Daisetsuzan

Fall`s come to Hokkaido. There`s that undercurrent of Fall excitement that only comes when the oppressive Summer humidity finally rolls away like some fat bully finished steam-rolling us all and we can finally breath again. The crispness and the cool and the electric blue sky and the smell of leaves all point to Fall. But we`re discovering that in Hokkaido there are heretofore never experienced Fall happenings that welcome the season. Strange and wonderful things pop up at every turn. Like the happy discovery that there is a national holiday on the Equinox - brilliant. And in the farmer`s market where we always buy our produce the price of fruit has plummeted (pinch me, I`m dreaming!), pumpkins and squashes fill the floor space, and there are beautiful, common vegetables that are uncommonly purple. I`d never seen a purple bell pepper before, but there it was, glowingly eggplant-purple in it`s basket as if nothing was wonderful about it at all. As if bell peppers had always been purple in the Fall. Potatoes too. I had seen purple potatoes, but not this purple. They have the usual purple veggies like cabbage and onions, eggplants. But there`s also purple cauliflower, purple asparagus, purple daikon like radishes and even little purple chili peppers. Our meals have been particularly beautiful recently, and Brian made the prettiest kimchi from the purple radishes.

There`ve also been a few small thanks-giving festivals to welcome the harvest season, and the salmon running season. We went to this little Ainu ceremony by the Toyohira River near our house a couple of weekends ago. To be perfectly honest, it was rather boring, even for culture vultures like us. But the 200 yen massive chunks of delicious grilled salmon were well worth it.

Last week there were two national holidays, one on Monday and one on Thursday, so Brian and I took the Tuesday and Wednesday off for a 6 day vacation to do some hiking. The onset of Fall in Hokaido means the near end of the backpacking season for a warm weather hiker like myself, and we`re not geared out enough to deal with snow and serious cold, both of which Hokkaido certainly gets. So we headed out to Asahikawa planning to do the "Daisetsuzan Grand Traverse" as lined out in the Lonely Planet.

We`d brought all our gear from home, but we still had to outfit a bit. We`d been using the Steripen for water purification in the States, but in Hokkaido there`s a nasty killer called Echinococcus (not bacterial, despite the name). This is a type of tape worm that gets in the water from fox feces, and being a worm/egg/larvae UV light and chemical treatments won`t kill it. So we finally bought a real water filter. Brian`s sleeping bag is only a 35 F bag so he got a liner as well. As we were told by pretty much anyone that we mentioned this trip to, people die in Daisetsuzan all the time, and it`s usually from exposure. No matter the time of year, have surviving hypothermia in mind when packing for this trip. We also bought maps, of course.

Choosing hiking food was a breeze in Japanese supermarkets because there are a lot of dried things available. We got noodles and dried sauce mixes, freeze dried tofu (which rehydrates most deliciously), gorp, oatmeal (with instant custard mix as a calorie booster), ramen, and CalorieMates.

We left Sapporo on a Friday night and took a bus from Sapporo Station to Asahikawa (2 hours, 2,000 Y one way) where we stayed with Megan. The next morning we took a bus from Asahikawa station to Asahidake, but because of bus times the earliest you can get there is around 10:45 - 11 AM and it gets dark around 5:45 in September in Hokkaido, so if we had that to do over again we`d take the bus out to Asahidake the night before and stay there in order to get going earlier. As it was, we were hiking by 11. There`s a gondola that goes half way up Asahidake that saves about an hour and a half (by our pace) hike up rather rotten board walks and poorly graded trails. But the woods and wetland there are beautiful and you won`t otherwise see many trees on this trip as the rest of it is above treeline.

Asahidake is the tallest peak in Hokkaido, and it`s a seriously tough climb. Extremely steep, almost non-existent switchbacks, and loose, shaley footing make the going tough. But the views are gorgeous and the camaraderie of the Japanese hikers is both energising and hilarious. Most are out for a day hike and are surprised to see hikers with large packs and especially foreign ones. Some highlights were an extremely animated woman gesturing to us about how windy and cold it was up top (many people were worried about us being warm enough as we sweated our way up the slope, but we had plenty of layers in our packs), a little boy who saw us, said hello very boldly, and then ran away screaming that we were cute, and a woman who offered to take our picture and then made sure she got one on her camera as well. We were photographed multiple times in fact. A rare breed of wildlife on the slopes of Asahidake were we.

