Hokkaido diary: Tokyo to Sapporo

A quick aside before we begin: this is the Sententious Vaunter's 600th post. A big thank-you to all you lovely followers who've hung with me for even half that time.

2/3: 

• woke up at 4:30 a.m.; back hurts
• got some H2O
• packed up and left at 5:30
• walked a few blocks to Tokyo Station, mumbling to myself
• found out I can't exchange my voucher for a Rail Pass until 7:30
• went to McDonald's and ate a breakfast sandwich with coffee and watched the light creep into the sky
• allergies are giving me the business this morning—must be the capsule bedding
• Not content to sit in Mickey D's for 90 minutes, I stashed my stuff in a station locker. My rabbit fur hat, strapped to my backpack, was shedding all over it like a living animal
• I stuck my hands in my pockets and walked south to Ginza. The city came awake as I had—slowly, groggily, gray and uncertain. I tried to capture the freshness of the morning, but couldn't. A slimy haze, like last night's hangover, lay over all. I reveled in the cool and calmness, deliberately going against the grain by walking slow and looking happy—the opposite, as Theroux wrote, of most Tokyoites, hurried and worried. This is where I should stick some platitude about "the city was all mine in the predawn light" but that'd just be doggerel. I bought some sandwiches, mikan (tangerines) and water and fruit juices (plus my trusty traveler's fifth of Suntory whisky) at Lawson Station and got my JR Pass. Then I cracked my stuff out of my locker and threaded my way through the labyrinthine passages (flashing my pass at every guard at every turnstile) to the Tohoku platform 22 and the 8:20 Hayabusa to Shin-Aomori:
                 
                       8:20 - 11:19                Tokyo - Shin-Aomori
                        (179 min.)                   (Hayabusa Shinkansen)
                        15 min. transfer
  
                       11:34 - 1:44                Shin-Aomori - Hakodate
                        (130 min)                  (Super Hakucho)
                        29 min. transfer
  
                       2:13 - 6:14                  Hakodate - Sapporo
                       (241 min.)                   (Hokuto)
  

8:00 a.m. So, Steely Dan says you can't buy a thrill, eh? Try pulling out of Tokyo Station on a bullet train. Nothing else like it.

Hung my fur hat on a hook and used it for a pouch to hold things in (finally managed to put on some deodorant, too)

• Everyone else eating their breakfasts—bread or bento (boxed, compartmentalized meals)
• I ate one of my sandwiches (supposedly a BLT, bu really a BLEPT—bacon, lettuce, egg, pickle and tomato—and tried some perfectly awful vegetable fruit juice
• 8:35 a.m. Tokyo still had that slimy film on it that I'd noticed earlier
• 8:45 a.m. Brief stop at Omiya; sure is nice having 3 seats to myself.
• 9:45 a.m. Napped for an hour and woke up to Sendai
• 9:52 a.m. Stop at Sendai
• 10:08 a.m. Passed acres of farmland mysteriously steaming—at first I thought, panicked, of Fukushima and insidious, invisible radiation—then I saw the men burning brush and weeds, scouring the fields clean well ahead of planting season
• 10:15 a.m. Popped out of a tunnel and there was snow on the ground. Always happens like that on bullet trains. Rivers still running like iron bands across the white landscape
• 10:27 a.m. Sky beginning to clear
• Bluish mountains dusted with white rearing their heads in the distance; stopping soon at Morioka
• 11:00 a.m. Flatter now. No snow, just slush, tired-looking rail yards, clusters of houses and brown fields. Too many damn tunnels to see much. Read the Sapporo and Wakkanai chapters of Theroux's book.
• 11:06 a.m. Snowy again, from what I can see. Next stop is Shin-Aomori, the end of the line for the Shinkansen.
  
