#otoineppu

[azukick]

いつも訪れる道央よりさらに北へ。 ただひたすらの緑と、透明なブルー。

[umahouse67]

2017_08_25_teshiocho-horonobecho-otoineppu-nakagawacho

[snowandravens]

Welcome to Winterfell...And other House Stark References...

Winter blew in last night, dumping half a foot of snow on my small mountain village. It's still snowing outside as I write, fat white flakes falling from on high, gifts from heaven, with all the dubious references that implies. Summer seems like a island wide fever dream now, with my facebook page full of ALTs, new and old, commenting on the snow. Those of us who have lived through winter in Hokkaido before observe the snow with the resigned sigh of experience while the newbies seem to greet the white fluff with an exuberance that can only be attributed to ignorance. Easy trips to the next town over are gone, as are untroubled train trips into the big city, replaced with arduous calculations on the best time to travel and the likelihood of a sudden blizzard. Even the promise of a thaw this weekend and a last minute chance to bug out for supplies does little to sooth the sinking sense that Father Winter has us all in his cold, white grasp. I have to make a list of things to do for the winter. Last year I was more on the ball with things having already put up my window insulation and purchased a yutanpo, or a hot water bottle. I held out until November 15th and while I hope I can this year, I'm not so sure. It seems terribly cold right now and I'm no longer a fan of shaking through the day. My mother is probably laughing at me as she reads this. (Or my father reads it to her. Either way, HI!) I need to clean off my windows and apply bubble wrap to them, a simple way to hold in heat or at least give me the placebo effect that they're working. Then I have to replace the foam insulation around the windows, slide on the draft guard for my door and then contemplate the elephant in my garage. Japan has yet to embrace the wonder of all season tires and as such I am the proud owner of four winter tires that need to be put on my car. Driving right now is a wintery death trap and I have to be careful if I don't want to slide into a ditch or into another car. I creep along, windshield wipers trying to push off all the snow, worrying about the sound of my car (something that will also have to get fixed ASAP). The last ALT managed to get t-boned pulling out of the parking lot of my junior high, an experience I am not looking to repeat. I suppose I'll be less nervous when I get the winter tires on and have the car fixed, my proper snow senses attuned and the promise of snowboarding on the horizon but right now all I can think is that it's cold, wet and trecherous out there. Oh Kansai how I miss you.

[snowandravens]

This is exactly how the Hokkaido Fox feels about winter right about now.

[snowandravens]

A Frozen Fox

Apparently there has been a leak in the pipes that supply oil to the heaters at my junior high school. A terrible flyer was on my desk this morning, detailing costs and savings the school will have to go through until April when apparently all heating will stop, regardless of the actual weather conditions outside. (As is the Japanese way of things.) They called some kind of repair person in to fix the leak and apparently they've turned off all the heaters in the school. ALL OF THEM. It's supposed to be a high of -6 Celcius and my co-teacher has just given the kids the go-ahead to put on their winter coats so that they don't freeze to death. It seems the solution to this problem is to purchase/rent a bunch of metal barrels, pump them full of heating oil and use those to supply the heaters in the school room until April when the flipping of a calendar page will magically solve this problem. Right. I'm now sitting in my snowboarding jacket, zipped up to my face as I wait for my body to start producing heat again after darting through the all ready frigid hallways to get back to the teacher's room. There is ice on the windows and it's snowing outside. The school nurse/counselor/resident angel of mercy is wearing a wool blanket but I suspect she has some kind of heating patch or heater over at her desk because everyone else is bundled up as if going snowboarding. Not to mention the heating oil smells like gasoline so can practically get high just by walking past a class room. *sigh* #Hokkaido Problems.

[snowandravens]

The Funeral Bus

I saw a golden dragon today, rushing down the street before the snow got worse. I wasn't paying enough attention to the dragon because I spotted the funeral bus, a blue and white bus with big windows that let the miserable peer out at a happy world like black goldfish. It seems like every other week the funeral bus comes out to take the stoic and middle aged to cemeteries and grief. Death is a regular visitor with incense and beads, bored looking children and lazy columns of cigarette smoke.

[snowandravens]

Escape from Sapporo

Normally, I love Sapporo and I am loathe to leave this amenties packed, people filled, three-starbucks-within-1-km-radius loaded city in the snowy north but yesterday Sapporo and I had a fight. But don't worry Sapporo because I am totally going to txt you an apology later on tonight after I'm done cheating on you with Tokyo and New York. You know you're the only snow-laden metropolis for me.

So...without further ado, and before Snowtoineppu is blown away by ANOTHER foot of snow...here's the story.

Over the New Year's Holidays I spent roughly a week with my best friend in Akita city. We had a great, cheap mostly damn you snowboarding!! time watching movies, eating food, hiding out from the locals and puzzling through the BBC's Sherlock. We also watched Jellyfish Princess, bemoaned the short season and went to see the Hobbit, which was fantastic and uhm, full of non-hobbity things. But that calls for another post and probably gifs.

Because I medicate with retail therapy at Target Because I'm poor and I'm trying to stay on budget I took four trains from Snowtoineppu to Akita city and it is a LONG trip. I leave at about 9 in the morning and get home roughly twelve hours later. There is no Shinkansen up in Hokkaido and there won't be until 2015 when it finally makes it to Hakodate, which is kind of like being excited because they're putting in a new Disney Land and it's only 6 hours away. To the closest airport, which flies to that city. That's close right? This is totally doable! 

Ha. Ha-ha.

