Hokkaido - Getting Rained Down
October 6-9, 2006 (Japan)
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| Japan had one of its many celebrated long weekends, so Yuka and I decided to take my parents & sister to see Hokkaido. While Japan's second largest island obviously can not be covered in three days, it is at least interesting to discover how different it is from Tokyo. | Unfortunately, we had two days of rain, rain, and then some more rain. Since Yuka and I flew into Sapporo and met my parents there, we had to pick some attractions in the vicinity that could be enjoyed in bad weather. My eyes randomly fell on the "Historical Village of Hokkaido", which turned out to be great place to kill a few hours. |
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| Here we are sitting in a restored Japanese elementary school, which was interesting to see. | The museum is made up of about sixty buildings constructed around Hokkaido between the mid-nineteenth and twentieth centuries. |
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| I thought the most interesting part of the museum was the old print press, and to see how they used to print newspapers before the age of computers. As explained by Wikipedia: "During the letterpress era, moveable was composited by hand for each page. Cast metal sorts were composited into words and lines of text and tightly bound together to make up a page image called a forme, with all letter faces exactly the same height to form an even surface of type. The forme was inked and mounted in a press, and an impression made on paper". | While typesetting is complicated enough printing the Roman alphabet, just imaging the painstaking effort of printing Japanese. With several thousand characters, this must have been an extremely boring job. The printing press at the museum is staffed by a bunch of volunteers that happily show you how to operate the press, though they do not speak any English. |
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| The zoo is another option when it is raining, and we therefore went to the Asahikawa Zoo in Asahikawa, which is the second largest city in Hokkaido. While this has recently become the most famous zoo in Japan due to some new exhibits, overall the zoo is a disappointing experience compared with zoos in Europe and the United States. | Sounkyo Onsen, a hot spring resort, is located in Daisetsu-zan National Park. We stayed in the Sounkyo Onsen Choyo Resort Hotel, which is a relatively inexpensive option for good Japanese ryokan style accommodation. |