I AWOKE IN THE HOTEL
I’d set my alarm for 8AM as the checkout was at 9. I had a quick shower and packed before making my bed and setting out the door. I don’t know why I made the bed and tidied, because I rarely do that in my own room, maybe the country’s courteousness was rubbing off on me. Either way, I dropped my card off at the lobby, and went out the back to my unsecured bike, which was still where I left it the night before.
Ah, Japan.
I chatted to one of the locals for a minute, he asked where I was headed and if I would consider staying in Hakodate for a couple more days. Apparently the festival was to continue, and today was the day of the Squid Dance.
Ah, Japan.
Unfortunately if I were to keep time I’d have to set off for the earliest ferry, so I said thanks and good bye then headed off towards the Hakodate Ferry port, and to brunch.
(It was at this point in writing that I neglected this blog for about six months, maybe more. I’ve edited the photos and I’m reminded as to why. I was trying to think up something about the Ferry to write about, but really, it was absolutely boring. It was only a few hours to cross the ocean to the main island and reach Aomori, but trying to think in advance about what I could say just sapped my brain. So I left it. Here I am almost a year after the trip writing about what happened, and unlike most information in my head the memory is still somewhat fresh. You could hook a projector up and I’d be able to daydream the whole thing back to you. So, I’m picking it up from here. Let’s start with the bike ride to the Port.)
The weather was perfect. Big, blue skies and nary a cloud to be seen. The sun was beating down, sure, but the breeze from the sea was phenomenal and I even got a slight tailwind as I navigated through the town and took a slight left on to the main road which would take me all the way to the port.
It was around this time I started to see some warning signs along the street. I’d kind of noticed them before, but they were becoming more consistent. The signs were warning me of Tsunami, although I imagined that in the event of a Tsunami I’d probably know about it before I read a sign warning me of the height of sea level I’d need to be cautious of.
Still, unnerved I continued on.
The ride through Hakodate was a little different to some of the earlier towns. The sidewalks seemed to roll flush with the intersections more often, and there were less of the scary grates on the side of the road so I was pretty happy with how much progress I was making and the ride wasn’t as frustrating as earlier. Powering on was making me hungry though, so I was looking for a place to eat.
I had heard of a place called “MOS Burger” from some friends who had visited before, and I spotted one on the other side of the road, but instead of stopping and crossing I decided to power on and grab something if it popped up on my left instead. It wasn’t long before I encountered “Lucky Pierrot”.
There’s no photo I could have taken to do this place justice. It’s really crazy. Lucky Pierrot, or “Lucky’s” is meant to be an American 50–60's themed Rock ‘n’ Roll diner. Or at least this one is. Next to it was a carpark/garage/wrecking yard, which added more to the charm of the place. It was just too haggard and eclectic NOT to go in there. So I stopped.
Being that this place was also kinda my breakfast, I ordered a burger with bacon and eggs and a side of fries and coke (Pepsi). The burger was really delicious and the fries were really really nice. The service was spectacular too, as you’d probably come to expect, but actually quite casual as compared to other places I would eat along the way. I give the place an 8 out of 10.
As I left, I took some pics of the place for others to enjoy, it’s charm is in the incredibly huge amount of Elvis paraphernalia that lines the walls from floor to ceiling. They even have a creepy mannequin holding the store’s core values by the door. Great!
After I had packed my camera away and had some water, I saddled up and continued to ride. I really need to think up more ways to say “ride”, as it’s pretty much all I did.
The road ahead was a little confusing. At one point I couldn’t go over a bridge, so I had to detour past it and cross some train tracks instead. The bridge after, I was allowed to cross on the footpath though. It was on this one that I tried to gather my bearings and use the height to see where I was going.
I couldn’t.
Consulting Google Maps didn’t help me much in this area, as the port’s roads were a mishmash of places you couldn’t enter and back alleys that had high fences. Though, eventually, I made it to the Ferry Port. It was a huge angular building, which I later found out was constructed to emulate a sail. Either that or an old man lied to me, the jerk.
