Sapporo: Day Four...

Day four started with getting packed up and organized.  I had contemplated sending our dirty clothes home by way of the Japanese post office, but none of them opened until nine, and in the end I got all our clothes rolled up and fit nicely back into our backpacks, so we just took them with us. 

We had another great breakfast; with one large exception...  Brave Miss M, always willing to try interesting new things, picked up a big pink thing labeled "cod roe."  It looked like a piece of raw fish, which she has enjoyed many times, so she grabbed her chop sticks and plopped the whole thing into her mouth.  It immediately became obvious that this was not normal raw fish...  It was, in fact, the sack of fish eggs, straight from the fish, and had, I hear, an EXTREMELY strong flavor.  We reckon that you're supposed to squeeze just a few eggs on other foods, to add a hint of taste.  Not just eat the whole thing in one go.  B and I are looking at Miss M gagging, and I'm thinking "There's no where for her to spit it out or throw up!  What are we going to do??!?!"  So I told her to hurry and swallow it and I would give her my orange juice, my water, whatever, and she could eat however many pastries she wanted, just PLEASE don't throw up!  And she got it down.  It was pretty impressive.  B thought he would try it, I have no earthly idea why, and he said it was about the most awful thing he'd ever had in his mouth. 

I wanted to take some pictures to remember our lovely rooms. 

I really loved that they had local artwork on the walls, not just random meaningless abstracts.  I wouldn't mind some prints of these...

 Here's the hotel lobby.  We saw two of these huge, amazing arrangements while we stayed there.  They must cost a fortune.

We walked over to the station.  We left our backpacks in a locker there, 600 yen well spent I think!  Instead of riding the train one stop to catch a different train, we decided to walk, underground of course.  It was fantastic!  You hear "tunnel" and you think dark, narrow, and subterranean.  But here it means bright, well-designed, and full of shops, galleries, statues, and displays.  We found a forest of columns, all hung with more Ainu quilts! 

 A note about the Ainu:  They are indigenous native people from Northern Japan and the nearby Southern Russian islands.  The height of their civilization was from about 1400 to the early 1700s.  But then they were conquered by the Japanese, oppressed, and made to culturally assimilate.  There was a cultural revival in the 1980s and 1990s.  Here is a link to a brief history from the Ainu Museum.

 These quilts are just so beautiful.  I read some articles here, and especially here about Ainu clothing and needlework. 

 From the second article:  'The patterns are geometric, but organic in nature, with a strong sense of movement and emotion, with dynamic swirls, s-curves, lozenges and ovals, all of which provided with barbs to symbolically prevent evil from entering the body of the wearer. "

 Since I am, unfortunately, illiterate, I can't tell who made these quilts, and if they are from the cultural revival in the late 20th century or if they are older.  Or if they are cut from clothing, or made and meant to be quilts.  But I think they are striking and lovely!

 The girls took pictures of all the quilts, then I got some close ups.

Here is a shot of the tunnel between stations.  Not only were we warmer than if we were above ground, but we found a craft fair!  (About my favorite thing.  And cue huge eye roll by B...)  I only bought a few wee little things:  a chop stick rest carved out of beautiful burl wood, and some hand sewn and quilted pouches to put in the girls' Easter baskets.  The quilting lady and I had a bit of a friendly fight over the money.  She said I didn't need to pay the extra 40 or whatever yen, and I, thinking her stuff was way underpriced as it was, tried to pay it anyway.  Of course she wouldn't let me, and there was much bowing and smiling.  She was very nice. 

 Everyone had to wait for me while I did my craft fair looking...

 The girls like to look for the subway train to appear.

 We rode the same train as on our ski trip, and got off at Maruyama Park to see the Hokkaido Shrine.

 The walk through the snowy park was beautiful.

 We stopped at, I think, Hotaki Shrine, on the way to the big shrine.  It looked shiny new.

Here is the Hokkaido Shrine.

While we waited for my goshuin stamp, we wandered around inside some of the back room areas.  They had a display of these paper people.

 They were so pretty and intricate.

 We were supposed to go to a nearby zoo, but we all came to the conclusion that we would rather get to the airport early, look around the mall and everything there, then have more time to rest.  I think we were all getting a bit tired...

 We walked back to the train station, and finally found an un-snowy cover.

The train on the way back into downtown Sapporo was very straight, you could see every hill and bump we went over looking up through the cars.

 Back in Sapporo Station, we stopped to take a last look at this beautiful carved statue of an Ainu elder. 

 From what we could gather from the sign, he is doing a dance.

 Isn't it amazing?  Here is a photo I found for comparison: 


We got on the airport train.  I was thinking on the ride out, through the snowy woods, how much I have missed snow.  It has been forever since I have lived in a place where you have the opportunity to look out on or walk through snowy landscapes.  I think there is a different kind of peace that comes when you watch snow falling, and piling up.  I feel like the flakes also fall inside, and make fall with them any anxieties or fears you may have.  Snow is still.  How have I been functioning without that for so long? 

 Back at the airport we went to the same food court we enjoyed on the incoming trip.  This is a girl who is so obsessed with reading Harry Potter, that she can barely eat her ramen.

 The airport had a stamp rally, so we used our extra time to wander around collecting stamps.  We came across a chocolate factory...

 Some sort of theme park in honor of this creature that we didn't know anything about but was quite cute...

 And much other interesting stuff.  The prizes the girls got for their stamps were quite nice.  Miss A chose an origami plane book.  Miss M chose a large notebook.  Miss R got a plane pull back toy.

Now, about mascots.  I mentioned earlier about the clock tower guy.  Another of Hokkaido's mascots  is the melon bear.  Here is an article about this, um, creature. 


This is from that article:
The city of Yubari in Hokkaido is renowned for its eponymous melons, a pair of which recently sold for 1.5 million yen at auction.  (Note:  I didn't taste one, because I don't like melons of any sort, but they look remarkably identical to canteloupe melon...)
So you have this scary bear with a melon stuck on his head.  I found these little bell key chain things at one of the airport shops.  It's hard to see, but they have the bear eating an animal, with the animal's tail in his mouth, and the head being pooped out the bear's tail end.  And if you think that takes the cake for Japanese mascot weirdness, than hold on.  You're no where close.  

This, my friends, is Marimokkori.

I will give you wikipedia's description:  Marimokkori (まりもっこり) is a character popularized in Hokkaidō, Japan. Much like the Tamagotchi, the name "Marimokkori" is a portmanteau: marimo is the word for the green algae clusters that grow in some of Hokkaidō's lakes, while mokkori, literally "bulge", is a Japanese slang term for an erection.

Marimokkori's fame comes through merchandising, with a number of various souvenirs being sold in Hokkaidō and throughout Japan.

Go ahead and do an image search for that if you like...

So there you go.  You have the Japanese love of clever word play, and the Japanese love of weird mascots, and you get this.  On top of that, B introduced me to some catchy 80s song called "Marimo," and made up crazy alternate lyrics, and now I permanently have that running around in my head.  It's great.  The marimo, incidentally, are totally cute.  I don't know why they didn't just stick with them...

 

We boarded our flight and said goodbye to Hokkaido.  I must go back!  I want to see it in all its seasons.

We had a beautiful sunset as we took off.

By the time we got back to Haneda airport and took the train back to Yokosuka, we were beat.  Thank Heaven for our wonderful friend N.  When I asked, she came and picked us up in her car at the station, to save us the walk back.  It was wonderful.

All in all, we really loved our trip.  B noticed that his Japanese got exponentially better in the few days we were there.  He thinks it was because, unlike around our American base, we only heard Japanese.  If for some reason we ever move back to this country, I would like to try living up there.