Trip to Japan

Some of you know that we recently were in Japan for the 18th IAHR International Ice Symposium in Sapporo on the northern most island of Hokkaido. My husband does research on ice and there is lots of it on Hokkaido as in Canada. Because we had been to Japan before and because time was limited, this trip did not take us to other areas in Japan. My last trip had been 18 years ago and I was not yet growing Hostas, so this time I did my best to look for native Hostas and visit gardens. In response to requests for pictures, this thread will detail parts of our trip.

Our routing took us from Vancouver to Kansai (Osaka) airport. A very interesting airport because it is built on an artificial Island in the Osaka Bay. Its mile-long terminal is bright and spacious. The island is connected to the mainland by a three km long causeway which you can faintly see through the windows in this picture.

About Kansai International Airport
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansai_International_Airport

http://www.japaneselifestyle.com.au/travel/kansai_airport.html

The flight from Vancouver to Kansai took nearly 11 hours and we changed planes for the 2 hour flight to the New Chitose Airport which is about a 30-40 minute train trip form the central Sapporo station, arriving on a Saturday evening. Our hotel was close enough that taxis didn’t want to take us to it and fortunately all our luggage was on wheels, so 10 minutes later we were settling in for the night.

The next day, we met friends who were at the same conference and took the train to a nearby port city of Otaru.
http://www.yamasa.org/japan/english/destinations/hokkaido/otaru.html

http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e6700.html

We spent that last Sunday of the Japanese summer season wandering around in the city center, eating sushi and generally enjoying the atmosphere. Otaru is a centre of glass making. We found this drumming group doing traditional Japanese drumming along a shopping arcade. We were also treated to some drumming at the closing dinner of the conference, but this was a troupe ranging from very small children up to accomplished adults and they were fascinating to watch. At times, they literally danced around the drums and took turns in playing them without missing a beat. For more information, check out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiko

more drums

A picture collage from Otaru showing a picturesque canal formerly used to access warehouses, a bridge across that canal - note how intricate, a view from an observation deck showing old and new buildings and the surrounding mountains, and an old warehouse. Otaru is quite conscious of its history and has many historical markers on buildings with the information in five languages - Japanese, Chinese, English, Russian and Korean. There is a ferry from Otaru to the Russian Island of Sakhalin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakhalin

We spent the night in a traditional Japanese hotel or Ryokan, Korakuen Otaru
http://www.japaneseguesthouses.com/db/sapporo/korakuen.htm

The gardens were lovely, but had only a few large, green hostas.

Koi pond - evidently they are used to being fed because as we walked around the pond, the Carp were paying careful attention to where we were.

Tea and dinner were served in our room and our friends joined us for a traditional Japanese meal. Individual burners cooked part of the dinner. After dinner, the tables were cleared away and futons were laid out on the tatami mats for sleeping. The pillows were hard and heavy. Not the traditional buckwheat, but some sort of cylindrical filler. Might have been a heavy plastic, but the sound of it made me think of aluminum. The duvets were much too warm for the night; so in the middle of the night I removed it from its cover which was warm enough on its own and in a moment of brilliance, I folded up the down duvet for a pillow and slept blissfully from then on.

In the morning, breakfast was served in this room. No back on the chair cushions here. The ones in our room were on the floor, but had hard backs which were much welcomed by these Westerners.

The next day we took the train back to Sapporo and back to the hotel where we stayed until our departure. Sapporo is the capital city of Hokkaido and at 1.8 million people, the largest city in Hokkaido. My last trip to Japan (though I husband has visited several times) was to the 9th IAHR International Ice Symposium which was held in Sapporo in 1988. At that time we took the entire family and saw several other parts of Japan. I was struck by how much Sapporo has changed in 18 years. It is nearly twice as large and the entire station area has been rebuilt to include a huge shopping complex. I never did completely get my bearings in getting around it, partially because it seemed that every time I approached the station, it was from a different direction. These links will tell you a lot more about Sapporo.

http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2163.html

http://www.infocreate.co.jp/hometown/sapporo/sappor-e.html

Odori park runs down the centre of the city for several blocks and has a large TV tower which looks strikingly like the Eiffel tower. In 1988, this was the highest point in the city. It still has a wonderful view, but the new JR (Japan Rail) tower at the station is taller. I did not get to the top, but apparently the best view of the city is from the men’s wash room. This was confirmed by a friend whose wife was attending the conference.

