Day 10: Hakodate   From the area of the station and my hotel, Hakodate spreads out on a small peninsula up to Hakodate Mountain at the far end. I’d asked for a high floor facing the mountain, and I was on 12 out of 13, so, even the night before, I could see the water on both sides of the peninsula and had a great view of the town and the mountain over across from me.

I’ve never really adjusted to the time change. Earlier this year, when I went to New Zealand, I did so in stages across the Pacific, and did the same returning, but this change was all at once. I’ve found I’ve been going to bed between 9 and 10 PM—incredible for me—and getting up at or even before dawn. I don’t mind that, since I get a good travel start, especially with the early sunset. I even do a lot of writing at dawn—unbelievable! So when I got up at about 6 in Hakodate I looked down onto the roofs of the town below and they were lightly white. Snow! Uh-oh.

As it turned out, the day varied between occasional bright sunshine, a lot of overcast, and periodic bouts of snow, mostly the huge-flaked, very fluffy kind. So the solution is: layering. I put on two shirts, a sweater, and my jacket, that has a built-in hood, and it all worked out perfectly fine. As a matter of fact, the weather added to the northern charm of Hokkaido. There were three things I wanted to do.

The first stop was right behind the hotel. The Hakodate Morning Market is indoors, very modern, and runs for blocks, selling everything. Most impressive were the tanks of huge crabs, some climbing up over the edge. Also amazing for me were what I finally decided were squid, about two-hands long with a weird front, and eyes at the back where the tentacles took off. There were tanks and tanks of these, too. It’s also interesting to see prepared Japanese foods for sale. I love to be open-minded, but so many things looked quite vile. There were all sorts of things to be tasted, and I wouldn’t go near them.

In 1859, Hakodate in the north was one of the three ports opened to international trade, along with Yokohama in the center (see above) and Nagasaki in the south, so Hakodate saw an influx of Western influence, which remains today in its historic district. My second stop was the first part of the historic district, called the Brick Warehouse District. That may seem odd at first, but Japanese construction doesn’t use bricks normally. This whole area looks very western, including the 1873 Meijikan Post Office, in Western style. All these buildings are now recycled as shops and boutiques.

Beyond that, and already starting up the slope of the mountain, is the other part of the historic district, the neighborhood of Motomachi. Spread out are a number of historic buildings, including the former British and Russian Embassies, but of most interest are the churches around and in Motomachi Park, up the slope. The centerpiece is the Russian Orthodox Church of 1859, rebuilt 1916, right in the middle of the park. It has a tower, and several small onion domes behind. Its bell, which has been replaced numerous times over the years, nevertheless is included in the “hundred sounds and scenes which will remain forever”, since the bell symbolizes Hakodate’s first encounter with Western culture. (Also note that Russia is the closest example of Western culture, in nearby Sakhalin and Vladivostok.)

On entering the church I had a mild surprise. In the vestibule there were pigeonholes for shoes—this is still Japan. So for the first time ever, I visited a Russian Orthodox church shoeless. The two Japanese/Russian Orthodox church ladies at the counter were very solicitous, and one insisted I take two postcards of the church. Walking around the church garden, I saw some huge white and red roses, covered with snow, which indicated to me that the weather was unseasonal.

Nearby was the Episcopal church, rebuilt in 1979, which was closed, and the Roman Catholic church, rebuilt in 1924, where I also had to take off my shoes, but slippers were provided. The frequency of rebuilding indicates the frequency of fires, given that there’s so much wooden construction.

Day 11: Sapporo   Sapporo is one of Japan’s newest cities. Given that Hokkaido is still underpopulated in relation to the rest of Japan, as the Meiji period started, the government wanted the area colonized and settled, just as the US West was being settled. That is surely why Hakodate had been made one of the three international ports. In 1869 a Colonization Commission was founded and by 1871 construction began on Sapporo. Japan imported technology from the West. Between 1871 and 1884, 76 foreign technicians were employed in Hokkaido, among which were 46 Americans, who came with colonization and settlement experience. Some of this Western influence is still apparent in Hakodate, but Sapporo got the greatest benefit, and is now the fifth largest city in Japan. It also hosted the 1972 Winter Olympics.

