Adventure in Hokkaido-Day 1

You can't take a vacation this time!

Golden Week Vacation, usually from April 28-29 to May 6,7 (depends on the calender), is one of Japan's holiday seasons. We have four national holidays within the season so it would be a huge vacation together with weekends. This year, we were off from April 28 to April 30 and from May 3 to May 6, in other words, May 1 and 2 were weekdays in the middle of the season. I was planning to go to San Fransisco by taking additional 2-day off on May 1 and 2 which would be 9-day vacation in total to me,,,,supposedly; due to some business reasons, I couldn't take those extra vacations and my trip plan to San Fransisco was cancelled entirely.

However, it doesn't mean that I needed to sacrifice the national holidays and I decided to take a short-trip. In search of a place to go, a friend of mine gave me an idea, which was an eye-opener to me; Hokkaido, the northern island of Japan's archipelago. There are mountains/hills  with many natural sites in its inland It use to be a different nation from Japan, so some of the local cultures are still vivid to us. It'd appeared to me that there were a lot of facsinating encounters, because I'd not been there. In addition, Peach Aviation, the recently-established Low Cost Carrier (LCC) company for the first time in Japan held a regular direct flight between Osaka, my place, to Hokkaido. The LCC flight ignited me to go there, too.

Since it's in north, though it was very fine, I felt a bit cold when I firstly got out of New Chitose Airport, a central entrance of Hokkaido for air. I was wearing half-sleeve T-shirt but I had to put on my leather jacket while walking on an aisle docking the plane to the airport building; a cold winds snapped the window. I was wondering what would happen to me in winter there.

Accessibiltiy from the airport to the central area in Sapporo, the largest city in Hokkaido, was convenient. Every thirty minutes, there are express trains conecting the city and the airport directly. Once you take a seat on the train for 40 minutues, you will be in the center of the city. I arrived at 17:30, so it was getting darker as I was approaching to the city, so my first adventure in Hokkaido was "dinner hunting".

You think it's better to have a local food for dinner. Hokkaido is surrounded by a grand nature; Oceans around Hokkaido give us flesh sea food is flesh, cattle firms give us delicious meat/flesh milk, agricultural firms give us tasty vegitables, so your thought may be correct. However, I was a bit tired and too hungry to take much time for dinner hunting (well, I did not have a luch to save the money on LCC flight; foods on service are very expensive!), so I went to a nearest "Ton-Katsu (Pork Cutlet) " restaurant for my first dinner in Hokkaido.Actually, "Ton-Katsu" was tasty but not that special to me because the taste itself was the same as what I had had in my town in Osaka, but at least my stomach was satisfied.

When I left the restaurant after the dinner, it was raining outside. I didn't bring my umbrella with me, so I rushed to my hostel. The hostel was actually ten minutes away from the central station by foot, well without any getting-lost time. In the lobby in the hostel, there was a group of high school students. They were actually a member of volleyball team and they were based in the hostel to attend a competition game in Sapporo. Literally, they are in the middle of adolescence. Boys were interested in pornography and some titillating stories and girls were talking about handsome teammates who they are interested in. They took me back to the time and made me realize I'm already an adult who has experienced things they were interested in; girl-hunting, sex, love and so forth.

That was the first night in Hokkaido. I went to bed as quickly as I could because the second day was my main tour. I needed to wake up early in the morning and pick up a rental car, then drive to the main destination; Kamui Misaki headland.

To be continued...