  Writers are snobs. We're just snobby about different stuff. Theroux is snobby about airplanes, manga, cellphones, computers, and people who walk and eat at the same time. I'm snobby about movies (at best a liberal brainwashing, at worst a cheap shell game, intended to bully, browbeat, shock, desensitize and amuse the populace into acquiescence) and music (hip-hop, created to make both the performer and the listeners think they're cool)
• 11:15 a.m. Will these tunnels never end? Sky's getting grayer. Shin-Aomori should be just minutes away.
• 11:30 a.m. Well, perfect. I suppose I should have expected this. Made a successful transfer to the Super-Hakucho 15 only to find the platform crowded with fatuous-looking foreigners—Americans in a tour group, all wearing name-brand coats and hefting fancy luggage and backpacks with names like "Arcteryx." Here for the snow festival, like me, and the ski slopes too, most of them. When did the outdoors become a penis-measuring contest? I suppose it has always been since the days of rich dentists and newspaper editors going on safari. At least brand names weren't so abundant and intrusive back then. God, there's nothing I hate worse than seeing knock-kneed, buck-toothed jackanapes with bulging eyes and protuberant Adam's apples taking pictures of an oncoming train with a smartphone. Ugh. I'm glad I'm only hear [sic] for the first day of the festival.
  
  Wow, speaking of snobby...
• 11:37 a.m. On the move, heading for Aomori proper. Lots of snow, heaped against buildings and on rooftops in spongy, sagging layers like week-old frosting on an angel food cake. 
• 11:52 a.m. For reasons which I would understand if I spoke Japanese, the train sat for an interminable age at Aomori, then started back the way it came—toward Shin-Aomori. Maybe we need to go back and switch tracks or something, or perhaps Aomori proper was just a branch stop. Ate another of my sandwiches. I have some tangerines, one apple juice and a full bottle of whiskey left. Morale is high. 
• 11:58 a.m. Yeah, we're on a different track now, passing white snow-clad fields with wisps of brown grass sticking up and crossing viscous gray-green streams. 
• I have an interesting map in front of me on the underside of my folding tray. It's a cross-section of the Seikan Tunnel under Tsugaru Strait, which this train will take to reach Hakodate on Hokkaido. According to the map, the tunnel curves at an obtuse angle beneath 140 m of water and 100 m of seabed, for a total length of 53.85 km, 23.3 of which is water (the rest seems impassibly mountainous). It will take us 24 minutes to traverse it. 
• We're just sitting again, this time in the middle of nowhere .I hope I don't miss my connection at Hakodate. I'm getting into Sapporo late enough tonight as it is. 
• 12:19 p.m. Rolling into Kanita, and BAM—there's the ocean off to the right—rolling, windblown, reflecting the gray sky. Snowy mountains across the water—my first glimpse of Hokkaido perhaps?
• 12:56 p.m. Nodding off and drowsing in my sleep. We've been in the tunnel for ages. The map shows some sort of station—Tappi, it's called—1/3 of the way along, just before water. We must have shot right by it. 
• 1:02 p.m. And we're out—still overcast but the snow is blinding after all that darkness. We must be on Hokkaido by now. Deep snow everywhere, piled high by doorways, just as Theroux described
• 1:09 p.m. Brief stop at Kikonai. Next stop, Hakodate. Much colder now. All the snow makes the plows and cottages look like cupcakes. Clumps of wet snow nest in the dead branches of skeletal trees like weird fruit.

2:05 p.m. Easiest transfer ever. The blocky, angular Hokuto 91 was directly across from us, engines rumbling. I bought some more snacks (plus beer) and now we're just waiting around 'til the darn thing leaves at 2:13 p.m. for the four-hour drive to Sapporo. I've got my Nook, my iPod and everything else I need for the journey. All the chuckleheads who got on at Aomori are in my car this time. Bummer. I don't have a window seat, but at least my seatmate (the first since leaving Tokyo) is a shy, retiring Japanese girl, maybe a university student. Okay, beer time. And snacks. I bought Yebisu Malt, some nuts in a small plastic bottle, more water and onigiri—a rice ball wrapped in seaweed and filled with salty tuna. The Koreans would surely think it Gimbap.