I wasn’t allowed to take pictures inside, but it’s pretty generic. Had a lobby and a snack counter etc. Kind of reminded me of an airport. Not really much to say about it. I bought my ticket, which had a cute dolphin on it, and set out to have a walk around and wait an hour and a half… Yawn.
Around the back, near the ocean I found this weird ‘M’ shaped structure with a bell in it. I thought it was really weird and I went in for a closer look.
As I got closer, I noticed the shape shifting in something familiar. It was a ruse! What I thought was a weird ‘M’ was actually a love heart, and the bell was for couples to ring to declare their love for each other. Pretty cute really. The sign explained the whole thing too.
I stayed on this decking for a while, but got kind of anxious about when I would be able to enter the ferry and decided to wait in the loading que. There were tonnes of cars and trucks, but I was told I couldn’t take photos because of the hundred or so Army type vehicles which were in line for the next ferry.
After waiting what felt like three hours, I was waved to approach the ferry. It felt like when you get on the S.S. Anne in Pokémon, the man took my ticket and welcomed me aboard, in Japanese. I blabbered out a weak “Arigato…” and wheeled my bike in to the ship.
Upon boarding the ferry and giving my bike to the dock worker for him to secure, I was allowed to take pictures and roam the vessel. It was pretty huge. Like, really fuckin’ huge. I was gobsmacked. I mean, the ship looked big from the outside, but you didn’t really get the full effect until you were standing inside the hull of the beast. The landing where they stored the cars for the journey could easily host a soccer game, and the only thing interrupting the parking spaces was what I imagine would be a pillar hosting the exhaust pipes from the engine room.
I walked upstairs and had a look at the ferry next to us. I think it was the premium one, which had a nice place for people to sit and a bar etc. It had this awesome design on the side of it which instantly reminded me of an artist from adelaide by the name of Driller. I took a couple pictures and sent them to him.
(I’ve included both an iPhone panorama and two DSLR pics for clarity. The ferry was right next to us, so I couldn’t get it all in one sweeping pic.)
After about twenty minutes, the big bay door began to lower, and the ferry’s engines started getting louder. The ship rumbled and swayed, then pulled away effortlessly from the dock. I walked around the top a little more, then ventured inside the loading bay again to see what cars had pulled in.
There were more passenger type vehicles (see, cars) but what caught my eye was the ENORMOUS HORSE FLOAT that was the size of a BUS. It was holding two horses, which I found out were owned by the Japanese royal family. Turns out, the royal family keep their horses in Hokkaido because apparently the land is nicer, and then ship then all the way down to Kyoto for shows, competitions and parades. It’s seriously huge though.
There wasn’t much to do on the ferry. So I watched it pull away, and took a few pictures along the way.
Just like everywhere else in Japan, there was a host of vending machines on the ferry in the waiting area. There were a couple resting rooms, which required you to take off your shoes, but it felt kind of uncomfortably quiet inside them and I was definitely the odd one out. I lay down on a bench instead, and listened to music as I waited. Every now and again I would venture out on the deck and take a couple pictures. I ended up with a couple nice ones.
Eventually, as the sun started to make it’s way lower in the sky and reminding me it was past noon, we made it to the Aomori port. My ferry journey was at it’s end. The captain of the ship made an awesome turn, almost like a drift, in to the dock and we prepared to disembark.
We got off the ferry, and I set off into the city of Aomori.
At first it was just regular industrial-type area, lots of shipping containers and nothing really of interest. After I left the docklands there was an instant line of domestic living. Bam. Houses and high-rises everywhere. Eventually I got to the Aomori Bay Bridge, and I was awestruck.
Just over the bridge was the Aomori visitor’s centre. It seemed there was a convention on as there were a heap of buses in the car park out front and a lot of people in Yukatas. It seemed pretty fun and I thought about poking my head in, but I was on a mission. I needed to find accomodation, fast, as it was getting to 5pm quickly and I couldn’t find anything in the immediate city centre. I took a quick couple snaps of the giant wedge-shaped structure and bailed.