Odori Park is lined with flowering bushes. Does anyone know what the top two photos are? (Todd?) Gorgeous. I’d love it, but it probably won’t grow in Ottawa. Sapporo gets lots of snow and ice, but not the long cold that we get here. The other vine is a trumpet vine and was labelled as such and there were lovely gardens up and down the park.

This message was edited Sep 15, 2006 1:41 PM

Our walking tour of the city took us past major landmarks. There is an old clock tower which has become the symbol of the city. http://www.conventionsapporo.jp/visitor/visitor.html

We were shown a couple of 100 Yen stores - or Japanese dollar stores since the Yen is almost equal to the Canadian penny. We went back to one of those several times. And we were taken to this huge shopping centre built in and around a former factory and appropriately called Sapporo Factory. BTW, you see English used all over the place on the names of things and on T-shirts, although not always correctly. This is part of that shopping centre.

This message was edited Sep 15, 2006 1:42 PM

And the factory part of it

I was intrigued by the smoking cages at one shopping centre.

One day several of us visited the Botanical Gardens. I was hoping to find an extensive Hosta garden, but no such luck. We did see hostas used in the overall landscape, but they seemed to be large green varieties, albeit with fragrant blooms but most were not labelled as to variety. We found some plants in bloom, but generally it seemed to not be the best time to visit the gardens looking for colour. Here is a collage of our visit.

Other shots in the botanical Gardens - a group picture, an unidentified plant with an interesting flower, a lilium cordata, and another on which they were collecting seeds.

Some lovely roses - the one on the lower left was missing its marker.

That afternoon, the entire conference piled onto buses to tour a few places in Sapporo. We had been slated to visit the ski jump hill from the Sapporo Winter Olympics, but threatening thunder storms made it a dangerous place to visit. Instead we visited an historical museum and the Hokkaido Shrine, a Shinto Shrine. http://www.hokkaidojingu.or.jp/eng/01.html

While we were there, a ceremony was taking place that seemed to be a blessing of young children.

Fascinating Viola Ann. Have never been to Japan but always wanted to visit. We (in NA) really do not learn very much about histories of too many other countries. So much history.........Ice. Things you learn from bores are quite terrifying . Glad I'm not going to be around to see it.

Airport info. It seems more and more countries are building out into the middle of bodies of water. Very interesting. Go look at Dubai too.

Please send more pix/info.
inanda - waiting for the hosta pix/info too - of course.

You can purchase a fortune for 100 Yen (200 if you want it in English). People who don’t like their fortune, tie them to these strings.

Don’t know who this is - likely one of the deities, but he’s sure awesome.

In the evening, we all went to the Sapporo Beer Garden for Genghis Khan, which is lamb and vegetables grilled on a hot plate (all with chop sticks) in the shape of Hokkaido and unlimited draft beer! Their special sauce is made from more than twenty different spices and fruits. This is a very popular meal in Hokkaido and was a part of the program at the conference 18 years ago as well. But then we were in a tent outdoors. Now the beer garden has been enlarged to be an indoor activity. It does get rather smoky and there is a certain amount of spatter from the cooking so we were all given T-shirts to wear for this event. Unfortunately, we neglected to take the camera. If we are given any pictures, I’ll post them later.

The next day was culture day. Only seven of the accompanying people went along. Ryan decided not to get dressed up in a Kimono, LOL. We went to the culture centre http://www.conventionsapporo.jp/culture/culture.html where we were shown the tea ceremony, given a chance to try our hand at Japanese flower arranging and dressed up in Kimonos. We all had a good laugh when told that the kimonos they were using were typical for young, unmarried girls.

Here is the tea ceremony.

And the tea. Inset photo shows both of the sweets that accompanied the tea.

This is my flower arrangement before they fixed it. We were each given a bundle of flowers to work with. My group worked with what we had while the second group decided to trade materials. We did flower arranging while the others were being dressed in kimonos and vice versa.

