Readers of Adventures in Korea may think that our travels are always happy. They would be correct, until this trip to Japan, which did, at least, end better than it began.
We were supposed to visit three places: Sapporo, for its ice festival, Niseko, for a day of skiing, a return to Sapporo for another day, and then some days in Tokyo. A lot of traveling.
A couple of days before we were scheduled to leave, Teresa did not feel well—a bit of stomach upset, some fatigue and a low-grade fever. We were not sure if we should go. By the morning of our trip, Teresa was feeling better. I was feeling a bit tired, so we decided we would go, but cut out the skiing in the Niseko part of our trip, and just stay in Sapporo until going on to Tokyo.
By the time we transferred planes in Tokyo, I was feeling worse, and by the time we landed in Sapporo, it was clear that Teresa and I were playing a gastroenteritis version of A Star is Born, and that my star was now ascendant.
Teresa’s own illness had been mild. I had hopes mine would be as well. We searched for our hotel, walking about a mile in the snow and cold. Those who visit ice festivals cannot complain about snow and cold. Sapporo’s winter beauty was meant to be a main point of the trip. We failed to fully enjoy that beauty as we failed to find our hotel, tried again, then discovered, as T.S. Eliot wrote, that “the end of all our exploring ….will be to arrive where we started. And know the place for the first time,” since it turned out the hotel was about 100 feet from the place we started out!
Out again for dinner, after a day of travel, we wanted ramen. We found a place and I cautiously ordered the lightest ramen available. Its quality of lightness, though, mainly lay in the glistening fat on its surface. I shivered on the way home, from the cold and what was by now a rising fever.
By the following day that fever made it up to 102, and I clearly would not be eating anything like ramen again soon. I spent the entire day in my hotel bed. My illness turned out to be quite a bit worse than Teresa’s. Feeling quite well,Teresa spent a good part of the day doing errands for me and working at a coffee shop.
The following day we had to find a new hotel, since our current reservation ended with our now canceled Niseko leg, and they did not have room to extend our stay. Though still feverish, after 24 hours of rest I was feeling well enough to travel to a new hotel, which we found without too much trouble.
More bad luck. We left our bags at the new hotel before we could check in, and looked for a place to get coffee. On the way, I slipped in the snow and fell hard on my side, my arm managing to poke into my side and cracking two ribs—as diagnosed three weeks later. And there was no skiing on this trip, which would have been a more glamorous way to break some ribs. For about 20 seconds, I lay in the snow just off the street, unable to get up. A kind citizen of Sapporo looked alarmed. I rallied and let her know I was okay. On to get coffee. When we returned our room was ready and we were able to rest. It is a mark of how tired I was that rest came, despite fever, stomach cramps, and now, two fractured ribs.
Were we having fun yet? No. But we remained determined. We had not yet found the ice festival, except for Teresa’s few glimpses of people carving ice cranes while she was doing her errands. We headed out to the neighborhood with the ice carving part of the festival. I was feeling a little better.
The street with the ice carvings was already quite festive, and even more so with its carvings.
I had my first significant meal following my arrival ramen, though I still tried to eat very cautiously. For Teresa and me eating the local cuisine is a large part of the pleasure of traveling, and it was hard to give up. Wisdom (and Teresa) would have had me eating Saltines—or their Japanese equivalent, lots of plain rice. I opted for sushi, for which Sapporo is quite famous. I figured that sushi was pretty good for what ailed me: lean and delicate. (A doctor later informed me otherwise.) This sushi was the best I had on the trip. I also had my first taste of salted cucumbers, which I really enjoyed, and ate different versions of through the trip. Teresa was enjoying grapefruit highballs.
We checked out the snow carving part of the ice festival the following day, as I continued slowly to improve.
Another good place we visited was the Sapporo clock tower, which had been moved to a more central area in Sapporo. Originally, the clock tower, which fronts a somewhat large building, had been part of the Sapporo Agricultural College, co-founded by the same person who founded Amherst College, which was also originally been created as an agricultural college. (I did not know that.) The Sapporo college produced many founding fathers of Sapporo’s modernity, and we enjoyed reading about them. (A woman’s school was proposed, and then canceled.)
We decided to use some of our extra time in Sapporo to take a day trip to Otaru, about 45 minutes away by train. We stayed at this snow globe of a town last year and enjoyed it a lot. We especially wanted to visit to buy more bravely the glassware that is one of the town’s specialty crafts, and we did, including something for me that we are counting as Teresa’s present to me for my upcoming 60th birthday.
By the time we flew back to Tokyo the following day, I was feeling much better, nearly 100%, at least with respect to my stomach flu—the ribs continue to hurt as of this writing over three weeks later (I’m told it takes about 8 weeks to heal fully.) We arrived to our hotel in the Asakusa neighborhood, which we really liked. Asakusa is quaint and has an older Tokyo feel, but is not too far from the city center.
We had two days to explore one of the largest cities in the world. We did what we could. I love fish and fish markets, so our first stop was the Tsukiji Outer Market, a famous fish market in Tokyo. I found it a disappointment. It feels much more like a set of boutique stalls for tourists (think the old Quincy Market in Boston) than a real market (apparently, that is the “inner market,” to which only professional traders in fish are allowed). The fish was fine, but not especially good. I had better shasimi in Sapporo.
We enjoyed our next stop more, the so-call “scramble square” in the Shibuya neighborhood, supposedly the most crowded street crossing in the world. I’m not sure if that’s true, but there was a lot of energy there and in the neighborhood around it.
While there, we saw signs up for Taylor Swift’s concert in Tokyo, which was in the news because of its date near the Superbowl.
We ended the day by leaving the glitz and consumerism of the scramble square area for a different part of Shibuya, the quiet park that surrounds the Meiji shrine, which honors the the Meiji emperor, who founded modern, imperial Japan in the later 19th-century. The park has a broad walk with rows of stately trees creating an arch over it.
Since we enjoyed this beautifully constructed park so much, we decided the next day to visit Tokyo’s Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden. We enjoyed this visit very much. The park has lovely walks and sculpted trees. It also showed off some very early spring—Tokyo is much warmer than frozen Sapporo, and warmer than the Incheon/Seoul area of Korea as well. We saw some flowering trees and early daffodils.
We also went to take a look at the Imperial Palace and its grounds. It was not worth the trip. One cannot get very close, and the grounds and the palace itself are not that compelling.
We got around everywhere by subway. The Tokyo subway system is extensive, but not as easy to use as Seoul’s. There are fewer signs in English, some lines are excluded from the regular subway pass, and elevators and escalators are more rare. Be ready to take the stairs!
Finally, we ate some ramen at a restaurant very near our hotel. This was my victory ramen, as I had mostly avoided this soup (I made an exception for a lighter soy-based version when we first arrived to Tokyo) since the unfortunate meal of my first night in Sapporo. We were about to fly out of Tokyo, though, and I wanted to enjoy some rich Tokyo pork ramen before leaving. I was pretty sure I now could handle it. It was good.
So I left Japan only partly broken. I have some good memories, my stomach is better, and my ribs will heal.