The climb from bottom to top took nearly 5 hours, so we deviated from the L.P. trek and camped at the first campsite so as not to hike the last hour and a half in the dark. I do not recommend any hiking in the dark in Japan. The trails are not well maintained, often extremely narrow, washed out, steep, and overgrown. Especially on that trek many of the trails hug a cliff edge or follow a knife-edge ridge. Our last day we hiked for over an hour IN a river. The trail WAS the river and the river was the trail. I may or may not have cursed Japanese trails a time or two at that point.

Given our first deviation and the forecast for the next few days (freezing temperatures, rain, and then snow with gale force winds) we remade our plans that night. We decided we wouldn`t be ok if we got wet on the rainy, freezing day, had to set up camp that night and then had to hike in freezing, blustering snow the next day. We decided to hike all the northern half of the park and save the southern half for next season. We also decided to finish on the fourth day instead of doing 5 days to avoid the blizzardy conditions. That allowed us this gorgeous day of pack-less hiking in lovely weather. And this fox spotting!



This turned out to be a very wise decision. Though the distances in the LP outlined trek aren`t very long, the going is NOT easy. We`d hiked half of the Appalachian Trail, so we`re not experts or anything but we`ve got some legitimate experience, and I can confidently say that I`ve never seen such tough trails. They`re steep, very overgrown where there`s growth, totally exposed when there`s none, rocky, and not well marked. And the weather is tough. As one man (rather melodramatically) told us, "when things are good in Daisetsuzan, it`s beautiful, when they`re bad, it`s DEADLY!!!!!!!!MUAHHAHAHA!!!". Not to scare anyone off. The place is terribly gorgeous, and once you get past the first couple of huts, solitude abounds. Did I mention the stars? But overnight trips there should be planned with due consideration. Here`s a shot of one of the huts we stayed in - much warmer than our 3 season tent.

The hike was beautiful, and though not exactly what we`d planned, it was a great success. Our last day it was rainy, freezing, and the wind was gusting hard enough that I came close to being pushed down more than a few times. All that made the 2 hour soak in the hot healing onsen waters that much more wonderful. In the evening we hopped the bus back to Asahikawa and from there bussed back to Sapporo again. Then we had two lovely days to clean up our stuff and recover our legs before just a Friday at school.

Friday night we spent with Rob, Brandon, and Tamon at the Liebspiece Beer Club delicious all you can drink beer night. Delicious and hilarious, there`s a Japanese man forever in liderhosen, a group singing of some German prost song, and what must be the best and cheapest beer in Hokkaido. It inspired me to make some spicy mustard on Sunday with the seeds we brought from home.


The weekend was slow and relaxing. Saturday we cruised over to the Autumn Festival in Odori Park to sample some Japanese specialties, like this sea urchin.

Not bad, sort of sweet and fatty and oceany, but that`s probably the last time I`ll buy one of those. It`s better pre-cleaned in my sushi.

Sunday we did some painting and mustard making. And now somehow it`s Thursday again. Tomorrow is my welcome enkai (drinking party) with my base school, so I`m looking forward to being buried in mountains of sushi and welcoming drinks. And Saturday we`re heading to Niseko for a bike ride to raise money for education in Cambodia. Biking, exploring, and helping the kids? What more could you ask for.

Obviously I have lots of time on my hands today. That`s because it`s a holiday for the students, but not for the teachers, so I`m warming my desk. Warming my desk with me is this super awesome robot dinosaur mug filled with strange and not quite wonderful instant/drip coffee.

And the rest of the Daisetsuzan photos.

Out East on the island: Lake Akan

As time goes on in Japan we`re finding ourselves with lots of free time at work. It`s going to take creativity and go-getter-ship to make ourselves feel more useful, but I`ve got a bag of tricks to pull from. Even though the work load is less than challenging, my relationships with my schools are feeling more and more homey and happy.



Outside of school we`ve been dedicating ourselves to acquiring cell phones (we`re so connected now!) and soaking up summer before the half-year long winter sets in. In fact, it`s been feeling like Fall ever since this weekend. I`m tentatively loving it. Fall`s my favorite season, but I`m scared the second I rejoice about it a blizzard will sweep in and crush Fall into Winter.