And the first four arrangements AFTER they fixed them. Mine is on the right.

oops - co-ordination problem here.

Some of us ended up with men’s clogs rather than the dainty women’s ones because our feet hung more than an inch off the end of the others.

Here are all seven of us. The three without kimonos were the first to be dressed in them. An international group from, (seating) Hamburg, Germany; Calgary, Canada. (Standing) Oslo, Norway; Ottawa, Canada; Hamburg, Germany; Ottawa (Kanata), Canada and me, also from Ottawa. We all know each other from previous conferences and Hella (standing) from Germany is a very good friend from way back when we spent a year in Hamburg in 1976.

The Culture Centre Garden was the best display of Hostas I saw anywhere.

After lunch, we bused to Otaru - same city I visited earlier in the week. Primary focus of the visit was the Nishin Goten which was essentially a dormitory for herring fishermen.
http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e6703.html
This large building has enormous timbers in it. Not in its original location, it was moved here some years ago. It also sustained severe damage in a 2004 typhoon but has been rebuilt. Note the very low ceilings.
And the railings that look like birch are actually made from concrete.

Low ceilings could be a theme in Japan as traditionally the people are shorter than we see in the west, although I had a sense that the average height has increased over the last 18 years. Or maybe the people of Hokkaido are taller than those on Honshu. The door to our hotel room was barely 6 ft. high and the hall ceilings were similarly lower than one would see in North America.

This message was edited Sep 15, 2006 1:55 PM

View from Nishin Goten

We were, as well, intrigued by Japanese toilets which varied widely, the traditional “squat” ones being a porcelain trough in the floor. A real challenge for us westerners to use. The curious thing though is that the “western” toilets in Japan are immensely hi-tech. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilets_in_Japan
We encountered a wide variety. In the Ryokan, not only were there an arrange of spray options, but the seat was heated (which we did NOT like). In our efforts to turn off the seat heating, we managed to inadvertently try all the spray and wash options. (The instructions were all in Japanese). DH finally solved that problem by unplugging the toilet. I encounter one in a large department store that started to make flushing and tinkling sounds as soon as you were in the stall. And the one in our hotel room was a more basic unit but still with the washing options AND a few words in English which would help to decipher what the controls do.

All in all, a great trip. The Japanese people are friendly and extremely courteous. Language continues to be a bit of a problem, but pointing to pictures and gestures get the message across. Unless you are small of stature, it’s not a place to go shopping for clothing. It tends to be quite expensive, but of good quality and too small for most of us.

On our final evening in Japan we were taken to a very good Sushi restaurant. It was a real treat watching the sushi chef prepare our food. Also interesting to watch them prepare a fresh shipment of fish for use in sushi. Wish I had had my camera with me.

A word about bicycles. They are everywhere, co-existing on the sidewalks with pedestrians. I don’t know how they avoid collisions but we didn’t see any. And NO helmets. Apparently they are actually supposed to be in the streets, but we didn’t see any there. We DID see a whole building devoted to bicycle parking near the central station and on our last evening, there were masses of bicycles parked around pachinko parlours in the susukino area. Obviously a very practical means of transportation.

Ann

Ü Your pics took my breath away.........thank you for sharing such an incredible trip with us Ann! Ü Years ago my father sold grain to Japan and they offered to him a trip like yours, unfortunately he couldn't make it so they sent him two scooters instead (one of these days I should try driving one).

Woo Hoo...look at you , looking very much like Madam Butterfly! Lovely photos. You did a great job setting them all up in collages and everything. Very interesting and beautiful gardens. Great high tech toities! I'd love to visit Japan. Thanks for the the tour!

Don

Wonderful Ann, thank you for your effort to show them to us

Sounds like a great journey, ............happy gardening....Elaine

Thank You for sharing your trip with us. Enjoyed it very much. dixie

Wow, what an experience. I think the toilets were the best part!! Sitting on the floor to eat would have been a start to a new diet for me!! Not sure I would have the stomach to try sushi...Beautiful pics Vi. sure enjoyed them