Happy onsen end

I decided to treat myself to some onsen baths at the final stop of my trip across Japan. I went to Tazawa-ko which is situated in Akita prefecture in Northern Honshu, offers some nice Onsen (hot springs) and has a direct shinkansen connection to Tokyo.
I found a lovely "jazz hotel" named "That sounds good". It's located at Tazawa-ko's lake which is the deepest in Japan and its owners are huge jazz fans. Jazz music is played all day and they have all the equipment to hold ad hoc jazz concerts which they occasionaly do. Pretty rooms, excellent food and an onsen in the house with jazz music are compelling reasons to stay there. How nice to have a late night bath in the onsen listening to some jazz music!
The lake is really nice to take some walks or you could rent a bike too. A cafe at the lake has delicious unusual pizza with beer dough.I visited an onsen in the mountains as well. An hours walk through the forrest with great views gets you there from the last bus stop. The water is turquoise green, everything in the bath is wooden and the location in the mountain forrest is just divine. Tazawa-ko made just a perfectly relaxing final part of the 6-weeks trip.

From prison to Olympia town

My last two stops in Hokkaido were Abashiri in the West and the prefecture's capital Sapporo.
Abashiri to Japanese is above all known for its prison. The area can get really cold in winter and it used to be sort of Japan's version of sending people to Siberia. The most hardened criminals would be sent there to endure very cold winters in grim and cold prison cells. The prison is still there, but has gotten a bit more accomodating. I visited the prison museum which shows artifacts from the former prison and tells some inhabitants' stories. Unfortunately only some information was given in very poor English. I also visited the very attractive "Museum of Northern people" which tells the story of Hokkaido's indigenous people, the Ainu and compares it to the culture of other Northern people.
Sapporo is Japan's fifth biggest city and was hosting the Olympic winter games in 1972. So I went to see the ski jump area and the nearby Olympics museum. The view over Sapporo from the ski jump's top is just amazing. Scary to look down and imagine you had to ski down there... The museum is really fun and interactive, you can try out your winter sports skills in all sorts of simulators from ski jumping to figure skating to ice hockey. I found out that I'd make a decent speed skater or ice hockey goalie, but a lousy ski jumper. Alright then, I'll adapt my career plans accordingly! :-)

Lavender fields

Furano is the geographical center of Hokkaido and is well-known for its lavender fields in summer. The region draws a lot of wanna-be-artists (and real ones I guess) who are coming here for drawing the fields with some impressive mountain scenery in the background. Asahi-dake is Hokkaido's highest mountain and the whole area is a national park too.
I stayed in a lovely youth hostel in Furano which is a farm too, so sort of a farm-stay. A young family runs the hostel and for breakfast and dinner they serve home produced vegetables and fruit, homemade jam, etc. Really homely place and the couple had some of the most egalitarian work division I've come across which was nice to see. Father also taking care of the baby and caring it around on his back. I shared my room with 3 Japanese girls and got to speak a lot.
The weather was not that great, but I still decided to go for a hike on nearby Tokachidake. It was a really lovely view of the colored autumn leaves around, despite being really cloudy and a bit cold. I just thought of the bears that are living around there which made me feel a bit uncomfortable during the hike (repeating the mantra "throw yourself on the floor" to myself). When I was back at the bus stop I would have had to wait for almost 3 hours for the next bus and it was cold too, so I decided starting to walk down. Luckily an old man in his oldtimer car picked me up. We drove at about 40 km/h, but had a good chat in Japanese and he insisted on driving me right to the youth hostel's door.
I concluded the day with a visit to the pretty touristy lavender farm Tomita. The lavender is not blooming that time of the year of course, but they had some other flowers on the fields. And delicious lavender-flavoured ice-cream :-)

The island of eternal craziness

The reason for travelling to the very North of Japan had actually not been Wakkanai, but a small island next to it, Rebun-tō. It's part of a small national park that also includes its bigger neighbour island Rishiri-tō. Rebun-tō is a hikers paradise and in summer it's covered with many rare flowers. These were some of the reasons why I wanted to go there, but also because I am an island-addict and because of it's famous youth hostel. I had heard of the youth hostels reputation from several Japanese, it really seems to be well-known across the country and is said to be one of the craziest places there is in Japan.
The ferry ride from Wakkanai takes 2 hours and the island does not look that spectacular when you arrive. It's neighbour Rishiri features a far higher volcanic peak and the flowers are getting scarce in September as well. At the ferry port a guy was standing waving a large flag like a madman. It looked like a cross between traditional Swiss flag waving and "One flew over the cookoo's nest"... So I figured he should be a representative of the said hostel. He threw my luggage into the hostel's van and then gave me a map and told me to walk there, since they would only drive people who were totally unable to walk. Fine with me... Nice 1-hour walk over the hills. The hostel was tucked into a corner of the cliffs on the West coast, very scenic location. The house is an old fishing building and the only neigbouring building is a small hut with a café inside.
I was a bit tired, not from the walk, but from accumulated lack of sleep, so I decided to have a short nap. This was soon brutally interupted by a guy screaming some incomprehensible stuff over the loudspeakers that were placed allover the house. And if I say "scream" I mean it and with a harsh, rough voice. I started to see where the "crazy" label came from...
Recognizing sleep was not an available option, I went downstairs to fill out the registration form. I got handed a list of the "house rules":

