Live from Japan!

Our first stop in Hokkaido was Otaru, it was a natural starting place since it was where the ferry dropped us off.

Before arriving we knew that Otaru was famous for two things – glass and a canal. From our inspection, that’s really it. We had two nights to spend there (one full-day in-between) and it ended up being really relaxing. A nice slow place to start our nice slow vacation.

Otaru sort of fancies itself as the “Venice of the East.” But, so far as I can tell, it has very little in common. Sure, it has a canal, one single canal that is no more than a few kilometers in length. It is a pretty canal, it is a fine place to spend and evening strolling, but nothing to warrant the self-given title.

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One of the places we spent a couple of nights while in Hokkaido was Asahidake-Onsen. A little chain of hotels and lodges all surrounding the hot springs at the base of Asahidake, the highest peak on Daisetsusan, and the highest point in Hokkaido. Daisetsuzan is a huge volcano, and it is active. Daisetsuzan shares its name with a national park that covers almost the entire system of peaks on top of this giant volcano. We enjoyed walking around the top just under peak of Asahidake. There were lovely little lakes and a bunch of fumaroles. Made it easy to understand where all the hot water was coming for our evening baths.

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As many of you know we decided to take a bit of a less conventional mode of transportation when we made our visit to Hokkaido earlier this month. We had heard about the passenger ferries available earlier during our stay, and always thought that it would be a fun way to travel. So, when it was time to make arrangements for our trip to Hokkaido, the idea reentered our minds and we decided to go for it.

There were several ferries to choose from and we ultimately ended up deciding to catch the Shin Nihonkai ferry from Maizuru. The schedule was the most convenient for us, and it was one of the fastest ferries available.

The ferries here are essentially enormous cargo ships that they decided to slap a hotel onto the top of. Their primary purpose is hauling goods between ports, secondary to that purpose was hauling people and vehicles. As a result, the schedules were created much more with the shipping industry in mind than the humans that ride the ship.

When we arrived at the port at about 10:00pm at night we spent a little time watching semi trucks drive onto and off of the boat. I was actually pretty surprised at what a big ship it was and seeing those big trucks offered the perspective I needed.

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Wow! It has been awhile since we have posted one of these.

This was taken at the Summer Festival in Sapporo which ended up being a park filled with Beer Gardens. With all the beer that was being drunk by festival-goers, this sign was actually quite practical. No need to ask, when the sign tells you quite directly “How to get to toilet.”

As Aaron mentioned in a post about a week ago, each person in Japan is subject to an annual health check. Since he just posted about it, and I just got the results from my check, I thought now would be a good time to show you what it was all about (before we start posting about our vacation).

Well, first of all, the health check is much like he described. I opted for the cheaper, and more convenient, check performed at my school. A van (with an x-ray machine, exam rooms and other equipment) pulled up in front of the school at about noon. The employees got out and proceeded to set-up other stations inside a large classroom (scale, height station, hearing/eyesight, etc). I, along with many of my co-workers and employees from other area schools, showed up at 1:00pm and formed a single file line.

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-edit3: Oh boy, do I dare to dream that we are really back? Is it possible? Now that I have found several hours to dedicate to getting us back online here we are. So, add us back to your reading lists. We seem to be back! After many trials and tribulations, we have moved to a new host. (Thanks for the rec Josh.) I am hoping this will take for good. I am glad to be rid of our former host. This one seems to be a bit more responsive (YAY!), although a bit more expensive (doh!). Still, we should be able to get more out of them, we have a couple of new projects on the horizon. Keep an eye out for them.

-edit2: Well, the problems have returned. I will be working to fix them again, however if I cannot resolve them I will be looking to switch hosts. Anyone out there have some recommendations of a host the use and like? email me.

-edit: okay finally we are back for real. I still have no idea what caused this problem, but for the time being it seems I have resolved it.

Sorry everyone about the downtime, we have been experiencing some major problems with how our website is being hosted. But now it should work more or less correctly. We should be able to do some updating, and behind the scenes I will continue working to correct the problem.

Things are still not working correctly, you may notice that the web address you see at the top is not the one you would expect. I am still experiencing serious problems with our installation. I am not sure what is causing these problems at this point. But it may be necessary to so quite a bit more work to get thing running as they should.

I have been surprised since coming here by the shear number of articles in foreign papers that like to focus on how weird and twisted Japan is. Often they take something that seems perfectly reasonable, given appropriate context, and blow it hugely out of proportion. Living here, people often forward to me articles about Japan. Which I really appreciate, actually. I like reading about what the rest of the world sees Japan. However, I am starting to notice a pretty disturbing trend in the way Japan, or in fact most foreign countries are displayed.

So, if you will allow me a brief rant. I will dissect the article Alycia posted in her comment to one of my sumo posts.

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So, the blog will be pretty quiet for the next week. We are leaving tonight on a boat bound for Hokkaido and we won’t be back for a week.

We have no specific plans while we are there, so we are going to do whatever comes up and I am sure it will be a great time.

When we come back we will have plenty of stories and photos from the trip, so come and check it out then!

Later!

We saw this little alien guy on the doors of a store in Nagoya (can’t remember which one) and we couldn’t help but having a chuckle at it. And, of course, the two clear eyes in the door got the better of Aaron’s curiosity and he went over to have a look!