He that would know what shall be, must consider what has been.

Japanese proverb

14 September 2023

• Sapporo Autumn Festival @ Odori Park
• Nijo market

Sapporo

I woke at 7:00 after six hours of sleep, curled in a foetal position on my host’s couch. We ate nattou with rice for breakfast and left at 9:30.

Inside the metro, he remarked that my suitcase seemed worn and weathered, as if I’d had it for years. Everyone who’d seen it in the past few months had been telling me that. I’d bought it in Sapporo on February 17^th; now, I decided to finally remove the plastic wrapping. It felt fitting to shed that shell upon my return to this city. 

He got off at the station before me.

“Yalla,” he said, having learned this Arabic word, used as slang in Hebrew, during his trip to Israel.

The meaning was not quite “see you” – more “alright, come on, let’s…”, yet the intention behind his usage was nonetheless appreciated.

I got off in Odori station. Alighting right by the familiar TV tower was a laugh out loud moment. How I’d missed Sapporo!

The tourist information center I’d visited here in February had closed since then. It was just an empty room.

Sapporo was raining nonstop. Luckily, the entire city was traversable underground. So I walked this way to Susukino station, for another tourist information center.

As soon as I entered the underground Pole Town connecting the two stations, I knew I’d stumble upon a bakery a friend had recommended to me in February. I’d liked it so much, that I’d gone there on my two days in Sapporo.

And soon enough, I had a gigantic soft serve ice cream and one of their cheese tarts in my belly. Back during the snow festival, there was a huge line, but today, none at all.

Susukino’s center was closed as well. Being the nightlife area, it opened from afternoon to 2:00 am.

Fine. I walked to my hostel in south Susukino, passing the famous Nikka whisky distillery billboard (which I’d visit this time around) and the venue of the Susukino ice sculptures from February.

I checked into my hostel completely deluged, and changed at once to my samue (finally cold enough to wear it!) and hiking boots (sneakers again smelly and wet). My hostel was large and clean, yet everything in it cost money – water, detergent, luggage storage.

From here on, I took the metro to Sapporo station, because I had a bunch of touristic questions, and the most pressing task for now was to plan my one month on this island.

There weren’t too many people in the metro. A quiet city. The ride cost a bit more than in Tokyo, though.

After half an hour or so of chatting with the tourist information center’s ojiisan, I left armed with a gazillion pamphlets and walked back to Odori. In February, every step along those familiar, once-frozen streets was a peril. I’d slipped several times on my butt. Now, it simply rained all day long.

I recognized many landmarks and corners of this city. The station area; the boring Tokaidei. They all raised a smile on my face. This was where my trip had begun. Memories were all over.

Sapporo Autumn Festival

Odori park (not a park, whoever had named it, but thanks) had hosted the snow festival and now the Autumn Festival. Basically, tons of street food from all over the world. I went to the venue that featured small towns in Hokkaido, per the ojiisan’s recommendation. It was 13:00, and the festival was teeming with diners.

I picked towns I hadn’t heard of and wouldn’t get to visit on this trip. A giant, grilled mushroom with butter and soy sauce from Nakashibetsu; grilled scallops from Setana; “Handsome-San” (a pastry shaped like a man’s face and filled with anko) from Date; and a sweet potato crème brûlée crepe from a town whose name I’d forgotten.

Business Dinner

Following this light lunch, I walked back to my hostel for a wet half an hour, and returned at 15:00. I couldn’t do much today due to the weather (the museums on my list were for another day) and my dinner plans.

A few weeks ago, the Morioka woman had introduced me to a sixty-something American friend of hers who’d been living in Japan for around 35 years. For the past decade, he’d been teaching English in one of Sapporo’s universities, in addition to being in charge of recruiting new workforce.

At 18:00, after doing some laundry and planning, I dashed to meet him. Google Maps had led me to a dark, vacant street right by Sapporo’s river. It was the wrong place, and even if I ran to the correct location, I would be late.

When I arrived at the restaurant by Nijo market (NIJO MARKET! One of the best fish I’d ever had the pleasure of eating were right here), he said Google Maps had misled everyone. We were six overall, him and four fifty-something men from Canada and the US, all teaching English here at universities.