1. Momo-Îwa hostel is not in the standard Japanese time zone (the rest of the island is by the way), but +1/2 hour. So all times indicated are half an hour earlier in Standard Japanese time
2. Getting up is at 6 o'clock. Everybody who goes on a hike needs to get up at 5.10 (which would be 4.40)
3. Every evening at 5.30 a compulsory meeting is held to discuss plans for the next day
4. Later, at 7.30, the daily community meeting is held. Staff presents a varying program and guests are expected to participate
5. At 10.30 lights go out and everybody goes to bed
6. Alcohol is forbidden

Hm, this sounded a bit like a school camp with very early get up and bed times. Surprisingly though, about a third of the people staying at the hostel were clearly in their 40s or 50s. And talking to the other guests I found out that most of them had stayed in the hostel before, some would come back every year even. This place must have some kind of broad appeal obviously! The crazy shouting over the loudspeakers continued. At 5 o'clock it would announce that the meeting would be in half an hour. 5 minutes later it said the meeting was in 25 minutes and you should start getting prepared. And so on... So in the evening I attended the two meetings. The first was a quick overview of the planned hikes for the next day, you could either sign up for a 4 or 8 hour hike. They gave some information about the route, the weather forecast, etc.
The second meeting was more interesting. We were again repeatedly urged over the loudspeaker to participate. The show started off with 5 guys from hostel staff running in in diving suits, women's wear and other strange costumes and starting to perform a song. This was just the beginning of 2.5-hours of pretty disfunctional, but funny behaviour. We were singing a lot of songs, then learning some strange dances, the staff performed some pantomime and a quiz show on the islands flora. The prize for the quiz winners were vouchers for a free night at the hostel, a curry lunch or a cup of coffee at the nearby cafe all for 2009. The twist was that these vouchers were supersized and heavy or fragile and they have to be brought back in the exact same form in order to check in the prize... The whole show was really hilarious. It was also funny to see all these 40-something salarymen doing weird dancing and really enjoying it. One told me that he came here every year, but his wife didn't really approve and thought he was being immature :-).
10-minutes before bedtime, children's sleeping tunes were played over the loudspeaker and we all went to bed. Had to get up early enough anyway. By the way, early in the morning the staff also held a morning gymnastics session...
I had signed up for the 8-hour hike. We were driven to the North end of the island and then started our hike to the Southern end, about 30 km. The coast reminded me very much of the Irish West coast in Donegal. Strikingly beautiful, green and very windy. The hike was really enjoyable and in good company. Got to practise my Japanese a lot too! We made a few stops in between. Actually we even had to, the hostel required us to call them 3 times... There were the inevitable photo breaks as well of course to immortalise the group on pictures striking the typical V-sign. We also had a lunch break in a small village on the coast. Three snack stands were lined up for hikers there. I think the guy at the first stand quite pisses his competitors off. He immediately chatted us up and got us to sit down at his place, the others looking quite frustrated.
When we finally got back to the hostel a dancing and singing show was performed, the hostel staff standing on the roof, to welcome us back.
I really enjoyed my time on the island and the hostel was a major reason for that. Despite it being a crazy mix of a school camp, hippie community, military boot camp, madhouse, workshop for expressive singing and dancing and so on, it's a really heartwarming place, full of enthusiastic and fun people. Who knows, I might be back as well... In any case I will go to the big reunion party on October 18, at Tokyo's Shinjuku station.

The very North

From Osaka I took quite a jump towards the North. Well, "jump" is not the right word since I went there by train and obviously spent many hours on Shinkansen (bullet train) - in the best case - and other, slower trains. Well, I do like to travel by train, you get to see quite a bit of the landscape on the way and also it was great to study Japanese.

I travelled from Osaka to Morioka in Northern Honshu, then to Sapporo and spent a night in both places. And then a long journey of 6 hours to the very Northern end of Japan, Wakkanai. It's definitely worth travelling up there, although really far off. The landscape somewhat reminds of Siberia and it's very scarcely populated. It would be a good journey to do by car since it would make stops and side-trips much easier than the train that runs only about 3 times a day.

This Northern landscape really looks quite different from the rest of Japan. For nature lovers this is a true paradise and a rather unknown one as well. Domestic tourists do appreciate Hokkaido (despite the bears, which is surprising considering the risk-averseness of the average Japanese), but there are few travellers from abroad. Well, some Russians obviously visit Wakkanai and its surroundings, but these are mostly fishermen. It's enough to have most street signs in kyrillic as well and the city also offers quite a few booze-only stores (not usual elsewhere). And Wakkanai is the only place in Japan where I have seen quite a few Jieitai (Japanese self-defense force / army). Locals confirmed my suspicion that all of the above is correlated to the presence and vicinity of Russia...