2:31 p.m. Somewhat distracted by my book, The Terror by Dan Simmons—getting good only 14 pages in—but must remember to look out the window. Real scenic out here, plains and woods and lofty mountains and the distant gray sea. Can't write too much, though. This contraption is the rockiest, shakiest, bounciest ride yet—worse than the Super Express with its wheezy, whistling brakes, worse than rattling, banging Amtrak. It's like being in a truck on a dirt road, and going through tunnels is even worse.

• 2:38 p.m. Brief stop at Onumakoen—foresty and drenched in thick snow, layered and crusty and flaky like pastry crust. 
• 2:57 p.m. Brief stop at Mori; sea and fog-strewn mountains to the right. This damned car is roasting hot—Why???
• 3:21 p.m. Brief stop at Yakumo
• 3:43 p.m. Brief stop at Oshamambe; young foreign couple got off here. The man had a Japanese sword stuck through the straps of his pack
• 3:47 p.m. Still following the sea around the arm of a great bay. Getting ridiculously snowy. Looks to be knee-deep in most places, and the mountaintops are simply caked with it. Sky and sea are leaden—a cheerless sight. How did the Ainu survive here?
• 4:11 p.m. Brief stop at Toya; Reading Simmons's book really makes you fearful of those cold northern wastes where ice and wind drive men mad and unknown terrors lurk.
• 4:24 p.m. Brief stop at Datemombetsu. Charming little station with a covered platform and a noodle shop.
• 4:44 p.m. Brief stop at Higashi-Muroran—rather big place compared to the others
• 4:53 p.m. Getting dark. Looks dang cold out there. Hard to believe I woke up in Tokyo this morning and it was 45 degrees. This ol' heap keeps wobbling and jerking back and forth and side-to-side. Wheels slipping on snow? Unsteady hand at the wheel? I don't know much about diesel trains but I'd swear this thing has a manual transmission. 
• 4:58 p.m. Brief stop at Noboribetsu. It's not just cold and wintery out there anymore—it's frozen. In the fading purple light I can see slush frozen into jagged ridges on the roads and icicles dangling from the eaves of the houses, which look hunched over against the cold. It's colder in the car, too—have they turned the heaters off, or is it just that nippy out?
• 5:40 p.m. Totally missed the last station. Coming up on Chitose now. I've read 160 pages of this book without pause. 
• 7:18 p.m. FINALLY in my hotel room (as you can likely tell from my neater script). We were delayed 30 minutes getting into Sapporo due to another train having mechanical problems ahead. After a lot of starts and stops, we finally squoze by and sneaked into town like a teenager who's stayed out too late. 

I KNEW those chucklehead foreigners were trouble—Americans and Australians both. I'm beginning to see why my mother and my fiancée both claim to hate people in general, and why Paul Theroux wrote that meeting another traveler is his (and every traveler's) greatest fear. What I should I see [sic] when I get off the train than this same stupid-looking bunch of people forming a gabby, impenetrable knot right at the top of the platform staircase. Fed up (and a bit travel-fatigued, I'll admit) I shoved right through them, gleefully relishing their bemused stares. Halfway to my hotel, however, I had a horrible thought. I remembered that, two months ago, I had by some miracle snagged the last vacant room at the Sapporo Clark. Upon rounding a corner and looking in through the lobby windows, my worst fears were confirmed: that same knot of gabby foreigners had beaten me to the punch. They were all standing in the lobby, yapping as they checked in. I kicked the two-foot-deep snowbank next to me and waited around for 15 minutes until they cleared out.

Now I'm in my room, cramped and lonely and with an iron-hard East Asian mattress. But THERE IS A BATHTUB. I'm going to go find something delicious and decadent to eat, come back, peel off my grimy clothes and stinking socks, and have the most gorgeous bath ever.

Next time, I won't come here when there's a festival on.