For our last day in Sapporo, we decided to stick close for breakfast and have pancakes in a restaurant below our hotel. (“Below” in this case means that the front desk for our hotel was on the 5th floor, and the restaurant was at street level.)
While waiting for our food to arrive, we watched a number of confused patrons ask directions to the bathroom, all of whom were directed here:
Can you spot the bathroom door in this picture? If you zoom in, you’ll see the shelf is a bit worn below the flour bin – you push there to move the bookshelf aside to access the washroom. Which is pretty cool.
What else is cool is that since we were last in Japan, the message seems to have been received that 外国人 such as ourselves would prefer to have pancakes available for breakfast, and not just as an afternoon snack. As such, unlike our last visit, we were able to get supper fluffy soufflé pancakes for the first meal of the day. So we did.
Since this WAS our last day, we had to check out of our room and take our suitcases to a coin locker in the train station until it was time to catch our bus at 1:40. Fortunately, we travel pretty light – neither of us checked a bag at all during the trip except for the flight home, so our total encumbrance was two carry on-sized bags and two backpacks.
Baggage stowed, we went to see what else there was to see, and found a cool museum in the “Red Brick Building” a former government office. It had a lot of neat exhibits about the various cities in Hokkaido, the history of the province, Japan’s ongoing argument with Russia about who owns the four islands between Hokkaido and the Kurils, (spoiler, Japan thinks they do and Russia thinks they do) and other historical stuff.
None of which we were allowed to photograph, so we didn’t.
In particular, there was a really interesting display about the indigenous Ainu culture on the island, which did a really quease-inducing job of tapdancing around the way they’ve been treated over time by the government. Eerily reminiscent of similar whitewashing attempts in, oh, I don’t know – the US. And Canada.
Ergh.
It was raining, so we wandered back down into the underground mall to look for lunch. We took a number at a conveyor belt sushi restaurant, and then realized that number was 82. Now serving? 36.
We spent an anxious hour watching the clock tick forward to the time we absolutely, positively, COULD NOT wait any longer to catch our bus while the “now serving” number clicked agonizingly slowly upwards. We were finally seated at 1:05, with our bus departure at 1:40. The only thing that saved us was the fact that while Leigh stayed in line, I had gone and grabbed our bags from the lockers.
And then we just shoved sushi into our faces WAY too fast to properly enjoy it. Pity – it was damn good sushi.
We made it to our bus stop just as the bus was pulling up, and were unceremoniously hurled on board to make our trip.
Where were we going? Noboribetsu, a small onsen (hot spring) town, full of ryokan (traditional inns), kanketsusen (geysers), and combini. (convenience stores)
To be fair, everywhere in Japan is full of combini.
The road up the hill from the main highway to Noboribetsu features this imposing apparition:
The text directly under him says “welcome,” but…
On arriving at our ryokan, we checked in, were issued our yukata, and then went for a walk to check out the town. We opted NOT to do so in the yukata.
Which WAS an interesting decision to make. After all – these onsen are inns for tourists. Primarily Japanese tourists, but tourists nonetheless, and we WERE tourists. And we saw lots of hotel guests who WERE walking the streets in yukata. So I think it’s a difficult line to locate in terms of being appropriative vs. respectful.
What WASN’T difficult to determine was that it was way too hot for long sleeves. We wore the yukata to dinner, hopefully that’s good enough.
We found this square with painted clubs to represent the different demons that populate the valley.
And soon it was time to return to our hotel for dinner. One of the things a traditional ryokan stay is know for is a multicourse kaiseki meal. These meals always contain certain types of courses in a set order – appetizers, steamed dishes, grilled dishes, etc. Also, while you’re stuffing yourself, they have time to sneak into your room and lay out the futons.
The ryokan meal we had last time we were in Japan was a real highlight, and this one did NOT disappoint.
There was also dessert, but we had to forget to photograph SOMETHING, didn’t we?
After dinner, we went back out again to see what the town was like at night, and I’m glad we did, because the geyser in the square we visited earlier was now erupting. Under the bridge someone had built over it, because that can’t possibly cause a problem, right?
It was too dark to get a good picture of the geyser itself, but even that wouldn’t convey the most interesting thing which was the NOISE. Apparently every three hours this thing makes a noise like putting a load of bowling balls in a cement mixer. Wild.
Since we can’t easily post our OWN video, here’s a link to someone else’s.
And with that, it was time for futon.
