Through the Snow
I think I was more or less handling the cold of
Hokkaido until we stopped for ice cream. I suppose I’ve experienced cold
er,
but I’ve certainly never seen so much snow. It wasn’t
particularly snowy near the water, but as we traveled inland we were soon driving through
ditches cut into snow banks higher than our car.
Day 1. Chris and Chiho’s original plan was to start out from Erimo on the Golden Highway, but since it’s closed we take a detour and several wrong turns. Chris is driving; Chiho and Ryan are holding a conversation about American popular culture in a mixture of Chiho’s limited English and Ryan’s even-more-limited Japanese. I’m sitting in the back seat with a bag of shrimp chips from Seicomart and a map book labeled in a language I can’t even read phonetically, attempting to navigate by matching the maps posted at highway intersections with pieces of the mapbook, trying to remember that the distances are in kilometers. Now Ryan and Chiho are talking about Chiho’s cell phone, of which we are jealous; and I’m regretfully informing Chris that we have to execute a U-turn in a snow channel which is barely wide enough to fit our car in the first place. And now we’re pulling into a hot spring resort.
Day 2. We begin and end in hot spring towns; in between, we
ha
ve
desolate and beautiful mountain lakes. And then,
at one of those beautiful mountain lakes… ice cream. Well, first
we see the inflatable dinosaur outside the gift shop. Then we see a concession stand
selling ice cream, complete with happy Japanese tourists
in heavy coats, sitting in snowdrifts and licking ice cream cones. And so what
can we do? We are helpless in the face of destiny. We buy ice cream. After that, I’m cold.
And this is even before we reach the ice palace.
Day 3. We reach the city of Asahikawa, which actually has a JR station—wefre temporarily back in civilization! Stop for ramen, learn from Chiho that you are expected to slurp. (Remember: slurping, good. Sneezing, bad.) And then, back to Sapporo, via the highway. This is exciting, both because driving in Japan is always exciting and because the Eye of God is watching us. But we make it with time to spare, and I stop for a donut before hopping aboard the night train back to Honshu.
