem that hot. Breakfast was the normal buffet with a mix of Western and traditional fare. I noticed at breakfast that some of the guests were speaking Chinese – I’m guessing they were from Taiwan or HK, but what do I know? That’s pretty far into the boondocks of Hokkaido for them to come! I wonder if there is some aggressive marketing campaign by the Hokkaido tourism association to get people out into the far reaches. I can understand when there were lots of foreigners out in Shiretoko, but this is really smack-dab in the middle of nowhere.
We caught a local bus back into town and went exploring until lunchtime. We found a gun shop! Oki Gun Shop had Czech Sako rifles, Steyr rifles, and SKB JDM shotguns. This is the first gun shop I’ve seen in Japan. Come to think of it, there were some hunters with scoped rifles getting out of a SWB 70-series TLC on the roadside between Yubari and Tomamu. It took a bit of walking to find a particular famous restaurant for lunch, but after all the effort, I was ready to eat. We had buta-don (charcoal-broiled pork donburi) at hage-ten restaurant. Yes, hage as in “bald”, and ten as in “heaven” – don’t look at me, I didn’t do it. It was very good. there was a small 4-slice size and a big 6-slice size. The 6mm-thick slices of pork were tender and moist. This is a Tokachi specialty, but I don’t really know if pig farming is really a local thing.
I managed to find single bottles of the other 3 varietals of the Tokachi Beer at the grocery level of the giant Nagasakiya department store to the Southwest of the station. All the omiyage stores in the station only had six-packs of Tokachi beer, and that was just too much. I’ll report on those as I drink them. The return bus was a little faster than the outgoing bus – maybe the time of day, or the weekday traffic. I noticed that the electronic speed limit signs were either blank, or displaying a reduced speed based on conditions. I’m not sure what the maximum speed is – this isn’t theautobahn, so there is some upper limit – I just didn’t see it posted. The bus driver was ripping it when there were no lit signs, so I’m guessing it is somewhere in the 100-120kph range. Traffic off the tollway was stop-an-go all the way from Oyachi to Odori. We stopped at Sapporo Factory then headed over to find dinner. I had a good junsai ten-zaru soba (batter-fried wild spring greens with cold buckwheat noodles) at a rstaurant in the Marui Imai department store.
Today it’s clear, blue, and sunny. Boo. It’s supposed t obe clear tomorrow too. Boo. I’ll do some board maintenance for this coming weekend, then go do otaku things around town after lunch. I’ll go boarding tomorrow no matter what – even if there is no new fall.
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