For my first-ever plane ride, the flight itself was utterly uneventful. Sure, I’d been on the edge of my seat before takeoff, and the weird pressure in my eardrums was kind of novel, but the initial excitement wore off pretty quick. About ten minutes after we reached cruising altitude, I was gazing out the window at the scenery below, feeling bored. I did really like those precious few seconds when we first passed through the clouds and everything went white; in that moment, it felt like we might find ourselves in a whole different world when we emerged on the other side.
A couple hours later, we landed at New Chitose Airport. Perhaps we were a bit pressed for time, though, because we weren’t allowed even a minute to soak it all in before we were rushed out of the airport and crammed onto our shuttle bus. From there, it was about a one-hour drive through mostly barren winter scenery before we ultimately arrived at something resembling the big city, at which point we promptly disembarked.
“Wooooo! We’re in Hokkaido!” Hoshihara exclaimed gleefully, throwing her hands in the air.
It was eleven o’clock in the morning.
The air in Sapporo was a lot cooler and clearer than it was back in Tsubakioka. With each breath I took, it felt like my lungs were being cleaned of all their impurities. After several hours of being stuck in a seat, the feeling of liberation won out over the cold for me, and for a while I just soaked in the crisp, fresh air without even putting my coat on.
Although the skies overhead were clear at the moment, the city streets were covered in a thick blanket of snow. All the major roads—like the one outside Sapporo Station, where we now stood—had been cleared away, with large mounds of snow piled high along the shoulders of the road.
“Okay, everyone,” said the head teacher for the sophomore class. “Make sure to be back here by five o’clock sharp. Don’t be late, or you’ll be left behind.”
He proceeded to rattle off a few more rules and warnings in a stern tone of voice. Everyone listened attentively, though I could see a few students so eager to be let loose that they were practically vibrating in their boots. Hoshihara was one of them; it seemed like she didn’t even realize she was swaying rapidly from side to side. When the head teacher had finished giving his spiel, his expression suddenly softened.
“All right,” he said. “Now have fun out there, and be careful. Dismissed!”
And so our free time began. We gathered into our activity groups and quickly dispersed in threes and fours. As soon as I linked up with Ushio and Hoshihara, the giddy girl immediately made a proclamation that almost sounded like a mandate:
“First order of business: food! Hokkaido’s famous for its seafood, right? Let’s head on over to the street market like we planned!”
We had indeed drafted up a rough itinerary for our free time in advance. Hoshihara had been the one to suggest we check out one of the local public markets.
“How do we get there?” asked Ushio.
“Well, it’d be fastest to just take the train,” said Hoshihara. “But we could totally get there on foot, no problem!”
“Sure, I’m down to walk. It’s pretty nice out, and it’ll help us work up an appetite.”
I had no objections either, so the three of us set off down the street.
While I’d been thoroughly impressed with how clean the air was here in Sapporo, the city itself didn’t feel all that unique or interesting at a glance. Sure, the roads were a lot wider, and the traffic lights were vertical instead of horizontal, but those were the only two novelties worth mentioning. Other than that, it was no different from your average big city, as far as I could tell.
“Feel like maybe I set my expectations a little too high,” I said.
“About what?” asked Ushio, leaning over as we walked.
I’d merely been musing aloud, so I hadn’t been expecting her to catch it. “Sapporo, I guess. Always figured it would feel a lot more different, since Hokkaido’s almost like a foreign country in some aspects.”
“You think? I’m not sure I’ve ever thought of it like that.”
“I mean, it’s completely detached from the mainland, with a big ocean in between.”
“You could say the same thing about Okinawa, though, couldn’t you?”
“Yeah, but Okinawa kinda has foreign country vibes too, in my book.”
“I feel like you’re making arbitrary distinctions. I’m fairly certain the locals might be offended if they heard you talking about their island like that.”
“W-wait, really? Damn, I’d better watch my words from now on…”
Now that I thought about it, I could definitely see how what I’d said could be interpreted negatively… Like, from a geopolitical standpoint or whatever.
“Hey, what are you two talking about?” said Hoshihara, falling back to walk alongside us. She’d immediately taken the lead and had been charging forward a fair few strides ahead of us this whole time—presumably because her stomach was calling to her.
“Oh, I was just telling Ushio that I was kinda expecting Hokkaido to feel more like a foreign country, but now I’m realizing that it isn’t all that different.”
“Like a foreign country? You mean because of all the Ainu town names and stuff like that?”
“Yeah, exactly! That’s a big part of it. Like, yeah, they still use kanji—but the way you’re supposed to read them is always so ridiculously unintuitive, y’know? Almost feels like you’re in a foreign country where you don’t even know the language.”
“I guess it kinda does, now that you mention it…”
It seemed Hoshihara agreed with me. I considered this a win.
We came to a red light and stopped at the corner of the sidewalk. Ushio pulled her phone out and typed something in with her thumbs. I figured she was probably just checking the map or something—but then she turned her phone around to show us the screen.
“Look,” she said. “I found this little online quiz someone made: ‘Hard-to-Read Place Names in Hokkaido.’ Wanna give it a shot?”
“Heck yeah!” Hoshihara exclaimed. I was curious too.
“Okay, question one…” said Ushio, scrolling down. “Here’s what the kanji looks like.”
She showed us her phone again. There were two large kanji characters displayed in the center of the screen, and it seemed you had to scroll down even further for the answer, so even Ushio probably didn’t know the correct reading yet. We all tilted our heads to one side and tried our best to puzzle it out.
All right, let’s see here…
“Well, I’m guessing it’s not just ‘Shimekanmuri’ or something,” I said.
“Yeah, no,” said Ushio. “They wouldn’t put it in the quiz if it was something as obvious as that. Unless it was a trick question, I guess.”
“Mmm… Yeah, I dunno,” said Hoshihara. “There aren’t really that many alternate readings for these two characters in the first place, are there?”
The three of us gave up right away, and Ushio scrolled down to the answer.
“What?! ‘Shimukappu’?! That doesn’t even make any sense!” I shouted. “How the hell is that only the first question?!”
“Yeah, but a lot of Hokkaido place names do the whole ‘double p’ thing, to be fair,” said Ushio. “So I guess maybe I can see it?”
“I never would have gotten that,” said Hoshihara.
Even after the signal changed and we crossed the street, we continued working through the quiz as we made our way over to our destination. We didn’t fare any better on the other questions, though. “Shakotan,” “Wassamu,” “Ottoineppu”… None of them sounded anything like place names you might find back in mainland Japan, and in the end we didn’t get a single question right. I considered myself pretty good at reading kanji too—but even I was thoroughly bested by Hokkaido’s regional toponymy.
That said, the quiz was still fun and a great way to make the time fly by, and we reached the public street market in no time. The smell of fresh seafood hung in the frigid air as we walked down the road past stall after stall of local fishmongers through a sea of other sightseers. It felt a bit like being at a crowded festival.
“Damn, look at all these vendors,” I said. “How do we even pick a place to eat?”
“Hey, are you three in high school?” came a voice as we were passing one of the many storefronts. It was an older man with a waist-high apron strung below a pretty hefty beer belly. He appeared to be the owner of the place.
“Yep! We sure are!” said Hoshihara.
“Well, aren’t you just chock-full of pep! Say, want to try a free sample of crab?”
“What?! Are you sure?!”