Sapporo, Fulano, end of term reflections, goals and more!

As I am typing letters into this Word document, our bus is passing through the outskirts of Sapporo on the back to Hakodate. In the past three days, I was able to get a taste of Sapporo’s irresistible charm. It is certainly a very “interesting” city, much more than Hakodate, although in the end I might find myself preferring the latter.

So before I go too much into detail, a little bit of background first: HIF is divided into two semesters (学期), with a four day break in between. For our semester break, the program arranged a trip to Sapporo, Hokkaido’s provincial center and Japan’s fifth largest city. In Sapporo, we lived in a very nice three star hotel in four person rooms for an astoundingly low rate of 8200 yen for three nights (the usually rate for one night!). In the day we hung around the city, browsed its myriad shops and visited a few tourist attractions, and at night we attempted to experience a little of the city’s famous (infamous?) nightlife. I also made a trip to Fulano (富良野), a rural township in central Hokkaido famous for its stunning lavender fields and fresh produce.

Sapporo

A planned city that rose in the wake of the Meiji Restoration, Sapporo was constructed according to a rigid grid system, making it extremely easy to navigate. While it now boasts a population of nearly two million, in 1857 Sapporo only had a grand total of seven (!) residents. It was chosen in the Meiji period to be the administrative center of Hokkaido, presumably for its location, although weirdly it isn’t a harbor city. I should do some research on why Hakodate, one of the most important harbors of this period, wasn’t chosen instead – maybe they needed a place closer to Hokkaido’s interior, to facilitate the growth of the entire province, instead of just the coast?

旧札幌農学校演武場（札幌時計台）, circa 明治１１年

Anyway, so much for my Wikipedia-isque introduction of Sapporo. Instead of listing everything I did in the city, I think I’m going to try to describe the general impression that it gave me. Each city is unique in its own way, and that point really shows with Sapporo. I feel that many Chinese cities in general are being over developed and losing their respective cultural identities. An argument could be made that infrastructure precedes culture, but ultimately, cities should become places where people can live comfortably, and not become “cities” just for its own sake.

Compared to Hakodate, Sapporo is much more vibrant. It has very few skyscrapers or super prominent buildings (the most visually conspicuous building is probably the Sapporo TV tower, which is still just a simple steel frame tower with a large digital clock display, while every other building seemed to be the blocky, ten to twelve floor type), but its streets brim with shops of every kind – from roadside Ramen-yas (a Hokkaido specialty) to Karaokes and 居酒屋 (Japanese bar/pub/restaurant) – as one HIFer commented: “This is a place that lights up at night instead of dimming down.” Businessmen walk briskly by in the morning and make cheerful ruckuses heading into bars at night, often in large groups led by senior associates of the company. There’s a lot of young people, and not just students either. By comparison, Hakodate has more of a retirement home feel – you feel that people are either tourists, fishermen, or simply just really old.

A random minor 祭り that we happened to run into on the street

Sapporo is also famous for its night life. Susukino (ススキノ), usually written in shining Katakana in the form of bright neon lights, next to huge billboards featuring ridiculously suave, homogenously groomed callboys) is a red-light district that lies only two blocks from where we live. Apparently, it’s one of Japan’s three biggest red-light districts along with Roppongi (六本木) and Kabukicho (歌舞伎町) of Tokyo and some-name-that-I-forgot in Fukuoka, Kyushu.

The lights of Susukino at night

While Japan has banned prostitution, apparently only coitus is explicitly banned. Therefore, all other methods of “sex” (I realize that the term is used loosely here, but hey, Google this up, kids) are all still on the table. We walked around quite a lot in this area in the past few days, but actually didn’t go into any of the clubs, because a. it was horrendously expensive, with prices almost always twice as high for men as for women; and b. they were sketch as hell. The signs that you could see from the streets alone could add up to a porno. I’m not going to go into detail here, but as you can probably imagine, Susukino certainly paints another side of Sapporo.

Yes, apparently shit like this happens. Don't ask where or who is this - stole from the interwebs :p

In the end, Sapporo is a city full of interesting contrasts. It was meticulously planned and is rigidly laid out, but its atmosphere is light and carefree. It’s certainly a very, very modern city (I window shopped the Tiffany’s store), but also bears the history of its 開拓使 (name of the Meiji officials that were sent to Hokkaido to plan its initial development) past. For example, the red-light district that is now Susukino was actually included in the 開拓使’s original city blueprint in the 1870s, as a way to lure laborers from Honshu into staying in Hokkaido and enduring its unwelcoming winters.

One night me and friends were sitting on adjacent benches in Sapporo’s central park (大通公園), beers (the world famous Sapporo beer, of course) in hand, the lights lit hues of soft orange, and it had just been drizzling a bit an hour before. The grass was wet, but the pavement was dry. Two Japanese girls right beside were taking turns playing the guitar and sang. Another friend played a small drum. We chatted over unimportant things that I’ve already forgotten, but I don’t think I’ll be able to forget that night, when I stretched out on the wet grass and from the corner of my eyes saw the flickering lights from the looming TV tower. That’ll always be my memory of Sapporo.

