Chapter 2: Kamuiwacky
Chapter 3: It's a Japanese Thing >>
北海道 網走市 網走バスターミナル Abashiri Bus Terminal, Abashiri, Hokkaido Fri Sep 29 2000 07:10
Hoo! Sapporoubihorokushiroutoro, poropinai-moorappu, kamuikamui kamuiwakkawakkawakwakwakkayuwakkayunoyunoyunotaktaktaktaki, korohoro-sorohoro-arohoro-dokonimohoro-moroporo-horohoro!
Phew. Now that I've gotten that out of my system I feel better already. If symptoms recur I think I'll have to write a program that generates random Ainu placenames and chants them for me...
So here I am, rapidly approaching the End of the Earth. It's cold, but not much worse, and with the sun out top temperatures should actually pass yesterday's. I was so tired that, after finding a pose where I didn't wake up due to my own drooling, I actually managed to more or less sleep on the night bus. But since it arrived at 6 AM I again have to wait a few hours before everything opens...
Abashiri looks very much like the northern seaport it is, brutally functional architecture and the scent of fish in the sea air, again atypically wide streets (for Japan) so snow can be plowed away. However, among the Japanese, Abashiri is best known as the site of both current and former Abashiri prisons, the older version being a shining pinnacle of Meiji enlightenment, among whose many amusements were unheated cells for political prisoners and other difficult cases. (It was 8 deg C at dawn today. Temperatures fall to -20 C in the winter.)
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北海道 知床半島 知床岩尾別ユースホステル Shiretoko-Iwaobetsu YH, Shiretoko, Hokkaido Fri 29 Sep 2000 17:09
My faith in hitchhiking in Japan was lost and restored today. Near the bus terminal was a 7-11 parking area with a clear line of sight to the road and easy access, so I picked that as my hitching spot. Two lanes of traffic zooming past, almost all small cars with plenty of empty seats... and they kept zooming past. 10 minutes, 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 90 minutes... at one point a freak raincloud unleashed a downpour, I evacuated to the bus shelter only to find that the next bus onward would be leaving in a little over three hours. I walked back and onward a bit, to a worse place with a little more traffic, but to no use: 2 hours, 2.5 hours... I was getting close to quitting when, finally, a car stopped and a very enthusiastic woman in her forties waved me in. She'd seen me at lunchtime, now she was leaving work early and would be glad to take me to Shari, and here's a chicken burger. You're going to Utoro? Why, that's only a 50 km detour, no problem! But I insist! And in the end I was chaffeured all the way to the door of the youth hostel deep in the valleys of Shiretoko, with a few sightseeing stops along the way, and I almost had to force her to accept a silly little souvenir pin as a token of gratitude.
Only along the way here did I realize that this is, indeed, a different part of Hokkaido: continuing the Scandinavia metaphor, we've come up from the south to fjord country, where craggy cliffs and pine-treed mountains soar into the mist. It's warm when sunny, but bitterly cold otherwise. But right now I'm just tired to the point of collapse, still half an hour still dinner, and I feel so social that I want to bite off the fucking heads of these idiots clanging around in MY hostel room dammit...
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北海道 知床半島 知床岩尾別ユースホステル Shiretoko-Iwaobetsu YH, Shiretoko, Hokkaido Sat 30 Sep 2000 18:07
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So here's the recipe. Fly across the planet to Tokyo, cross the 600 miles from Tokyo to Sapporo, take a 6.5-hour bus trip from Sapporo to Abashiri, hitch from Abashiri to Iwaobetsu in 4 hours, then spend one hour on driving through 11 kilometers of dirt road. (If you're lucky, like us, you may get a rock stuck in your brake wheel, a simple problem that can be trivially solved by removing the offending wheel and disassembling the whole thing. Fun for the whole family!) Eventually, you'll arrive at the Kamuiwakka river (Ainu for "river of the gods"). Put on your sandals, preferably tight-fitting Japanese bamboo-straw wareji and not fancy but slippery Caterpillar "walking machines" like mine, and start trekking up the stream. The water starts off tepid and warms as you climb up, which prevents frozen feet, but doesn't do much to discourage slippery moss growths. No routes are marked, so just clamber free-style, try not to slip and crack your head, and take comfort in the fact that no matter how hard climbing up may be, coming down will be considerably harder. Bringing along expensive cameras is not recommended.
But the pay-off awaits: a large rounded pool, deep and wide enough for a dozen people, filled with lovely warm water. No nasty creepy-crawlies, no slippery sections, no problems... except that, once again, the water was a bit too un-hot for my liking. It's also extremely salty, it won't make you float like the Dead Sea but it will sting at least as much if you wade in with any scratches and it tastes horrible. All in all, full points for location but low marks on facilities and water temperature. The search continues!
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オバタリアン： あんたは女か男か、そんな髪の毛に？
Obatarian: So are you a woman or a man with hair like that?
長い髪の毛の人： そないゆうんやったら、チンポしゃぶってみるか！
Long-haired freak: Well, why don't you suck my dick and find out!
After dinner Iwaobetsu Izakaya, aka a beer vending machine, opened and most of the few hostellers congregated downstairs to drink beer and eat nibbles. For the first time I realized what a strangely privileged position I'm in: travelling a strange country filled with bizarre and wonderful things, but able to almost fully communicate with its people and adjust to its ways...