As I was leaving I noticed that the huge group of people leaving the visitor’s centre were heading the same way as me. There were police officers blocking off parts of an intersection and a lot of commotion (the good kind) going on around where I was. I stopped and noticed a couple of crazy scooter dudes on heavily modified scooters. This type of thing, like most, is a huge culture in Japan. Basically anything that we would consider obscure is massive over there.
As I was heading through the city I noticed they were shutting down the streets, but I paid no mind. I had found a Ryokan only eight to ten k’s away that I wanted to stay at. On the way there was a weird pachinko place across from what I assumed was a weird arcade. The pachinko palace had text all around it, in English, and I had no idea what the quotes were from.
I kept on riding, pumping as hard as I could, and the suburbs became less dense. Eventually the houses disappeared and the trees surrounded me as the road developed in to a steep hill. Bugs were slamming in to me left right and centre and I was sure I’d ridden through a spider web at some point. I was sweating like a pig, the humidity was really getting to me, even in the dwindling light, and behind me I could hear a noise. There was the distinct sound of big drums, echoing up the hill. The city was having a summer festival, another one, about five k’s back. It was 7pm, and I had to make a decision. Do I continue up this hill to a Ryokan that is most possibly full due to the festival, and then camp in a bug filled forest, or do I ride back down the hill and get drunk with the locals and maybe find something to eat then pass out in a park on my bike somewhere and hopefully wake up before anyone sees me.
I chose the latter.
I figured “fuck it”, I’m on holiday, I’ll do what I damned well please. I hopped back on my bike, and set off down the hill real quick. I hit about 50km/h easy, with a slight tailwind. I hooned down the empty streets past the pachinko joint and then approached a locked down intersection. Near the intersection I got off my bike and walked it to the parade.
The parade floats were awesome, I couldn’t find a place to lock my bike, so instead I walked along the road and found an alleyway to occupy while I watched the floats go by. They were massive paper sculptures, with a wire frame making them three dimensional and then lit up from the inside. They seemed to depict scenes of ancient japanese lore and were pushed along by a team of men in Yukatas. The floats were balancing on a single large tractor tire, and the men would every now and again spin on the spot and rush towards the crowd either side of the street, stopping inches away from parents holding their children up at the barrier.
There was a weird mix of business advertisments and community projects, with one float sponsored entirely by Samsung LED who was running the float and surrounding support acts solely by batteries charged by solar, as far as I could gather. This is when the whole ‘Eco’ thing kind of struck home. People were sick of nuclear and coal energy, and were wanting a greener alternative. The Japanese companies were getting this technology in to the face of their consumers by any means necessary. I must say, as weird as it was, it didn’t seem too tacky, and they definitely put a lot of work in to their float. It even fit in incredibly well to the parade.
As exciting as the parade was, it couldn’t distract me entirely from my hunger. So I went away from the main steet in search of some food. There was a smell lingering in the air that I just couldn’t ignore, so I followed my nose about three blocks and finally centred in on this amazing Yakitori joint, well, it was either that or the nursing home up the road, but I figured I’d try and get a feed in here first.
Inside, I grabbed a menu, sat at the bar and started to sweat. It was all in Japanese. No Google translate to help me here, I couldn’t string the characters together to get anywhere near what resembled a food name. I was starting to panic when I figured what the hell. I chose what resembled a reasonably priced dish, at about $8AU. The chef, kind of amused, proceeded to cook the meal. Down the bar a couple in their late thirties started to say “Hello!” in good English to me. I responded, and we began to chat. It turns out they were teachers on holiday, and both of them were English teachers. They were married, and wanted me to sit with them. I moved down toward them and as I sat down my meal arrived. It was a whole bunch of deep fried meat, probably chicken, and they giggled looking at it.
“Do you know what that is?”
“Uhhh, not really, haha.” I admitted.
“It’s a bit of everything, liver, heart, wing, foot. Chicken!”
I was kind of relieved to be honest. I could deal with chicken parts. They shouted me a beer, and we got chatting a little.