I took a morning train out of Hakodate further north to Sapporo to spend a few hours there before returning south to Honshu on the overnight sleeper. On arrival in Sapporo, I left the ultramodern rail station complex and walked south several blocks on the street grid pattern that had been developed with American assistance. The city is surprisingly sophisticated and up-to-date, with contemporary steel-and-glass construction. Fortunately, the cold weather of the previous day in Hakodate must have been a fluke, since in Sapporo it was open-jacket weather and very pleasant. I walked five blocks to Odori Park, which runs east-west across the city. There were very chic underground shopping malls, and more being built, which attests to how cold it can get here in winter. The underground shopping system is similar to Montreal’s.

You can tell how organized the address system is, as compared to older cities such as Tokyo. A channelized river to the east is the north-south axis and Odori Park is the east-west axis, dividing the city into quadrants, like Washington. Also like Washington, the whole downtown area of Sapporo falls into the Northwest quadrant, meaning all addresses here will use the word “North” and “West” somehow. The streets are numbered in Japanese, with English below, up from Odori Park (Odori means Main Street--how American!) as North 1, North 2, and so on. The station is at North 5, so you can tell just how far I walked. The perpendicular streets are then, starting at the river, West 1, West 2, and so on.

This may all sound familiar, but there’s a twist with the addresses. Addresses are not directly based on streets, as you’d expect, but on blocks. Therefore, the very first block north of Odori and west of the river has the designation “North 1, West 1”, and the numbering of that block goes around all four sides of it with that designation. This means that houses facing each other across the street, being on different blocks, have different addresses. As I was walking down West 4 from the station, there were actually two street signs, West 4 on the west side and West 3 on the east side, since that was the backside of the West 3 block. Unusual, wouldn’t you say?

The most famous landmark in Sapporo is the Sapporo Clock Tower, whose address is on North 1 West 2, so you can judge just where it is. It may not look particularly unusual to be a landmarked building until you think again that this is in Japan. It would look just as unusual if you had a pagoda in downtown Boston. It’s one of the last surviving buildings from the colonization period. It dates from 1878 and was specifically meant to show the wooden architecture used in the “frontier lands” of the US at the time. The clock was made in Boston, installed in 1881, and has run ever since.

By 5:12 it was time for my sleeper to leave, just as it was getting dark. I was wary about dining facilities, so I’d bought some food supplies of my own at the station. This was the overnight I had wanted to book long in advance along with my hotels, but couldn’t from abroad, and on arrival at Narita Airport they’d said all the single rooms were taken. What I got worked out well. It was one of many compartments for four, but only the two lowers were occupied in mine and many others, which simplified things, making things less crowded. The other guy was a middle-aged Japanese who wouldn’t be going all the way, but would be changing trains at about dawn, so I’d have the compartment to myself in the morning until my arrival in Ueno at 9:38. My entire overnight experience on the train came to 16h26.

What made it quite simple is that they supplied you with those “Japanese pajamas”, really a kimono, so changing clothes was not difficult. They also gave you slippers—suited as ever to petite Japanese so that your heels hung over the back. You also had curtains to pull closed around your berth, and I got writing done (on battery) and reading. I slept very well, and wasn’t aware of stopping late in the evening in Hakodate, or even going through the Seikan Tunnel again back to Honshu.

Day 12: Kyoto I   When I got up, I was the only one in the compartment, although the outer door still stays open all the time, so I settled in for the morning ride. By that time we were already where the Shinkansen route parallels the traditional route, and the concrete elevated structure either paralleled us, or sometimes straddled us. At one point we went through a grade crossing with lights flashing while the elevated structure zoomed right over it.