Last weekend we took an end of Summer trip to explore the Eastern side of Hokkaido at the Eastern Welcome Party for JETs. We rented a van with 5 other Sappsters (all rental negotiations thanks to Crystal) and Brian drove us out to Lake Akan. We had a tough time with the navigation system and a side trip to pick up tents; none of us had ever driven in Japan before so it was a new sort of adventure for everyone, but despite all the obstacles we arrived, still smiling, around 3 AM to the campgrounds.



The next morning June caught us as we were waking up and invited us on a hike to the top of a volcano that overlooks the lake. We`d been eyeing that walk in the Lonely Planet, so we were stoked to have somebody with a better idea of how to make it happen around to make it happen.
We picked up another happy camper in the parking lot and by 9:30 June, Brian, Lechey and I were off.



We got going in the wrong direction at first, but it`s lucky we did because it was a gorgeous little walk with such beautiful things to see, like this scene on the forest floor.



And this place, that translates to "the blue place". Aptly named. The water is that color from the volcanic activity in the area. We encountered multiple signs about the dangers of hiking on an active volcano. And the dangers of bears. Next time I`ll get a shot of the bear signs. They`re really funny - bears with two paws up in full attack-to-obliterate position and massive I`m-gonna-eat-your-face-off, fanged mouths. Every Japanese hiker we passed had a bear bell, though I`m not sure how much bears like the sulfur-fume-coated volcanic peaks where most of the hike took place.

It was a pretty tough hike up the steep sides of the volcano. We did a loop that took us up one side and down the other. It was a relentless climb followed by a relentless descent, but well worth it. The forests were lovely, and once they petered out the views were stunning. It was a perfect day for a hike, even though a typhoon had been on the forecast. In my mind that day marked the beginning of Fall in Hokkaido. But in reality there`s actually a national holiday to mark the Autumnal Equinox (brilliant Japan!), on which I hope to find myself hiking again.



This was our first glimpse of the crater (though we smelt it a long way off).

The loose footing made the climb tougher, but the perfect weather, lovely temperature, and amazing views made it that much more rewarding. The crater was massive on this volcano.

Here`s a little panoramic video to give you a better idea of the views.

At the top we met Alan and Shu, other JETs from Sapporo, who`d climbed up from another route. We had lunch together at the summit before trying to avoid falling off the mountain side together on the somewhat treacherous way down. The hike took most of the day, and at the end we soaked away the stiffness in a beautiful little rustic onsen (public bath with natural hot spring water) at the bottom.

Though Brian and I are used to bath houses from being in Korea, this one had some unexpected surprises. Most notably, the outside portion, which is still separated by sex, was not fully separated. One of the screens that separated the two was missing, or never meant to have been there, but from the angle at which I was heading out it looked as though it were blocked off. So I was quite surprised to walk out, look to my right, and see there a man sitting as nakedly as I was standing. Surprise!

Back at the campground more people had arrived and Simon was cooking up a massive, delicious, falafel filled dinner for everyone. It got nice and chilly, but what with the party and the hot foot onsen we hardly noticed.

Sunday we had just enough time to cruise around the tacky Ainu village before driving back to Sapporo. The Ainus are the indigenous people of Hokkaido, but like most indigenous people whose lands were settled by outsiders... the history is pretty bleak. But in 2008 (yes really, only 2 years ago) they were officially recognized as indigenous people of Japan! Check them out on wikipedia. This town is like Cherokee, NC, but not quite so high a level of touristy development. Close though. Disturbingly close.

We got to see some Ainu carvings and marimo (the ball-shaped algae for which the lake is famous) and then got on our long way back. Here`s Marimokkori, the personified marimo with an erection that is one of Hokkaido`s mascots.

It`s a play on words that combines marimo with mokkori, which according to my dictionary is a

"bulge in a pocket or clothing" or "`tent` an erection makes against pants or bedsheets". Somehow, and blessedly, this is perfectly acceptable as a mascot for the island, which leads to hillarious marimokkori dolls, often with some function to it`s mokkori. For example, on one doll you pull it`s bulge and it vibrates. Another you push it`s bulge and the eyes change from 00 to ><>

I love Japan.

Here are the rest of the photos from the weekend.