Pictures

http://www.kolumbus.fi/nikkes/japan/3/

Here's the latest picture gallery from July to September, covering the whole trip to Honshu and a few other things.

Not much has happened lately in Kitami, except that the school has started and two new Finnish students came here from close to Oulu. Other than that, it's just been studying and a few other things which I might go into later, but for now, just take a look at the gallery.

Niimi, Okayama & Kitami again

I had kind of lost my desire to travel anymore in Matsue, for a couple of reasons. I was tired of cycling since my hands were hurting due to some kind of nerve damage which must have occurred during cycling, especially with a bike like mine and with distances like I took. So if rest is a good remedy for most ailments, I'm sure it would work for my hands as well so I didn't want to make my hands any worse by prolonging the trip any further. Another reason was that I was running out of money and therefore wanted to be with Tomomi instead of going to new cities, since in my experience, the cities themselves are nothing to be interested about. I don't care that much about old buildings, no matter who gave the order to build them or what kind of destruction was planned inside them. They're overrated anyway.

So while presented with two choices, cycling 120km to Tottori and from there, at least a hundred more to Okayama, or go about 160km straight to Okayama, I took the latter option. Again, there was a pretty severe uphill at the start of it, right after Yonago, but before it got really hot, I was already past the highest peak and on my way down. After that, most of the trip was downhill.

I took a stop at Niimi, which was famous for one thing, its two limestone caverns. One of them, Ikura-do, was kind of built up to be an amusement park for kids and adults alike, with its theme-based restaurants full of miniature waterfalls and caves as well as the souvenir shops all the other adorable amenities of a tourist attraction. In other words, I loathed the place. But the cave itself, after getting over the 1000 yen entrance fee, was beautiful. Only that it was also infested with parasites of human form - children. While I was expecting to have a sort of serene experience just peacefully going through the tunnels, I was condemned to listen to the whine of the kids from 1 to 10 year-olds until the end. The parents didn't think, of course, that their darlings would have disturbed anyone in the cavern. So the kids just screamed constantly. What could've been more fun than that, right?

Well, in any case, after getting over the frustration and building a mental block to all sounds too high-pitched, I could enjoy the beauty of the cave too. It was definitely worth going, but I only wished that the ever-so-polite Japanese would also mind about their kids, as it's not the only place where they let them scream and run free.

After leaving Niimi, I eventually arrived to Okayama in a pretty good shape, all things considered. When I went to measure myself, though, I was only 67 kg, so in these few days, I had lost perhaps 1.5kg more, although I was eating normally. I suppose it's not enough to just eat normally, though. For the record, I'm 1.84m tall, so my weight is really too low. In Finland, it was 72kg before I left for Japan. I'll put myself on gaining my weight back right away.

There's not much else to tell - I spent a few more days in Okayama and then it was time to hit the ferry again. I took a couple of trains and a bus and a ferry and then, I was back in Hokkaido. Because my hands were still aching, I went to Kitami by bus as well. A bit inconvenient but it couldn't be helped, since my hands are more important for me than gaining mileage. I just hope they will get better soon.

Matsue

Although it kind of ended in a sour note, Miyoshi was still ten times better than cycling through completely urban landscapes. It only got better though as I left for Matsue, since there was going to be a whole of 20 km or so of constant uphill! Aces! Well, at this point I really didn't mind about it and in retrospect, it felt good. However, so many people say about the army as well, yet they swore to rather be anywhere else while serving. And some people do like to get spanked, too, so it doesn't really justify my point. That is, cycling on roads with almost no traffic and surrounded by nature was just a great experience.

Doing the same thing in Hokkaido before had no such beauty to it, because I pretty much knew what to expect on those northern routes. Here, I had no clue, since I lacked the map. So I was pleasantly surprised at first to notice a road sign for waterfalls and immediately switched route there. I was even more surprised that there was no tourist resort built around the river which flowed from the said falls and there was just a single car parked on the lot. Even that left pretty soon after I arrived.

