No, let me rephrase that.
Hokkaido has a bear problem. Seriously. This year has been particularly full of bear reports on the news. In the past week a bear was seen wandering into the Sapporo city area for some reason (and promptly gunned down, I've been told), which has caused all sorts of hubbub for the worried city folk. Then the other day a train hit a bear which understandably brought everything to a halt for a bit. It's pretty common here for trains to hit deer, since those are also so prevalent that they've become a problem too (I hear there's talk now about bringing in wolves to deal with the deer problem), but I guess a bear collision is a bit more out of the ordinary and therefore news-worthy. On numerous occasions this year I've even come in to the faculty room at the junior high only to be greeted by another map on my desk of the neighborhood with a big "X" on it all "A bear was spotted here - you might want to be careful." No kidding.
My eikaiwa (the group of adults I teach every Tuesday night) tells me about these bear incidents since they know I don't always catch the local news (or the news in general, since they use some pretty high-level Japanese in those reports), and it's always comforting when the conversation goes something like this:
"The last bear was seen just behind the elementary school."
"Oh, so you mean... right next to where my house is?"
"Oh, well... yes."
Beautiful.
So anyway, I'll talk a bit this time about a recent day trip a friend and I took out to Shiretoko, a big national park up here known for being THE place in the area if you want a good healthy dose of nature. I told my office I was going there and got panicked looks of "But... there're BEARS out there!" I told my friend about their panic and she rebutted with "Well yeah, that's kind of the point." She then told me of our plans to take a boat cruise around the edge of the park to see some waterfalls and, hopefully, some bears, so my mind was put at ease after learning about our plans and how they didn't involve hiking into bear-infested forests. My office probably thought that's what we would be doing, and probably don't think me smart enough to stay out of the way of scary forest creatures. And they're right, of course, I haven't been too savvy at hiding what an airhead I can be at times. They probably think I'd try to go give it a snack to make friends or something. (Nah, they don't really think that... I hope. I swear I'm smart. Really. What?)
But to get back to the point, it was a nice little road trip. I'd probably like to go back to try to see more of the park if I ever get the chance, since we really did just skim (or rather, boat around) the surface. The morning of our scheduled trip, I got up early and took a rather calm, 40 minute drive on twisty, hilly roads through forests and farms, followed by a panic as my car decided to be an absolute jerk to me again as I entered the town where my friend lives (I'll get back to this), I met up with her at her house and we began our trip out to Shiretoko (in her car that... you know... actually works). The trip there was kind of cool too, not only for the reason that we got to stop a few times to gawk at the clear weather, beautiful seashore, and random Ainu statues we found along the way, but because we were able to stop at 4 michi no eki throughout the course of the day.
A michi no eki ("Station on the Road" I guess you could translate it as... it's kind of like a pit stop) is a pretty big thing in Hokkaido. Hokkaido is nowhere near as densely populated as Honshu (or any of the other big islands in Japan), so everything is spread out and most people have their own cars with which to travel or even just get around in daily life. Because of this there are many michi no eki on these well-traveled roads, providing a place for people to stop, rest, use the john (one of my English teachers LOVES that I taught her this term for some reason), grab a bite to eat made from local foods, or buy region-specific souvenirs. They're really quite cool. And of course, one other reason why people stop at these places is to put that specific station's stamp in their stamp rally book.
I bought a book at our first michi no eki as we made our way out to Shiretoko, so I officially started one of the stamp rally books. Kind of a bummer since my less than reliable car kind of keeps me glued to my town out of nervousness, but at least when I'm out with others I can join in on the stamp rally fun and keep track of where I've been. So, after grabbing my first stamp and a sweet potato tart we once again hit the road.
Not too far outside of the official bounds of Shiretoko is a pretty big waterfall called Oshinkoshin falls. We stopped there to join the many other tourists in picture taking and gawking at its beauty. The weather was gorgeous and the waterfall was right next to the sea, so you could get a double dose of aquatic scenery. It really was gorgeous. Boy do I love the sound of water.
After that we headed into Utoro, which is the big town next to the park. We bought our boat tickets, which was interesting as all the places to buy them are on a far too narrow, far too crowded side street (and you need to pick a place to buy from before you can park in their parking lot, so the two doofy foreigners were stopped in the middle of this road talking to a flustered woman from our car window about which boat tour we wanted so we could move out of everyone's way. Good times.) We decided on a two hour cruise that included a chance to admire a hot spring waterfall and then a chance to do some bear spotting. And then with that out of the way, because it was past noon by this point we decided we NEEDED food.
