At 7:00 am Sapporo station was
bustling. Crowds of people shuffled around each other in an intricate weaving of
human traffic. Long lines formed at each of the ticket windows, and I was relieved
that I purchased by ticket two weeks in advance. After buying a bento and
snacks for the long journey, I found the sign for the train departing to
Wakkanai and boarded in car number 2. I
took my place at t window seat, and as the seats were narrow, a trademark of
earlier trains in Japan, I spread my body out across two of them and made
myself comfortable. This would be my home for the next five hours.
The large window frames a fantastic scene as the train eased out of the
concrete landscapes of Sapporo. Slowly picked up speed and once the sky scrapers were far behind us,
rolling plains of snow and distant forests took their. During the long
ride, I absorbed the scenes out the train window. Grey barren trees, piles of
un-melted snow from winter, rolling hills of dry brown grass, and the distant
white peaks of sharp mountains. Occasionally a colorful shape would pop of the
snow, usually a lone house, always fire red, golden yellow, or aqua blue. On
the mainland of Japan, where houses try to mimic nature, try to live in harmony
with it, it felt like the homes in Hokkaido wanted to outshine their settings.
They were unnatural shapes, unnatural colors, in unnatural positions on the
earth. Rather than being cradled in the fold of tiny hills, or perched along river
beds, they were isolated structures amid
barren planes, interrupting the
expansiveness of an open valley.
After only an hour I found it difficult to stay comfortable on the train.
The seat did not recline far, and although I had spread myself across two seat
I couldn’t seem to settle into one position.
Halfway through the journey, as we ascended up a mountain and neared
Asahikawa, the small piles of snow grew until they covered the ground was
wholly invisible. The trees had no even begin to bloom; it was as though we had
traveled backwards from early spring to the dead of winter.
I began to worry if the clothing I packed was too light for such weather.
But my fear waned as the train lurched on, two hours left in its journey, and
the snow began to disappear again. Green leaves from young bamboo took its
place on the rolling hills, and the deep emerald of pine trees could be seen in
the distance.
I took a snapshot of the station at Toyotomi, a tiny town bordering
Wakkanai. The station was little more than a concrete podium and a white sign
against a stark backdrop of dead grass and brown mountains.
I prepared myself for a similar scene in Wakkanai. When the train screeched into the Wakkanai terminal at 1:00 pm, I
disembarked from the train carriage into an open air platform, and felt the cool northern air for the first time
in five hours. It was not the biting wind I had felt in Sapporo, nor that
extreme cold I shuddered to touch from the train window. This was a pleasant
breeze warm from the powerful sun which illuminated everything beyond the
shelter of the train station. The sun only heightened the wild colors of the
homes and building, though many of them were crumbling and faded, they seemed
to smile in the radiant light.
I had made it to the most northern city in Japan. With expectations of
encountering a cold and barren refuge, I
was at once enchanted with carnival of a town and its jubilant weather.
A few ardent tourists had rushed
off the train to photograph the
station signs, showing the distance of
Wakkanai from Tokyo. I wondered if I would see them again at one of the
few attractions in this small northern city, but as we left the station we
scattered into the city and I was alone when I reached the lobby of my hotel.
No comments:
Post a Comment