After getting off the bike, I went on the short hiking route up to the waterfalls. Pretty soon, I thought to be already there as a 20-meter waterfall was facing me after no more than 200 meters. I thought, "wow, it was worthwhile to come here" but noticed that the path went on, so I just kept on going up. Then another waterfall, and another, and so forth, until I was at the end of the road. At the end stood a two-stage waterfall, perhaps not so tall as the first I saw, but more beautiful on all other aspects. And it was not just the last waterfall which was beautiful, but the whole path through the area. While being there, I felt enchanted and stopped hurrying back on the road, although I knew all too well that lingering for too much would cost me a lot of time from Matsue. I'm glad I didn't mind, though, as I would have rather spent even a night there, had it been possible.

The rest of the route to Matsue was uneventful but as I finally arrived on the shore of the western lake Matsue is situated on, there was a storm about to arrive. Sure enough, I got soaked a few minutes after seeing the lake, but it passed quickly, only leaving strong winds behind.

In Matsue, I took a look at the castle which was the major attraction, but after Himeji-jo, it didn't feel so impressive. No other castle can, I suppose. Then, an important attraction was also supposed to be the fish from the lake, so I went to eat sashimi. Perhaps I chose a bad restaurant, but I honestly couldn't know a difference between the sashimi you get from a supermarket and this one. It was all the same to me, so I made a decision not to waste my money like that again, especially since getting one's stomach filled with just tiny slices of fish is pretty damn difficult. So I bought a Big Mac instead.

Such was Matsue - in the evening, the stormy winds calmed down a little but when I woke up next morning, they were still blowing from the west. Good for me, though, since I was headed east for Yonago and from there, to either Tottori or Okayama.

Miyoshi

Going from Hiroshima to Miyoshi was really easy. There was only a single heavy uphill and during that rise, a few tunnels manifested themselves as well. After that, it was all easy up until Miyoshi itself. There was a single natural event worth mentioning, though, right after the tunnel-infested rise. The plateau was filled with fog and you could probably see 500 meters, no more. The sun was at times completely hidden, there was no telling where the disc was. But the clouds above were moving, momentarily revealing the sun and letting some of the rays through. Then, the sun was suddenly gone again. It was also really cold - only plus 20 degrees! It was the coldest since I had left Hokkaido, which I was really happy about. No sweating was possible in such pleasant morning weather.

In Miyoshi, I eventually decided to find out where the youth hostel was and stay there since it was going to get really hot in any case. So after a while, I ended up in a house with 80-something couple running the hostel and a grand-grandmother of 103 years. If anyone in that house, that lady had lost some, if not most, of her marbles. Even the 86-year old grandma agreed on that. In any case, my Japanese skills are nothing to be held in high regard so needless to say, I was in kind of trouble when they started talking. And did they talk! They just didn't stop when they got it going and it was hard to leave while they were on it. I felt not in the slightest like talking, though, especially in Japanese which is not exactly a forte of mine. But I didn't have a choice so I just sat it out until they grew tired or found other interests. This same event reoccurred later in the evening a few more times.

Miyoshi could be known for Japanese from its winery and grape farm, but I suspect there would have been anything else of interest to draw tourists to. It was really a relaxed village but I grew so bugged out by the over-curious uncles and aunts of the youth hostel that it didn't leave me with a good feeling.

Lastly, in the evening, there was to be some fishing on the river. It was not of the ordinary kind, as the fishing was not done by a pole or a net, but by live birds. The real "original local culture experience" was this circus trick: the birds, which are attached to ropes so as not to escape, catch some local fish and proceed to swallow them. Next, a brutal Japanese man squeezes the fish out of the poor bird's throat and presents it to the audience, who will proceed to pay hefty sums to be able to eat this once-vomited fish again. Such is Miyoshi and I will conclude telling about it here, as next morning I left for Matsue.

Hiroshima

After spending a week or so in Okayama with Tomomi, I decided it was time to go again. I wanted to see a few places on bicycle and Hiroshima was the number one for me, as I had already come from the eastern side.

I started early, as always, around 5am when it still was dark and went off cycling for some time until having breakfast at a convinience store, be it 7/11, Lawson or Sunkus. I saw a sunrise at a bridge somewhere around Kurashiki and went on all the way to Onomichi, to which I stopped since there were some beautiful temples on the hillside all over the city. After taking a look at some of them, I went onwards. There were some problems to occur, though - it was going to be the hottest day of the month or so, perhaps even the hottest of all summer. I didn't know that when I went on cycling, though, and came to regret it later.