Changing was no problem. We pulled into Ueno, I changed to the Yamanote Line for three stops to Tokyo Station, and got my next Shinkansen headed for Shin-Osaka, although I’d be getting off at the next-to-last stop, Kyoto. I dozed for a while, but woke up as we were passing the symmetrical volcanic cone of Fuji, the tallest mountain in Japan at 3716 m (12,388 ft). It was visible, but with a gray sky behind it. Its white top looked as though it were wearing a black shirt, but that must have been the tree line and forests below. We then reached Kyoto Station. This sign is typical for all rail and subway stations. The name is given in triplicate, in kanji, in hiragana, and finally in romaji, so outsiders can read it. Note on the indication for the next station, Shin-Osaka, that they finally yielded on including the kanji.

Kyoto was the capital of Japan for over a millennium, from 794 to the Meiji Restoration in 1868. It was also spared in WWII, and has many wooden homes. It’s taller buildings are also more of stone and less of glass-and-steel, giving it more of a cozy look. But how to visit Kyoto was problematic from the start, since its sights are spread out and its subway system is not as extensive as it might be. Staying in the southern part of town near the grand, modernistic station, the second largest in Japan after Nagoya, wasn’t practical, and I’d found a nice hotel in midtown. But there were still things I wanted to see in the south, so I decided to walk, with my wheeled bag behind me.

There had been a huge temple complex at one time, but a disagreement divided them, so now there are two huge temples about a ten-minute walk apart, separated by city streets, Higashi Hongan-ji Temple (higashi= west) and the Nishi Hongan-ji Temple (nishi=east). They were both grand, but temple-ing gets to be as repetitive as shrine-ing. Walking through the middle-class neighborhood between them, though, was also of interest. At both temples they gave you plastic grocery bags to carry your shoes with you once you’ve taken them off, a novel touch. At the east temple, though, I finally got to see chrysanthemums, so typical of Japan, particularly in the fall. Remember that the royal government is referred to as the Chrysanthemum Throne. There were large potted displays of them, both mums and spider mums, with huge blossoms as large as a head, in yellow, white, light purple and dark purple.

As I reached midtown I walked through the Nishiki Food Market, which is a covered lane. As was the case with all markets like this, it was relatively middle-class in style, and not as simple as you may imagine. At the end of the market area was the big shopping area, where Takashimaya, which had been founded in Kyoto in 1829, was located on the main intersection. When I went in, I was surprised to see a branch of Tiffany’s right inside the entrance.

It was still a bit early, but I decided to go again to Din Tai Fung, as in Tokyo, for soup dumplings, since I didn’t want to come all the way back from my hotel later. It was just as enjoyable a meal, and when paying, I tried to see if they’d accept the discount coupon for a free dessert, but apparently that was only for the Tokyo branch. But I did come back a second night while in Kyoto, and, along with the soup dumplings, ordered another kind of steamed dumpling, shrimp and pork shao mai, as well as dan dan noodle soup, which was peanut-flavored. Then, right between the two dumpling courses the headwaiter and waitress came over and offered me a large steamed bun of another sort, and were apparently trying to tell me it was complimentary. I suppose I was a good customer, and maybe they were also thinking about that failed discount coupon. It was very nice of them, and when paying at the cashier’s I did some appropriate bowing. After all, I don’t want them to think that Westerners ain’t got no class.

I had mentioned the nice, different desserts I’d had there. This time I had a “Wei-chuan grass jelly with black honey and soybean flour”. It looked like black Jell-o and had a honey flavor, and was great. But again, this is all Chinese and not Japanese.

I then walked up to my hotel for the night, the Kyoto Hotel Okura, which was quite comfortable and pleasant, and right on a subway line. The view from my eighth-floor window included Kyoto City Hall next door.

Day 13: Kyoto II   The first full day I wanted to see the sights on the other side of the river, which runs north-south a block away from my hotel. The Kyoto metro has two lines that cross in a large plus in central Kyoto, and my hotel was right at a station on its east branch, but that didn’t help me here. Instead I found a private suburban line that ran right along the river, so I took that for a couple of stops to the south of town. Buying tickets on this line or the metro is very easy. You check out on the map what the fare is to the stop you want, put either bills or coins into the machine, and press the fare you need to pay. You get a ticket for the turnstiles (leaving and arriving), and change.