I have no problem eating Japanese food pretty much all the time, but a lot of my other foreigner friends really love tracking down the foreign foods in new places. (Indian food is absurdly popular with them, so that's usually what I expect to eat any time I go out with the other ALTs in Sapporo or any other city that provides such a selection.) This day we happened to stumble upon this little hole in the wall pub that served fish and chips, complete with malt vinegar. I had no objections.
They brought it out to us with chopsticks. Sure, why not.
After chilling out there for a bit, watching the more hardcore tourists with their fishing and diving gear and whatnot, we headed to the ticket place where they ushered us, single file like elementary kids, out to the boat dock. They do this mostly since we have to cross that narrow busy street to get to an area full of trucks and cargo crates and fishermen tending to their fishing boats. But we got to walk past cool things like this dried fish vendor, drying out their fish by clipping them to this whirligig thing and letting them spin spin spin until they become ready to sell. Note the tentacles. Whee!
We then set off for our 2 hour boat cruise on a fairly tiny boat that bounced about on the rather bumpy water. Definitely not for the weak of stomach, but fun if you like to be tossed around a bit. We sat inside on padded benches, so we were protected from the wind and spray and all that... but we were also looking at the scenery from water-splattered windows (and we sat on the wrong side of the boat at that). Luckily there was a doorway on the side of the boat that was left open (with a wooden baby gate sized thing to keep anyone from falling out, like the few of us that were out of our seats taking pictures from this lone opening in the side of the boat). From there we got to see some gorgeous cliffs, rock formations, forests, the aforementioned hot spring waterfall, and eventually we stopped off a rocky shoreline to do what we paid to do: look for bears.
The sun got in my eyes as my friend tried taking my picture...
The boat people say that something like 95% of the boat cruises see bears, but we were at the very tail end of the bear-sighting season so we were worried we wouldn't see any... especially since quite a few minutes passed with no bear activity. But at long last one little brown bear came stumbling along the rocks on the shore, and though we were kind of far away and couldn't get a very good look at the little guy we still got to see a real, live, wild Hokkaido bear. Followed by another. Followed by a family of three. Bears everywhere! They weren't kidding. Even at the end of the season we got to participate in all this bear watching stuff.
There are no pictures of this though, sorry. My camera's not all that hot to begin with, and so trying to get a shot of a little bear on a coast a fair ways away while swaying around on a little boat didn't exactly produce results.
After getting back to shore and making our way passed all the fishing equipment, we stopped at the Utoro michi no eki again to pick up omiyage (souvenirs) for our offices. Any time anyone goes anywhere they're pretty much expected to pick up a box of small, individually wrapped sweets or crackers or something local to the area they visited, and as such pretty much anywhere you go has tons of these boxes with their own regional specialty. They had lots of cookies and dumplings and whatnot, but my friend and I both decided on what was obviously the clear choice: bear cookies. And not just bear cookies, but bear cookies that came in a cookies bus (complete with Engrish and everything). My office got omiyage, which they never actually seem to expect me to get and are always kind of surprised I remember, and I got to keep the cookies bus tin. It's totally a worthless trinket, but it makes me chuckle.
On the way back to her house we stopped in a city along the way at their Pizza Hut to get some double cheese pepperoni pizza. As I said, the other ALTs like to hunt down the not in any way Japanese foods in the area... but boy was it good to have pizza (normal pizza at that, not squid or mayonnaise or potato or something... not that those are all bad, exactly, but this pizza we got tasted like home).
I spent the night at her house and then made my way home the next day. In... THAT car. That car that made it through a little over half my short journey home before deciding it wanted to be a jerk and just stop on me. Luckily I had made it to a not twisty-turny part of the road so other cars could see me, and I ended up calling my Japan-mom on a bright sunny Sunday morning begging for assistance. After hanging up with her I decided to give my car another try (or seven) and eventually it puttered along... for a little while... before giving out again on me (but again on a straight bit of road at least). After a half an hour or so of waiting, admiring the onion field to my left, my Japan-dad and his wife arrived to take me and my half-working car to the local garage. Again. Boy, do they know me well there. Me and that stupid car of mine. Seriously, Donut (I named him), I absolutely hate you.
But then I was glad I bought everyone bear cookies. Again I had to bother everyone on their time off with my car problems... but that could be saved for a different (and what would be a very looong post) about my various car trouble stores in Japan.
But anyway, this ties back in to my main point, because as I told my eikaiwa about this one Tuesday night (they know my car and can tell immediately when I come to class in a car I had to borrow from the garage) they looked at me all "Oh, that's where your car broke down? There're bears out there."
Big surprise, Hokkaido. Big surprise. I'm just glad I didn't know (or at least think about) that while I was stranded out there.
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