On the digital boards above the roads, the thermometers read 39 celsius degrees. If I bought something to drink, it was soon warmer than a cup of cocoa. So, I bought ice, but it didn't last for a long time either. And the distance I had to cover was 160km, which by itself was enough of a problem. Before, when I went from Kitami to Asahikawa, 180km wasn't all that bad and neither was Maizuru to Himeji, around 150km or so. But this was bad. It was positively dangerous and even lethal, but since I'm posting this, I didn't die although I felt like it. My heart was beating crazy every time there was a serious uphill and all I could think of was having something to drink although I drank all the time. Even after 6 liters of drinking, I was still thirsty when I finally got to Hiroshima.

As for Hiroshima itself, I went to a nice guesthouse called J-Hoppers. Oh, the memories from backpacking... it was exactly of that kind, a few locals mixed in with a bunch of Europeans and Americans all with different destinations and reasons to be in the country. After some chatting, though, I quickly passed out, since I was just dead tired from the toil of that day.

The next day I cycled to Miyajima in the morning. This was a mistake, as there were far too many people on the island. I heard later that in the evening, there had been almost no one around so it should've been my choice as well. Oh well, it was still a beautiful place but somehow I didn't feel that impressed. I just had to go there anyway, since it had been advertised as such.

Visiting Miyajima affected me in one way, though. I really didn't want to see any more touristy places after being there, so I dropped my plans to go to the Hiroshima castle and just visited the peace memorial museum instead. There, people at least didn't make a number about themselves, not even the kids. It was a profoundly sad museum with all the stories about the victims as well as all kinds of relics from the city after the bombing. What touched me the most was the story of Sadako, which I'm sure can be found in Wikipedia for those who are interested.

I met some nice folks in the guest house that evening and I ended up going to bed around midnight, getting only 4 hours of sleep. Not enough, not enough. But that's the only way - wake up early or don't leave at all.

The next day, I went to Miyoshi, a small village some 70km north of Hiroshima. I'll write about that later.

Sapporo, Maizuru, Okayama

The journey to Sapporo was a little bit uneventful. It mostly consisted of cycling, drinking sports drinks and getting angry at other traffic and Japanese construction engineers for building roads all the time and having to fix them every few years. How about it, wouldn't it actually be easier to build roads which can last usage, so they wouldn't have to be repaired all the time? I guess the engineers here have a different mindset, for the road was full of all kinds of construction, from new bridges to minor surface repair work.

Otherwise, the sceneries were so familiar from previous trips around Kitami that I rather not mention them. It was not until I was in downtown Sapporo that I actually felt like being in a different city. There was constant urbanization for a good part of the road though, at least farms and whatnot, which is something isn't taken for granted in the areas around Kitami.

Close to Sapporo, there was one event worth mentioning. In Ebetsu, I stopped to eat lunch at a bento place but after getting out of there, it started to rain so much I only got across the street and had to take cover at a Lawson convinience store. There was also a young Japanese guy taking shelter in the same place, so after noticing that the rain developed into a thunderstorm, we started to talk to each other. Ryohei was a 17-year old high school student and of all things, he wanted to be a rock star when he grew up, playing guitar in a punk bank. Why not? It's as good of a profession as any. He could practice his English
and I did my best for Japanese and although the conversation got a bit difficult at times, we could understand each other.


In Sapporo, I was supposed to go sleeping in a capsule hotel. It was most likely the cheapest option still in the downtown area. There were rider houses some 20 km from the city centre, which was too far to really take a look at the city with any ease. So I settled on the same capsule hotel with some other caucasian guy and a bunch of dirty, stinky and butt-ugly Japanese businessmen, whose reason to be there was probably because they couldn't afford anything else after spending their money on hostesses of Sapporo.

Susukino area, in the nexus of which the Capsule inn resides, is famous for just that - hostesses. There's the male alternative too, for women, but both have one thing in common. That is, they both cater for the rich and the emotionally damaged - one night with a hostess serving you drinks can cost tens of thousands of yen if you really have at it and most of the bars of this type are off-limits from gaijin as well. In the evening, the streets start to fill up with the hosts with their almost feminine complexion and dyed, spiky haircuts and some well-dressed businessmen of typical appearance showing up menus of hostess girls to choose from. They're a strictly an affair of no physical contact other than holding hands and the like - it doesn't get deeper than that.

