The Osaka Misadventures File

After the jam packed week around Osaka and Kansai, it was time to board 2 shinkansens (bullet trains) and 2 rapid expressessses for the 16 hour train journey to the wilds of the northern island of Hokkaido, approximately 2200 kms from Osaka town.

An epic journey to be sure, to be sure....We kicked off at 7am, excited to see our first glimpse of her majesty Mt Fuji from the train and to enter the bustling metropolis of Tokyo for a quick coffee break. It was exciting to pass through the prefectures where most of my students come from, obscure suburbs and non exciting prefectures like Aomori and Chiba...I enjoyed waving to my housewives who were busy relaxing and going to shopping and taking their english lessons. By 10pm, we had crossed under the ocean in the longest sea tunnel in the world, around 45 minutes of ear popping pain shared with all the other passengers in alot of pointing and charades to share our discomfort with the locals around us. Of course no 16 hour journey is complete with a little chaos, turned out I accidentally decided to get off at the wrong station, unfortunately only Dad made it off, with the train door shutting on my arm and driving away into the 10 foot snow drifts and darkness with Dad left on the random station. But nothing brings out the extremely helpful and kind nature of the Japanese like gajin in an emergency and the silent passengers around us sprang to life clearly excited to use their 10 years of english lessons to talk to us and help with our dillemma, culminating in arriving at the huge correct station and getting all the station masters involved to ensure Dad was on the next correct train to Sapporo. Alls well that ends well and it is always worth the trial to be rewarded with the kindness of strangers....

Sapporo is a delightful and pretty city, recently built and devoid of WW2 damage, plus spruced up for the winter olympics years ago. We somehow winged it into staying at a beautiful 5 star hotel, enjoying Japanese buffet breakfasts in ballrooms with butlers.

We made it out to Lake Toya, home to active volcanoes and site of the big G8 conference coming up. Unfortunately it was bloody bone chillingly cold, truly at the end of the world a few hours away from any english speakers, on obscure buses passing bubbling lava and smoke. We made friends with an older tawainese couple who became our travel buddies for the day. Most random part of the day was hanging out for a few hours in a games arcade that served coffee....with antique furntiture and stuffed bears.

Enjoyed hanging out at the desserted historical theme park of old buildings and life in Hokkaido, one of my favourite things is wandering around theme parks in the off season/late in the day when there is few people left...beautiful forests and deep deep snow coupled with silver birches.