The humour around the low, traditional table was in accordance to that. Not jokes I was used to hearing, but an entertaining meal nonetheless. We ordered pickled eggplant, hokke (Hokkaido’s signature fish), white horseradish, jaga-bata (potato with butter, which my second Morioka host had advised me to try in Hokkaido), and all sorts of maguro, including otoro. It was my second time eating the latter delicacy, and we agreed that it was so fatty, that it didn’t even like fish anymore. Just pure butter.

“Once you get used to Sapporo beer, you won’t be able to drink any other kind,” the Morioka woman had told me yesterday. I ordered one non-alcoholic Sapporo beer.

I didn’t have the heart to say out loud that I hated it. Anything carbonated did not belong in my cup of tea.

As dinner went on, the men explained to me how teaching English in Japan worked. Without the JET programme, the main problem was visa. Universities preferred it if applicants already had one.

Plus, most only found part-time teaching jobs.

Once again, I was advised to just get married. The men were all married.

By the end of the meal, I realized I’d forgotten my business cards at my hostel. For the only business meal of my life.

I wrote down my details of scraps of paper. Using my left hand, it became apparent that out of six diners, four of us were left-handed.

The meal was pretty modest in terms of size (why did every single person I met eat half than me, even non-Asians?) but cost as much as my most expensive meal on this trip, in Kyoto’s Pontocho alley, at an upscale sushi restaurant. More than my nightly budget. Yet the American man treated me as his guest. So that was a relief.

I bid everyone good night, hoping to have another meal like this before I left Hokkaido, a month from now.

Today’s highlights: returning to good old Sapporo; the soft serve ice cream and cheese tart; the Autumn Festival lunch; the dinner.

15 September 2023

• Ramen Yokocho
• 17:23-17:50 Susukino station to Ropeway Iriguchi station streetcar
• Mt Moiwa observatory (45m)

A Cowboy in the Land of Snow

My first night at the hostel was horrendous. With only one shower stall, and the only sink being inside the dormitory room, everyone made a ruckus brushing their teeth at night, and at 6:00, when they all woke for some reason. I couldn’t find my ear plugs, and barely slept. I managed to doze off until 9:00.

This hostel was very clean, but ill-designed, in my opinion, and also too far. While only a ten-minute walk for Susukino station, I could’ve picked a closer hostel. One that didn’t charge their guests for everything.

In the morning, I met a 28-year-old Chinese guy who, shockingly enough, remembered me from my two days here in February. Originally from the same northern city in China as the 28-year-old Chinese guy from Tokyo (a city known for its -40 Celsius winters and a snow festival that dwarfed Sapporo’s), he’d been living in Sapporo for the past five years, working in a hotel near my hostel.

(Another 27-28yo, 5-6y living-in-Japan Chinese guy? At least this one had short hair, tattoos, and sharper features.)

“Are you eating properly?” was one of the first questions he’d asked me.

“Not really,” I answered truthfully.

We talked about Taylor Swift most of the time. In no time, it became apparent just how big of a fan he was. He’d already seen her perform once, and bought tickets to all four of her upcoming shows in Tokyo, in February. I hadn’t thought I’d meet someone more into her than the Mongolian student from Dajaeon. He hadn’t been able to secure a ticket for Tokyo.

I’d also never met someone who drank tomato juice for fun. Apparently, this was quite common among Asians. Not a phenomenon I’d encountered yet during my seven months in east Asia.

The Chinese guy wore a YOYOK bracelet. You’re on Your Own, Kid was our favourite song off of Midnights. It was probably my favourite Swift song overall; listening to it for the first time atop South Korea’s Seoraksan in late July, watching the sunset from my mountain shelter and crying from my relation to the lyrics – I grew envious of this bracelet, and resolved to make one someday for myself.

Then he sang some of her songs to me. Maybe he was sleepy from his night shift at the hotel, or simply a person with a quiet demeanour, but I thought the melancholy of Folklore and Evermore exposed a sad side to him. Those songs had spoken to me because of the trauma they narrated, and made me cry in the past.

I nicknamed him Cowboy after his favourite Taylor Swift songs, the lyrics of which were printed out on the back of his phone.

At 12:30, we said goodbye. He needed to go to sleep.

Ramen Yokocho

At 13:00, I met at Sapporo TV tower a 19-year-old Sapporo native with orange-dyed hair parted in the middle. He had an entertaining tendency to exclaim “wow” in a Japanese accent. We strolled through Odori park and went to the soup curry restaurant I’d eaten at with the Singaporean guy on February 17.