So I left Akita full of saddness, and onigiri, and boarded the train to Snowtoineppu armed with two books, two movies, two episodes of the Big Bang Theory and the determination to finally be able to sleep on public transport. I settled into my seat, turned on my first movie and promptly zoned out from Akita to Hakodate. Upon hauling my luggage between trains and finding my train car, I discovered that the ever-so-kind people at the JR green window (that's one of the places where you can buy train tickets) had placed me next to the prissiest Japanese woman traveller I had ever seen. Her hair was down and flipped expertly at the ends and she was wearing the skinniest pair of leather high heeled elf boots known to man. This combined with her petite hot lemon tea pertly resting on the drink holder and a bedazzled cell phone told me I was sitting next to a serious Stylish.

Oh, did I mention she was wearing plaid knickerbockers? Truly precious.

I have found that Hokkaido, minus Sapporo, truly discourages fashionable dressing. It's cold as all get out here for half of the year and even the most dedicated of fashionistas can't bring themselves to completely suffer for fashion. Travellers especially, they all wear some variant of skinny jeans, knee high boots with warm lining and layered slouchy sweaters. The hair is of course impeccably styled and the hand bags are usually japanese high end (if not Louis Vuitton because that's the only Real Brand-tm) but the coats are warm and the scarves are many and adorable. But this woman would not be disuaded and I'm afraid, dear readers, that she's probably in a hospital somewhere suffering from a truly terrible case of frostbite on her toes which are now permanently frozen into a little triangle.

After a long ride from Hakodate to Sapporo, spent watching Ip Man which really makes you hate Japanese people in general, I made it to Sapporo and with a sigh of relief and dread, I left my train and headed towards the LAST TRAIN. 

That sound you hear is the imaginary choir of cherubim singing Hallelujah.

At first I was a little depressed that I couldn't stick around in Sapporo and at least get some curry or a pizza but after traveling since 9 am and with the promise of my own bed, I was mostly happy just to have the last three hours ahead of me.  Truthfully I didn't have the money to spend in Sapporo so I stood wistfully in line for my train cabin and dreamed of the day when I could spend money on things other than student loans would live in a place that actually had vegetables other than spinach and cabbage for sale. The train pulled in right on time and I got in, deposited my stuff and waited for the cart service cabin lady to bring me a bento of which I would eat probably half. (I do not, on general principle, eat fish with their heads still attached.)

So I waited.

And waited.

While I waited, I noticed a man standing outside of my train, taking a picture of the computerized screen that shows the name and ultimate destination of train. Densha-Otaku (train geeks) are all over Hokkaido in a way I don't remember seeing in Honshu. They stand on the train platforms taking pictures of trains pulling in, pictures of train signs, pictures of trains pulling out and pictures of train engines, glazing at the pictures like some kind of extremely rare piece of jewelery or art. 

And they are on EVERY train I take. Sometimes there are more than one. One train I was on, had three. Three. For one train car that only goes between Otoineppu and Nayoro.

THREE.

Feeling like this would make a good tumblr post I snapped a seruptious picture of the sneaky photographer and went back to waiting.

And waiting.

And waiting.

Apparently I cursed my train because we never left the station and we never even left the platform. Our train moved about 2 meters and then stopped. About an hour after we boarded the conductor came on the horn and told us that a.) if you're a time sensitive passenger going up to Asahikawa, get on another train and b.) the break is broken and this train will not be going anywhere. Get off.

@____@ I cannot emphasize how freaked out my japanese train mates were. Usually I'm the one running around double checking that I'm on the right train and that it's going in the direction I want to go. I'm used to that. I don't speak or read japanese fluently so there is always a higher level of stress for me travelling in Hokkaido because trains don't run very frequently here and they stop SUPER early compared to Tokyo and most of Honshu in my experience. But my fellow japanese travellers were the ones who were freaking out this time. I actually saw a lady jump in her seat, absolutely horrified that the train, a TRAIN, was not working and that she would have to wait. Others fluttered around anxiously, yakking the ear off of some poor platform conductor and wandering around aimlessly like lost carrier pigeons trying to find their way home. Personally, I bothered every single JR person I could find, trying to find somebody to explain to me in either a.) simple japanese or b.) simple english what happened and what I should do. I eventually got out of the people at the gates that the next train was coming at 8 and it would be essentially the same train just running three hours late.

So apparently Sapporo, in a fit of posessive pique, tried to keep me in it's lovely snowy confines instead of releasing me back into the wilds of Rumoi. I wandered the station, looking for a place to plug in my phone (which was slowly dying from a low battery) and then I decided to take advantage of my predicament and wandered downstairs in search of the elusive McDonalds. I grabbed a Big Mac meal, which was ALSO delayed (are we sensing a theme here, and hurried back up to my platform only to wait AGAIN for the train to finally crawl into Sapporo. By then it was 8 pm and I knew I had a late arrival time waiting for me.

Fortunately this train was working properly and we sped off into the night, picking up people at only two stops before Asahikawa (we usually make three or four. I can't remember it accurately.) and we hardly idled there (where we usually stop for about ten minutes) before it was off again to Wassamu, Sheep-land and finally, home to Otoineppu. I made it home in the silence of newly fallen snow, past three story tall mounds of snow and piles of plowed ice that are had completely covered entire sides of buildings. It was a lovely quiet way to end a long day of traveling. 

I have learned my lesson though, next time one of Sapporo's Densha-Otaku geek out over my train, I will not photograph him! Next time it could be for a train to the airport and I do NOT want to miss a flight that may or may not take me to Tokyo... For reasons that are completely mysterious.

[snowandravens]

It's cold here folks. Really cold. I can't remember the last time I was so cold.

Texas made me soft.

I almost-think-I-might-have-if-I think-about-it-too-much got frost bite taking this video so enjoy the fruits of my cold frozen labor!