My first stop was a highlight of the day, Sanjusangen-do Hall from 1266. The building itself impresses, given its pagoda roof, age, heavy-wood-beamed construction, and the scent of incense throughout. Its size also impresses, but not how you’d think. As you enter the front, the Hall is only 50 m (50 ft) wide, but then you proceed to a corner and get to look down the Hall’s 120 m (400 ft) length, which makes it the longest wooden building in Japan.

There are translucent panels on the length of the wall to your left, filtering in daylight to lighten the scene amid the dark, aged wood beams. And what you see running the length of the building on the right is three-fold, including 1001 statues of Kannon and 30 statues of other gods.

There are first of all 1000 standing statues of Kannon (count ‘em if you will). They are almost life-sized and arranged in about a dozen rows in sort of bleachers running the length of the Hall. They’re made of cypress and gilded. I understand 124 date from the 12C and 876 from the 13C. I left out the point that each statue is thousand-armed. Well, sort of. But each one does have 40 small arms coming out from the sides that are meant to represent 1000 per statue. It’s a visually stunning site, and even more impressive when you stand at the end of one of the rows and look down its length.

But I said there are 1001 Kannon statues, because halfway down the hall is a large seated Kannon from 1254, 3.3 m (11 ft) high. The third thing to see is a row of 30 statues placed intermittently in front of the first long row. They are each described as national art treasures, and depict various other gods, serving as disciples to Kannon. The wind god and thunder god, which one sees often, are at either end, and so many of the other gods show Indian origin; some of them had both Japanese and Hindu names, Vishnu being a memorable one. I never realized before that there were so many Hindu deities adopted into Buddhism. At one point there was a sign suggesting in Japanese and English a certain prayer, with an optional alternative written in Sanskrit for those who wanted to do it “in the original”.

They are particularly strict about no picture-taking here, and it was difficult to find a decent one online to use here. This one of the Kannon Statues is not decent enough, but will have to do. It seems to be taken from an antiquated postcard, with old spellings in the caption. It lacks the 30 statues of the gods, and the big central Kannon. Also, the railing is much more impressive today and the statues here look smaller than they really are. Given all that, 1000 statues of Kannon still impress, as does the length of Sanjusangen-do Hall.

One rather modern-looking woman visitor was so taken by the sight of all this that she kept putting her forehead to the floor while her husband waited patiently by. One could buy votive incense to burn as well as votive candles to light. So much of this scene reminded of Roman Catholicism—it could have been statues of Mary with statues of saints in the foreground.

My route to the next site took me through a park area along a hillside which included a Japanese cemetery. There was no greenery near the monuments, which were side-by-side. The monuments were square, as tall as a person, with the obelisk on a pedestal, which then surmounted a second pedestal.

Another highlight was then that next site, Kiyomizu Temple, founded in 798, but rebuilt in 1633. It’s known for its site high on the hillside with extensive views down to Kyoto from its veranda, which stands on 39 huge wooden pillars, a sight by themselves, each 15 m (47 ft) high. To me the most curious shrine was hidden behind another building. It was listed as Kannon with Wet Hands, and consisted of a small statue of Kannon in the center of a stone basin, the whole thing not waist-high. The small statue was dripping wet, and I then saw why. Nearby was a fountain and people were using long-handled dippers to carry water over to pour Kannon’s head. I never found out why, or understood the “wet hands” reference.

But maybe it had to do with what was to me the most interesting part of Kiyomizu, Otowa-no-Taki, or Otowa Falls. Kiyomizu means “pure water”, and the whole complex was originally founded here because of a spring, which is on a hillside and which perhaps originally came down as a waterfall. However, today it’s channelized to come down over a roofed-in area that you stand under with three channels of water running off the roof into a pond. Using one of those long-handled dippers, you then catch water from one of these streams to drink it. It really is nice, fresh spring water, and is supposed to give you health, long life, blah, blah. Now so many people drinking from the same few dippers might seem to you to be unhygienic, especially given the Japanese passion for surgical face masks. But there’s also a typically Japanese solution. Hidden away under that roof is a modern ultra-violet sterilizer from which you take a dipper, drink, and then return it. This is Japan.