It was closed.

I checked my map. Ramen Yokocho was a 5-minute walk away. I’d eaten there, on February 11, perhaps the best ramen I’d had in Japan. During the snow festival’s last weekend, the yokocho was teeming, the line was 2 hours long, and snow was falling. Now, the sky was clear, the corridor was empty, and only one restaurant had a line: the spot where I’d eaten.

We queued up and ordered the same miso cheese ramen. Thick, heavy, cheesy sauce. Only in Hokkaido.

“What should we do know?” we wondered aloud at the end of the meal.

“Apart from food, there is nothing in Sapporo,” he said.

We passed the time at my hostel, also within a walking distance. Sapporo wasn’t too big. And there wasn’t any other spot for us to go to, since Moerunuma Park was an hour away, and at 16:00, he had to leave for his evening shift at work.

When he left, I had an hour to kill before my next attraction. It was at this moment that I happened to get a phone call from a friend from Israel whom I’d lost touch with.

Today was the Jewish New Year. Being more religious than me, she called to say happy new year.

We talked and talked; we’d known each other since first grade. I filled her in on some of the things that had been happening to me. Both good and bad.

“I cry all the time now,” I admitted near the end. I could probably count on one hand the number of times since elementary school she’d seen me do so. 

“Good,” she replied.

Her response took me by surprise. For weeks, I’d considered my crying excessive.

She was doing a master’s in psychology and already treating patients. Perhaps she understood the value (and necessity) in shedding tears.

We chatted for too long, though, because I ended up dashing to catch the streetcar to Moiwa Ropeway. Today’s weather was too perfect to spend morning-to-night indoors.

Mt Moiwa

I also missed the sunset from atop the mountain.

Only purple leftovers from the end of dusk were visible after I took the ropeway to the observatory. Last year, the view of Sapporo from Mt Moiwa was selected as one of the new top three night views in Japan. I understood why.

The lit-up city looked brilliant at night, contrasted by the surrounding, pitch-black mountains. I hadn’t realized Sapporo was this large. Downtown stretched from Sapporo to Susukino stations: a thirty minutes’ walk.

The ropeway was extremely crowded. This was indeed one of the best things to do in Sapporo, especially on a day like this. Up here, the air was cool and breezy. I needed a jacket. There were plenty of couples, attracted by the romance of this pink-to-black landscape. I spotted one avenue more brightly lit that any other street; probably Odori.

At 18:45, I rushed back to the ropeway, because my host from two days ago had suggested meeting for dinner.

The Best Sushi I’d Had

I took the bus to northwest Sapporo and met my host at the busy branch of Toriton from two nights ago. He’d visited Sapporo twice for a total of one week, yet been to this specific restaurant four times already. I heard it was a top contender for the best conveyor belt sushi chain in Japan.

Once I got to corroborate this for myself, I died. Of pleasure.

In four and a half months in Japan, I’d eaten the best fish of my life. Korea’s did not compare. Israel’s were a joke (mostly imported and frozen). Japan’s was worth going from vegetarianism to pescatarianism for the flavour alone.

Yet tonight’s dinner was on a whole other level. Nowhere in Japan had I eaten such delectable sushi. I was moaning. I was ascending. My host laughed all through dinner.

Shrimp, crab, fish egg, shell (tough texture, hard to chew), miso soup with scallops and a fish dashi- (quite unusual, according to him, not something one could make at home)…

“I mustn’t get used to this,” I muttered at some point.

“But you’ll be in Hokkaido for a whole month,” he said.

“The food alone is worth moving to Sapporo,” I said, and told him about my meals in this city since our last meeting.

He insisted on paying in the end. It was expensive… three times my budget.

“Cost of living in Israel is three times higher, and you’re not working,” he said. “Plus, I want to go back someday.”

Earlier, upon hearing what he’d eaten there, I’d exclaimed that he’d missed my favourite dishes: tahini, the Israeli cottage cheese, etc. We’d agreed another visit was in order.

I took the metro back to my hostel. My key to my dormitory didn’t work, and I found myself sitting in the hallway at midnight with 3% of battery left. None of the other guests came in and out.

My new portable charger was already wiped out. It barely lasted one full charge.

After half an hour or so, I tried again. The key worked. I took a shower, and crashed on my bed.