Sapporo Beer Museum! Where you can get a glass of ice cold beer, plus free cheese and crackers, for 100 yen. Heaven on earth.

A gallery of advertisement pictures for Sapporo beer. An interesting conversation about the portrayal of masculinity ensued.

Japanese Clint Eastwood, anyone?

Fulano

I’m starting to get a little dizzy from typing so much on the bus, and Fulano’s scenery needs to be shown rather that told, so I’ll just let pictures do the talking for me. Yes I have proven numerous times that I AM that lazy. :p

So much lavender!

Me! Looking kinda of dumb, must admit

Us taking the Lavender "bus" (really an odd tractor of sorts) at Lavender East!

The three members of our trip - me, Ko-san, and Cyo-san

The past month + goals

This is going to be slightly 困る (troublesome) because I’m supposed to write about this for my Japanese journal today, but I do want to look back on the past month and review my goals for HIF. I know I wrote in my first blog that I was going to talk about my goals and allow for enough time for reflection, which I have shamelessly ignored since, but this may be a good (and final) opportunity to do it.

Regarding my study abroad experience on the whole, I’ve been extremely happy about the way the past month has went in general. I’m less happy about my own effort with regards to Japanese learning and socializing with other HIFers, but I feel like it’s still been a month worth building upon.

First of all, Hokkaido, HIF, and my host family, all of the environmental factors so far, have been nothing short of amazing. Hokkaido is a truly beautiful, beautiful place, with a welcoming people, and I found myself positively fascinated with Japanese culture and society. Like almost any other foreigner, I’ve so impressed by how polite and orderly Japanese people are. One thing that I’ve noticed in particular is their utmost respect and devotion towards culture and tradition, which used to be the pride of the Middle Kingdom. Our traditions have been now kicked to the curb and are almost impossible to retrieve.

The HIF program runs like a well-oiled machine, and my Japanese sensei is wonderful. Everything’s been so good there’s literally nothing to write about here.

With regards to myself, I think that my effort level has been inconsistent. The bad thing with going to school with a lot of other 留学生 is that people always end up conversing in the language they’re most comfortable with if left to themselves – I’ve spoken English and Chinese almost exclusively for the Sapporo trip – and nothing destroys your confidence in a new language more than speaking extensively in your native tongue. The incredible (comparatively speaking) expressive freedom that I get with English/Chinese highlights how poorly I speak Japanese, and it’s hard to go back.

I wish I had spent more time studying vocabulary on my own, which is really the biggest obstacle in my Japanese studying right now. I have tried using Anki, but every day I come home and feel really tired, and have trouble maintaining focus. I can barely keep up with the 3-4 hours of homework that we get each day, and always end up pushing my IS project and additional studying back. The result is, nothing has gotten done. A consistent work ethic is one of the main things I had decided to work on this summer, so hopefully this situation will change soon.

Another one aspect of the summer experience that I’d to talk about is my relationship with the other HIFers. I find myself shying away from the big Gaijin groups, because it really takes me out of the cultural atmosphere. I’ve also come to realize that I often judge people pretty hard, and I’ll go out of my way to avoid people I don’t like, even if that means I won’t have the chance to be with people I moderately like. Not sure how this is going to change in the near future, as I simply cannot put up with people who I have a strong distaste for. I am enjoying being alone more than I had imagined possible, though. This is a point that I’ll continue to think about in the next month.

So finally, before the quality of this column really begins to taper off, my goals for next month:

1.     Try to spend weekdays 日本語だけ. I find that if I only speak Japanese for longer stretches of time, my confidence builds up and I improve very quickly. Instead of just speaking Japanese at HIF and with my host family, I want to force myself to not speak Chinese or English.

2.     Catch up with my IS project! My independent study project is to paint/draw around 5 signature images of Hakodate. True to my procrastinating ways, I currently have … 0 presentable paintings. I need to get on this fast, and I need at least two by this Friday. This needs to happen!

3.     Use Anki everyday. I want to manually input all new phrases I learn each day (I’m starting to become insensitive to new words/phrases, which is terrible), and do a daily review.

4.     Start reading 「ノルウェイの森」 (Norwegian Wood, the Murakami classic and one of my favorite novels) and manga in Japanese! It’s going to be a dictionary fest, but I need to start trying.

5.     Watch every episode of 多部ちゃん’s new drama, 「浪花少年探偵団」!! I can understand about half with the assistance of Japanese subtitles, and I’m having a wonderful time. Just caught an episode today, and I’ll be tuning in for sure every Monday at 8pm. Baa-chan seems to be enjoying it too, so it looks like I won’t be the only person watching it! J

That’s it for now – whew. That was a long one. I’m going to put up the pictures and go to bed now – tomorrow’s going to be a good day (hopefully)! Also, I’ll be sending postcards from Furano soon! Look forward to them! J