As we were talking another couple, about ten years older, came in and sat down. The chef was chatting to them, and glancing over my way, when the older gentleman grabbed my attention with a wave.
“Hello!”
“Hi.” I said rather timidly. Trying to do the whole ‘respecting the elders’ thing.
“Would you like a drink?”
“Uhhh, no, thank you, I’m finishing this one still. Thank you though.”
“Well finish it quickly!”
These were my type of people.
I finished the teacher’s beer and sank in to his, all the while the chef brought me other random bits and pieces to nibble, including some fries. Which, were just kinda, mccain’s fries. Nothing really crazy here, but maybe over there it’s a novelty. Or maybe they were trying to make me feel at ease, I dunno, I was getting pretty drunk.
I shouted the teachers and the man a beer, and we “Kanpai!”d and the conversation flowed a little easier, save the Japanese people tripping over their English a little more often. Eventually, they asked where I was staying, and I said I was going to camp in a park somewhere. I asked if there was one that wouldn’t upset people too much and they all started speaking in Japanese to eachother. The older gentleman offered me to stay at his house.
Woah. What an honor, really. That’s such a stroke of luck.
I refused initially, but he insisted, so I went to pay my bill, which they had all already covered (I imagine it was somewhere about $30AU by this point, but the gesture was enough for me to try and bow at them, which they laughed off). We stepped outside, and I asked to have a photo of them.
The older lady and her husband got on their bikes and started to ride me back to their house. The lady detoured to the convini on the way home while I followed the man, and he let me store my bike in the shed/garage. We went upstairs in to his lounge room, and he cracked us a couple more beers.
We got in to some jilted discussion. It turns out this man worked for the Government, and where he worked was local Government. In Japan, they don’t have suburbs and states, so there’s no Council and State Government. If you work for the Government at any level, you work for THE Government. It’s also a highly respected position for anyone to be in, so I was in great hands. It turns out his job was actually to help foreigners in their times of need, which was a coincidence, and that he doesn’t ever bring people back to his house like this. He said his Daughter would be here soon, and that she spoke better English than he did. All of a sudden, he turns to me, and his tone gets darker. He stared intently at me and spoke in a very deliberate manner.
“What do you think, about nuclear bomb.” He asks.
I stumble, kind of shocked at the intensity of the question. I throw up my arms in the ‘X’ and shake my head saying “No, no nuclear.”
He sits back in his couch, relieved, and laughs “Okay, good! Hahaha!” and we cheers again, sinking the rest of our cans.
At that very moment, his wife arrives with snacks and beer. She joins us, pouring her beer in to a glass of ice. Her husband jokes that she gets drunk very easily, she points at him trying to stand and giggles. They both laugh.
They seem like a fantastic couple.
After another fifteen or so minutes of light discussion and drinking, the Daughter arrives. She’s fluent in English, and also part of the JDF. Kind of Japan’s army. Which is pretty cool. We chat for a while, and then at about 2am, it’s time for bed. I’m pooped, and they suggest I have a shower. I get a family portrait of them before I head to the shower though.
Before I get in the shower, they give me a towel and teach me how to use the bathroom. It’s a little different from back home, but to be honest, I prefer it. You sit down on a stool, with a washcloth and use the shower head on a hose to wash yourself. The whole floor is a basin, and the water just disappears. I’d love a bathroom like this any day. Afterwards I dry off on my Peanuts towel (Japan LOVES Peanuts. LOVES.) and head to my room, guided by the whole family.
I am exhausted. The family wish me goodnight, and even though my head is swimming with a million thoughts, drunkenness and an overwhelming feeling of gratitude, I manage to get some sleep.
There’s more blogs to come. This trip is only about ten percent through, and there’s so much more stuff to talk about as I continue on. However, because this is the Internet, I figured I’d leave on a cliff hanger, and show you what I woke up to in the morning…
Oh yeah, did I mention the house had a whole room dedicated to this one cat?
UP NEXT!
An eighties hotel, wind farms, and torrential downpours ahoy!