For a great documentary about the host and hostess culture, watch this movie: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6186147595582048109 . It's both funny and somehow sad at the same time, although it's pretty much needless to feel any pity for the hosts, though, being on top of the food chain. It's their customers which make up for the sad parts.

So, back to what I was doing in Sapporo - the first evening wasn't all that interesting, since I was dead tired and just wanted to go to an internet cafe to chat with Tomomi, and I wasn't going to take a look at the nightlife anyway. But later, I met the other tourist in the capsule hotel whose capsule happened to be in the same floor with me so we talked for a good while and thought of seeing each other on the following day. The guy was a German exchange student called Juljan from Tokyo and was much more into the Japanese culture and language than I'm ever going to be.

The next day, it rained a lot. Yeah, it had been raining the day before as well and in fact, every day I had been on this trip so far, it had rained at least a little bit. So why should have Sapporo have been any different? In any case, I spent a good part of the day just reading a book in Starbucks and drinking coffee while it rained, cycled around the city looking around when it didn't, visited the botanical gardens and took a look at a department store just since there wasn't much else to do. Since it was so cloudy, I didn't bother to pay to visit the JR tower from which there's supposed to be a great view of Sapporo. I'm sure there will be chances to see that view later in a better weather.

I also moved my ferry ticket, which had been ordered to me by the only English-speaking staff member of KIT's International center, to leave on 9th. So after two nights in Sapporo, my time was up and I had a mere 35km trip ahead of me to Otaru, a port city next to Sapporo. But since Juljan told me there wasn't a lot to see there, I thought I should just leave later and spent the day with Juljan instead, visiting the Sapporo beer gardens. After all, perhaps Sapporo is more famous as a beer brand than it is as a city.

Back to the ferry tickets though. I used Shin-nihonkai ferry company, for which the ticket cost around 12000 yen a second-class cabin, which in Japan means a room shared with nine other people. Then, there was a cost of 2900 yen for taking my cycle inside. I was put to go together with the bikers as the last in the line and got out of the ship last as well. Unlike I had read from cycling websites, it was in fact impossible to take my cycle with me to the ferry by putting it on a bike bag. In the ferry terminal prior to receiving the ticket, you have to fill out a form, but luckily, this is explained in English, so it's not a problem for someone who doesn't understand a lot of Japanese. On the ship itself, all of the directions were written in English, although the staff didn't seem to speak that language.

The food on the ferry is really expensive due to the fact that there's only one shop inside it, one real restaurant and a kind of cafeteria. It really doesn't compare with the luxury of Finnish ferries for instance, especially with the kind of prices they have. Taking your own food with you is a far better choice than buying something from the ship. Just pack some bentos and instant ramen and it's a whole lot cheaper.

Also, why am I writing
this? Because there's not a lot of information about cycling in Japan on the internet in English, although a few sites exist, so I just want to do it in case someone googles for the information. Most of all, this information would have been useful for me, had it existed, so perhaps it will help someone else too.
so, after getting to Otaru, it was already so late and rainy that there was not much of a sunset to be seen, just a quick bath, a all-you-can-eat dinner and the it was off to the waiting line.

When I got up to the ship, the second-class cabins were listed with letters from A to something like K or P or whatever and it was apparently okay to go anywhere you liked. I didn't know this though, but there was a biker who'd helped me out before in the line and I bumped into him on the hallway again. He'd been touring Hokkaido for three days of his five-day summer vacation and spent two days on the ship. After he helped me out, we talked some more and sort of celebrated my 23rd birthday, but since everything on the ship was actually closed, it was kind of difficult, and I was in kind of murky mood anyway since the people I really wanted to celebrate with were somewhere far away.

So, on the next day, we finally arrived to Maizuru, the port in Kyoto prefecture that we were headed to. We separated our ways with Jinno, the 28-year old biker, black belt of judo and a police officer. I headed for the capsule hotel, he headed for Osaka, a two-hour ride from Maizuru with his bike.

I didn't even have a map of the Kansai area, but as for Maizuru, I got it from the ship's reception, but I found my way to the railway station without it as well. I asked the clerk for a map of Himeji, which would be my next destination, and he was really surprised that I was going there by bicycle. He didn't have a map though, so he drew me one instead. It turned out to be enough for me, so I still don't have any kind of map of the area. I headed for the capsule hotel next, opposite to the station, but since the cheapest form of stay was a rest until 2am, giving me less than five hours of time to sleep, and the more expensive one wouldn't have been so useful since I would be leaving in early morning, I chose the 2am wakeup instead without a capsule. I slept on a reclining, rather comfortable chair for those hours and went off in total darkness. It was an experience by itself though.