Today’s highlights: singing Taylor Swift with Cowboy; miso cheese ramen; the view from Mt Moiwa; the conveyor belt sushi dinner.

16 September 2023

• Sapporo pride – day 1 (1h)

Sapporo Pride Festival

The plan for the next two days was simple. Sapporo Pride.

I took my time in the morning and arrived at the booths’ venue at 12:00. A Seico Mart konbini breakfast: warm, freshly made onigiri, and delicious pastries. Infinitely more delicious than any other konbini chain in Japan. Especially a cheese and bonito flakes onigiri. Cheaper than other chains, too.

As a few days in Sapporo soon taught me, Seico Mart should be renamed Saiko Mart (saiko = “the best” in Japanese). This was the oldest chain of convenience stores in Japan, and arguably the finest, as recently picked by public vote. It was exclusive to Hokkaido, featured a “Hot Chef” section with freshly baked pastries and freshly cooked onigiri, and also offered more discounts that the big three chains.

Yet another reason to move to Sapporo.

Day 1 of Sapporo Pride was just one street with booths. Expectedly smaller than pride in Tokyo (in late April) and Seoul (in early July). Just like Tokyo’s, one needed to sign for tomorrow’s parade in order to participate. I did so, and then got some free merch, such as stickers and sparkling drinks. Moreover, I recognized a Japanese drag queen I’d seen in Tokyo.

Half an hour later, I was done with the booths.

This was a modest pride. A stage with some… underwhelming performances. Things got very boring, very fast. The amount of people wasn’t enough, nor did I know any other attendees. Apparently, there was pride even in Otaru, a tiny canal town close to Sapporo, and this year, only 200 people had participated in it.

Ironically enough, the music that was playing here was English pop and K-pop. J-pop did not fit the vibe.

At 15:00, I returned to my hostel, disappointed that I hadn’t gotten around to making new acquaintances. Sapporo might be the fifth largest city in Japan, but half the time, I could cross the road without waiting for a green light, because the cars weren’t that many.

I spent the afternoon doing a routine check-up at a clinic and a 24-year-old guy that I happened to meet. If I couldn’t meet people in this city, life here would be quite boring.

Susukino

At 22:30, I went out to Sapporo’s Happy Building. (My nickname for it.) Basically, it was five floors of 40-something tiny bars, all queer, under the same roof. At the entrance to the building, the names of the bars that were open tonight were lit up in neon signs.

Some bars were full of customers laughing boisterously, which almost drew me in. But they were all too small and expensive for me, with cover charges, as I’d recalled from that night on February 11, when I’d sat alone in one of the bars here and paid an obscene amount of money.

This was pride weekend. I wanted a club full of people, where I could dance and strike up a conversation. Not an 8-people bar. As busy as Susukino was tonight, Sapporo seemed quite dead to me, after growing used to partying in Busan, Seoul, and Tokyo. It was like Busan’s gay scene: practically nonexistent, because everyone flocked to Seoul to party in Itaewon during the weekend. In Japan, only Tokyo (and, to a much lesser extent, Osaka) was it. If you didn’t live in Tokyo, things were too quiet.

The only clubs in Sapporo were straight. I almost wanted to move here and open a queer club. The city sorely lacked a queer party spot.

Defeated, I returned to my hostel at 23:30 and sat outside on the pavement.

Now what?

Not just tonight. Now what would I do with my life. I still hadn’t figured out my Hokkaido itinerary; fitting everything on my list into one month was an impossible task. If I couldn’t properly see the island in this timeframe, when would I be able to? When would I return here?

I barely had any money. It was now or never.

This was supposed to be a night of partying. A weekend of celebrations. Instead, I grew anxious and afraid on a deserted pavement at night.

I texted Cowboy. He was working the graveyard shift. I fought against my exhaustion and stayed up until 3:00, after which I went to say hi at his hotel. I didn’t want tonight to end with me alone on a pavement.

We talked during his break. The more I interacted with him, the more interesting facets of his personality came to light. Such as a tattoo of The Shining, our favourite horror film, and his go-to movie to put on during bouts of insomnia. Indeed, a sleep-inducing piece of cinema.

At 4:00, his break ended, and I went to bed.

Today’s highlights: discovering Seico Mart’s Hot Chef shelves; the 3 am rendezvous.