The Tourist and the Stuffed Animal

---

Left Hakodate in excellent spirits, hoping to reach Biei and then to access the Daisetsuzan National Park (see last journal entry). For this I had to change shinkanzen at Sapporo and Asahikawa, in eight hours of train travel (there's a lot of land up here).

The scenery is quite wonderful - deep fir woods with patches of the trees in autumn umbers of pale yellow and others of vivid green - with mountains at the edge of everything. I suppose that is what made me want to go on from Hakodate, the range of mountains which seemed to begin lumbering from the southern tip of Hokkaido (the name of this island) to the north.

Also, there's some folklore that Japan, which cartographically does suggest it, is actually a quiescent dragon, and Hokkaido its head. So, roughly, with that thinking, the largest peak on the island, Asahidake, in the centre of Daisetsuzan, would be its eye.

All well and good, I was primed. I arrived at Asahikawa at 5:30 pm on Friday night and had had no reply from Biei about staying there for the night, so I booked the Terminal Hotel (they offer a discount rate if you hold a Japan Rail pass). The city itself is was very cold, though, when I arrived, it was around 8 degrees Celsius, which was to be the warmest it would be all weekend.

Friday night I collapsed on my hotel bed, drank sake, read Donne poetry, used Facebook, and messed about on my wordprocessor. I slept through my 7:30 am wake-up call (the bus to Daisetsuzan leaves at 9:10 am and takes two hours to get there). So I wrote Saturday off, reading Huysmans' 'The Damned', annoying my friends on Facebook, and taking strolls around the city.

I fell into a bit of a detached mood, slightly melancholic, I suppose. I think that travel does excite the mind and captivate the senses so much that when things begin to quiet, a mental recession knocks on the door. Or perhaps it was the piped music which seems pervasive in Asahikawa, with a rainbow theme ('The Rainbow Connection' and 'Somewhere over the Rainbow' are bell jar tunes) floating over the long, straight arcade of a shopping mall in the centre of the city. I will say that they play something which sounds more like 'Sailor Moon' in the supermarket.

Perhaps the staff at the hotel had noticed for, on Saturday afternoon, a fluffy, soft toy Kangaroo had appeared on the hotel counter. To be fair, Asahikawa has a famous zoo, and there are other fluffy toys in the room at large, but they had actually placed it there, in the centre of the desk. As I was the only Westerner in the hotel, it drew something of a bizarre smile from me; being so gracious but, yet, so cute. I haven't had to provide my room number when asking for my key, since the 'roo appeared.

Anyway, Saturday was me reading a great deal and bumping into another episode of insomnia in the night. Still, regardless of having not slept very much at all, Sunday morning saw me waiting for the bus to Mt. Asahidake. It was 2 degrees Celsius in the morning, and, perhaps because of my Gaijin luck, it was raining a little. Still, I had come all this way just to make it to the park, so I climbed onto the coach when it arrived, blurting out 'Asahidake? Hai, hai! But ... Asahidake ... right?' (There is less written English up here than in Tokyo).

Grey day, sleep deprived mood, but as we left the city and began to ascend into the countryside, I saw that it had been snowing! The branches of the trees were laden with a snowfall and all became quite picturesque. I settled into the 2 hour ride, listened to mp3s, and dozed, dreaming of onsen (volcanically heated rock pools) steaming in the craggy rock peaks after a long and energetic walk through some mountainous forest. I enjoy going up mountains, who doesn't? And also remembered my trip up Mt. Titlus in Lucern, Switzerland, 2004.

No luck this time; or rather it might be the Gaijin element once more. Alighting, at the very top of the road, I found a skiing resort and a desolate tourist centre, full of skiers running around wearing thermals and all sorts of appropriate gear. It was absolutely freezing. I was wearing three heavy layers, but I wasn't prepared for this sort of weather. Walking about to find the tourist centre meant that I almost slipped on some black ice upon a road; well, I did slip, and a minor fun-ride of flailing arms and erratic balancing ensued. Inside the empty building I found a crew of Japanese workers repairing the cable car. They explained it was being repaired on Sunday, and I could walk up to the top of the mountain in 2 hours.

Ah, well, defeated, but at least I know that I'm a tourist. Perhaps the dragon didn't want me there. At any rate, aware that if I missed the bus which had carried me, I would have to wait another 4 or 5 hours for the next, I quickly found it again. The driver looked at me quizzically and opened the doors. 'Asahikawa? Hai, hai ... Asahikawa Station right?'

Still, at least I tried. I'm heading back to Tokyo on Monday, to revive my spirits with Benjamin Tupman, before heading to picturesque Nagano, referred to as the 'Roof of Japan', where I may lay sight upon a 'false image of buddha' (a copy of a statue which is too sacred for even the Emperor to view) on a holy mountain.

But, the weekends are for Tokyo now. Enough of the woodsman for me. And I have a couple of these great little sake jars for tonight.

Ever the tourist,
N.

---