Wakkanai is not that spectacular. A sleepy small town that lives from fishing and from being a the Northernmost point of Japan and a jump-off point to Rishiri-Rebun-National park. It was pretty, pretty cold as well, evenings get really chilly already in this place. The youth hostel, although nicely situated on a hill above the city, was not heated at all and I had to wear my jacket inside as well.

Here a "Thank you" to my friends who gave me the Jack Wolfskin voucher! This is definitely the best jacket I have ever owned so far. And it saves me from freezing to death in Hokkaido. The bight pink color might attract too much attention from the bears however, but that was my choice.

Japanese tv export

Whenever I switch on Japanese tv, chances are that I come accross a somewhat crazy game or quiz show. Candidates (and presenters') behaviour tends to be a little immature, giggly, strange - you name it. And usually they voluntarily make complete fools of themselves in front of the nation.

You may remember "Takeshi's castle", a popular Japanese tv export on German channel DSF. A sportsy game show with the goal to conquer "Takeshi's castle", a cardboard castle defended by Takeshi and his followers. On the way there the 100 starting participants had to overcome several strange obstacles. They were disguised as pinballs for example and an oversize was rolled down the hill towards them. Those who fell would be eliminated. Another popular obstacle was a pond full of mud crossed by a moving bridge from which most contestants would fall off. Takeshi, the show's father, by the way, is not some infantile unknown, but the acclaimed film director (e.g. Hana-Bi), actor and lecturer at Tokyo's University for Fine Arts, Takeshi Kitano.

One of the later successful Japanese tv export is "Human Tetris". The show has been bought by American, British and Swedish tv channels among others. The game is a life-size Tetris game with human game figures. A wall with cut out shapes is moving towards the candidate(s) and they have to slide through the provided holes. If they fail, they fall into a pool. Watch and enjoy some scenes from the show on YouTube:

http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=592BJSEP-ZU

I wonder why the Japanese have such a taste for funny tv shows. Is it the need to compensate for the not-so-funny work life they are confronted with?

Ōsaka

After visiting Kansai's cultural center, I paid its economic center a visit. Ōsaka is not famed for its touristic appeal, but I had met some "natives" along the way whom I wanted to visit and also it offers some good museums. It's the second biggest city in Japan, with a population of about 2.5, so despite being a big city it's a dwarf version of Tokyo.

The first evening I met a guy I had met in Okinawa. He first took me to a Takoyaki shop to taste this local staple. Takoyaki are fried squid balls and it is pretty delicious. Ōsaka by the way also has a special version of my of my almost favourite dish, Okonomiyaki. We walked around the neon lit streets of central Ōsaka. Restaurants, game parlours, shopping arcades, etc. whereever you see. A lot of very trendy shops line the street of "Amerika miura" (American village) and its adjacent streets. You see that reflected in people's dress. While the Japanese are very fashionable in general, this is even more pronounced in big cities like this. Very avant-garde and you feel tempted to spend a lot of money... Just the thought of my already too heavy luggage made me step back and think twice :-).

The next day I visited some of the museums. Ōsaka's aquarium features a giant whale shark. I had wanted to see some other aquariums in Japan, but somehow never got around to doing it. This one was really nice, you could walk in tunnels with fish all around you. And the tank with the whale shark and several mantas was just huge. Of course the Japanese visitors were screaming "kawaii" (cute) non-stop (this word for sure is the most over-used in this country!). But some people are still being a bit reasonable. There was a family watching the seals and they kept repeating "kawaii, kawaii". Then the father said: " Well, actually they are fighting and biting each other, that's not so "kawaii"". Made me applaud almost... This word can get on your nerves at times, because everything is "kawaii" here.

Situated right next to the aquarium is the "Santori" museum which features an excellent art collection and an IMAX cinema, I visited both of them as well. "Santori" by the way always reminds me of the film "Lost in Translation". Bill Murray's character in the film is in Japan to do a commercial for "Santori whiskey" and he has to drink the stuff over and over again, struggling to look cheerful.

The museum I was most interested in was the "Human Rights Museum". It talks about human rights in Japan and the various groups whose human rights have been violated in the past or present. There are two domestic ethnic groups, the Ainu (from Hokkaido) and the Okinawans who have been forcedly "japanized" and whose culture was marginalized for a long time. These days there are increased efforts to preserve their culture and language. Another group are the "buraku", the lowest caste (Japan used to have a caste system) who were tasked to bury the dead or produce leather. They were considered "unclean" and discrimination has long remained even after the caste system was abolished, e.g. they were discriminated against on the labour market. A special exhibition talks about the Korean population in Japan. Many Koreans either voluntarily emigrated to Japan or were brought here as slave labourers during Japanese occupation of Korea. They continue to be disadvantaged on the labour market until today. The exhibition talked about other groups as well such as disabled people, women, day labourers, etc. The museum features a good introductory part that hints at Japanese society's desire to streamline lifestyle and objectives and the related tendency to marginalize outsiders that do not fit into the common lifestyle model. The old Japanese saying goes: "The nail that stands out gets quickly hammered down".