Okay, I hope this comes out looking how it’s supposed to, since this is a JIS keyboard and all… Anyway, I just got back into Sapporo after travelling around the Shiretoko-hantou, Abashiri, and Asahikawa for the past few days. Since this has been life out of a minimal kit, this has probably been the dirtiest I’ve felt in Japan ever. I was only able to pack a pair of shorts and some DPM trousers and 2 T-shirts other than the one I was wearing on Wednesday night. It was fairly hot every day, probably around 25C and sunny, so with all the hiking about, in one day a shirt was ruined with funk.
I visited 2 nice onsen towns, went to an open-air onsen waterfall, and saw numerous wild deer at under pistol range (probably more like hammer range). It was salmon spawning season, so every river was choked with salmon swimming upstream (which are difficult to photograph without a polarizing filter), and every river mouth was choked with oyaji fishermen. Oddly, I didn’t see any bears, but maybe that was a good thing, considering I watched salmon swim upstream while eating a salmon onigiri, then saw deer then got deer on the menu later that day on two occaisions.
Someone mentioned getting all hot and sweaty just from eating, and I definitely experienced that here (was that Ckucke?). That’s a sure sign of oyaji-dom. I don’t recall a single meal on this trip that wasn’t accompanied by sweating…
Anyway, I’m going to take a shower, eat my peach, and drink my Suntory Malts Premium and hit the futon.
So, did you visit the Abashiri Prison Store and buy shoes?
Went to the Abashiri Prison Museum which is located in the boondocks (by some turn of conspiracy serviced by a bus line) which has a bunch of the old prison structures form back in the Meiji era either recreated or relocated. Shoes might be from another prison – the prison wares for sale were wood carvings, either Ainu-style graven images or relief-carved tissue box covers. The reputation of harshness was probably created in the original days when it was prisoners and guards in the middle of nowhere and they had to farm and cut trees to eke out survival. In current times, it’s not much different than living in any other part of Eastern Hokkaido (cold for a Honshuu person, but not out of the ordinary for a Dosanko). They had “prison lunch” for y500 in the cafeteria, but I had already eaten. (it was way better looking than Hawaii public school lunch) BTW, I didn’t buy anything.
WTF dude, that was a topic of conversation as we sat at Island (shake raised fist) Burgers, that you’d better get some shoes from your favorite place.