Leaving Tokyo

We leave Tokyo after a couple of days and zoom up to Hakodate on the island of Hokkaido. Literally zoom – in the new bullet train. The shinkansen service connecting Hokkaido with Tokyo only came into service in early 2016, cutting the journey time by almost a half compared to the regular train. Given that most other major cities in Japan are connected by bullet train to Tokyo, the fact that it has taken so long for the country’s northernmost island to have such a connection says much about this part of the country.

Hokkaido - beautiful but sad

Hokkaido is scenically beautiful and the mountains of the central part of the island, in the area of Sapporo are blessed each winter with a staggering amount of snow. The region was initially put on the map as the site of the 1972 winter Olympics. But in recent years, the area around the town of Niseko, a short distance from Sapporo has become a favourite winter sports destination particularly for Australians. Outside the ski season though, Hokkaido has a rather sad and despondent feel about it. Many of the towns and villages that we pass through are rather drab and shabby with many empty or derelict buildings. Hokkaido has the highest percentage of vacant dwellings of anywhere in Japan. Other than in the larger cities like Sapporo, we don't even see that many people and those that we do see are mostly elderly. 

Until the latter part of the 19^th century, the powers-that-be in Tokyo didn’t take too much notice of Hokkaido, or Ezo as it was then known. That changed when Russian expansion in the far east was underway and the central government decided that they need to do something to protect the country’s northern flank. The name Hokkaido didn’t even come into existence until 1869. The government embarked on a programme of resettlement from the main island largely to exploit Hokkaido's very fertile volcanic soil. Agriculture remains an important part of the island's economy together with fishing. A rather unfortunate challenge faced by the farming industry is a shortage of farmers' wives! Local girls prefer a city life to the hard grind of farm work; the central government has even started a sort of farmers' dating service to try to attract women from the cities!

Hokkaido, as it became had been inhabited by several groups of indigenous peoples, most notably the Ainu. The origins of the Ainu people are somewhat of a mystery, but they do share some cultural and ethnic similarities to people of northeastern Russia. The Ainu also inhabited the island of Sakhalin, now part of Russia, but in earlier days, part of Japan. Like indigenous peoples in other parts of the world, the Ainu were persecuted and discriminated against by the Japanese and their culture has all but vanished. There are thought to be some 20,000 or so people of Ainu descent left in Japan but almost none of pure blood, the result of years of inter-marriage. Almost nobody speaks the Ainu language although many place names in Hokkaido are derived from Ainu words. In recent times, the Japanese government has tried to preserve what little is left of Ainu culture some of which is showcased in a small open-air museum that we visit near the town of Shirao on Hokkaido's south coast.

Onsen time

But the main attraction of Hokkaido for Japanese and East Asian tourists are the onsens - communal baths fed with hot water from volcanic underground springs. Hokkaido is full of them - mostly inside hotels or ryokans. 

Like everything else in Japan, taking a communal bath is cloaked in ritual. First to come off is any footwear before you enter the locker area proper. Once in the locker room, everything else comes off - no clothing of any sort is permitted. There are two stacks of towels - one of hand towel size the other bath towel size. You take only a "hand towel" which has two functions - one to provide a little modesty, the other more importantly to wash yourself with. Washing of course not in the communal bath - that's an absolute no-no, but in the adjacent washing area. Hand-showers in small open cubicles separated by low divides. Each cubicle is equipped with an array of liquid soaps and shampoo, a low stool and a wooden bucket. The next no-no is standing to wash - splashing your neighbour is considered very rude! And this is no quick wash! Either the Japanese are the dirtiest race on the planet or are obsessively clean! Using the hand-towel and copious quantities of soap, washing and scrubbing from head-to-toe is at least a twenty minute exercise! Having rinsed yourself off, you then use the hand-towel to wipe yourself down before finally lowering yourself carefully into the 40C/110F water in the communal bath itself. Under no circumstances allow your hand towel to touch the water! No, the towel is carefully folded and placed on your head!! Swimming, floating or splashing are seriously frowned on - I only saw that in one onsen and he turned out to be a Cambodian! After a few minutes of soaking, you emerge "refreshed" and use your hand towel to wipe yourself down before re-entering the locker room. Signs at the entrance to the locker room from the bath area encourage you first to dry yourself with your wet hand towel to avoid wetting the locker room floor! Only then do you collect a bath towel - to do what with is not entirely clear!!

That all perhaps sounds a bit more negative than intended. The onsen is actually a very pleasant experience - quite addictive as Kevin points out to me

Whither Japan....

But the onsen ritual is illustrative of the challenge that faces Japan. A low birth rate, a rapidly greying population and with almost no immigration the population is predicted to fall dramatically in the coming decades. Rigid Japanese culture, the over-bearing formality and politeness would make it difficult for immigrants from just about anywhere to adapt or assimilate. In the boom years of the 80's we all thought that Japan was unstoppable and would take over the world. 

Today, one can only wonder whither Japan......?