I saw a votive tablet in what I could recognize was Vietnamese, a first for me here, and I finally found a Dutch one:

I’ve talked about being shrined-out, but maybe the next step up is being overshrined, or even übershrined, so I ended this walk late in the afternoon by stopping in Gion, which is the traditional geisha district of Kyoto. Most Westerners misinterpret what geishas are. They are not sex workers, but their traditional job is to entertain men, usually with flirting, talk, music, and entertainment. I suppose there’s a sleazy parallel in the West—bar girls, who aren’t necessarily sex workers, but who do flirt with men to get them to feel good and buy more drinks. That may be the closest parallel, but it’s sleazy as described, while what a geisha does is refined. The center of Gion is Hanamikoji Dori, a lane that’s an enclave of two-level rather solemn-looking, sedate wooden houses and exclusive restaurants that are part of the geisha world. In a nearby neighborhood I came across two white-faced geishas in costume on the way to an appointment.

While walking back on some heavily-trafficked streets, I was lucky to find a stream crossing under the road that was headed in my direction, so I thought it would be a more pleasant way to walk. I turned into a side street and followed it a bit into a nice quiet neighborhood where the swift-flowing stream had a narrow roadway on each side and willow trees hanging over it. It was very reminiscent of a small-scale Amsterdam.

I ended the day in a bookstore. I’d started the trip with 1 ½ books to read, and they were now finished. In Samoa and New Zealand earlier this year getting English books was no problem, but here I needed a store specializing in foreign books, which my hotel recommended, to get a couple more to last until I was home.

Day 14: Kyoto III   The first stop of the day turned out to be more of a surprise than I’d expected. I first walked a few blocks from my hotel to the Kyoto Imperial Palace (Kyoto Gosho), where the imperial family lived from 1331 to 1868, when they moved to Tokyo. The entire rectangular estate is today a public park. I came across the walled enclosure within the park housing the palace area, and found all the gates closed. I wasn’t really too concerned, since only guided tours are available, and for ones in English you have to apply in advance. I was ready to move on to my next stop when I looked down the long length on another side of the enclosing wall and saw swarms of people moving in. I had to investigate. It turns out that, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the enthronement of the current emperor, Special Open Days were being held, just from November 1-10, and here it was the 7th, so I joined them. It was very well organized. The brochure showed you just where to go and explained what you’d be seeing. Moving along five and six people across was not really a problem. You got to see all the buildings, and walked through the courtyards. At one point there was a traditional dance and music performance. Four men in flowing orange costumes with hanging sleeves did a stylized, synchronized dance to the accompaniment of about a dozen brightly-costumed musicians playing different flute-like instruments. There were several Japanese gardens, and I’m becoming more and more convinced that the Japanese style of garden is superior to others in its simplicity and charm.

I then took the subway to Nijo Castle of 1603, which is in the style of the Edo period, since it was the shogun’s home. In it is the Nihomaru Palace, with typical dark-brown interiors, where one room has mannequins showing warlords meeting with the shogun. It’s ironical that it was from Nijo Castle that Meiji issued the decree in 1868 abolishing the shogunate and restoring the emperor’s sovereignty.

I ended up at the Heian Shrine, in spectacular green and orange. It only dates from 1895, but commemorates the 1100th anniversary of the founding of Kyoto. It’s surrounded by the Shinen Garden, famous for its changing maple leaves in the fall. There were a number of attractive ponds, and, although I found the use of English in signs to be generally quite good, this sign was posted before crossing some stepping stones:

It’s charming, and yet perfectly understandable. (I’ve also seen a sign at a breakfast buffet saying the serving bowl contained Corn Frakes, and a restaurant sold beer by the bottle or by the grass.) Nearby there was a large wooden bridge with a two-level pagoda-like structure at the center and benches to view the lake scene. People were feeding the carp as a heron flew by, and it all looked very much like this scene of Autumn in Kyoto.