I was far away from my apartment, the island I'd been living for the past four and a half months, without a map and without... lights on my bicycle. So I stopped by to eat early breakfast at a convinience store, looked at the road maps and cycled until there were no more street lights. I had to stop for about an hour to a parking lot of an onsen to wait for the sunrise and I just stretched and watched the eastern sky slowly light up. When I could see forward again, I went cycling forward. Then, the sun came up from between the mountains, but it was then I noticed that my camera was full of pictures. I made a stop on a resting area on the side of the road to move my pictures on the laptop and behind the bushes, there was a tent put up with a guy just getting out of there. Of all things, he too was a foreigner and had a cycle with him. I was really surprised to meet anyone on that spot at 6 a.m., but after meeting Caius, we cycled together until the road separated our routes. He went up to the north coast while I headed south for Himeji.

I remember how the Maizuru station clerk said how it's much more than just a hundred to Himeji. So, it indeed turned out to be much more. It totaled around 150 km, cycling on a completely clear day, with no clouds anywhere. But what kind of day it was - after cycling for so long in Hokkaido, everything seemed new again. The houses were made of Japanese wood and with that beautiful, traditional architecture you only see in pictures. Each of them looked like a small temple to me. Then, rice paddies separated the housing blocks from each other and a river flowing through each of the valleys divided the whole landscape apart up until the hills and mountains on the horizon. When I cycled through these areas, I could smell the scent of the wood of which the houses were built upon, see the reflections of same scenery on still lakes and rivers and just enjoy the beauty all around me. Eventually, everything got more urban as I got closed to Himeji, but there, the massive Himeji castle lay in the center of the city with its towers, parks and moots surrounding it.

I won't go explaining the Himeji castle in great detail, as I'm sure it's already been explained in various sources. But it was indeed one of the most beautiful sights I've seen in Japan and easily the most beautiful I've seen on this trip. I could've easily imagined staying a whole day in the castle area just walking around, reading a book in cover of the trees and watching the city from the castle grounds high up on the hill it's built on. But I didn't do any of that, although I did spend a good amount of time on the castle area. Instead, I decided to head for Okayama by train, since it was now really close by, just under a hundred, the train was not that expensive and I had burned myself quite badly after being in the sun all day. Most importantly, though, I wanted to see Tomomi again, which was the reason I was headed for Okayama anyway. So, I packed my cycle on a bag and off I went to the train. Although I was late from the one I was supposed to go, there were other ones coming and I took one of those instead.

So, in total, I have cycled some 490km on this trip so far. Not that much, but the point is not to cover a great distance, rather than to get where I was supposed to go. Besides, I will have enough chances to cycle a lot more later on, too.

Holiday

I had made somewhat accurate plans for the first few days of my vacation, while I would still be in Hokkaido, so that I could spare my time between cycling and doing something else. I was supposed to cycle a maximum of 130 km per day, which was from Asahikawa to Sapporo and sleep in rider houses, a form of almost-free accommodation for bikers and cyclists alike. In Sounkyo, I was supposed to sleep in a mountain hut and climb up on the mountain in the process. I made these kinds of basic plans for each day but thanks to the weather, I had to change them.

I went off cycling around 6 am and Petri was awake again since he'd been up playing games all night. We saw each other in the hallway and he came to see me off, and off I went after perhaps fifteen minutes of trying to put stuff on my cycle.

I could go no further than two kilometers when one of my panniers suddenly fell off the bike after a slight bump. It came off because a support strap came off its seams. I thought of giving up, going back to the dorm and getting it fixed later that day, but instead, I just wrapped the thing on my bike with kind of hooked, flexible bicycle ropes that you use to attach stuff to back of the bike. It wasn't all that solid but held together well enough, so that I could cycle all the way to Sounkyo.

Last time when I had gotten to Sounkyo, I was in such a hurting on my knee(s) that I couldn't consider cycling after that. Now, although I had to go through the same 1km-high peak, it didn't seem like a problem. I had weighed out my problems last time and fixed my bike's saddle post to proper length and this time, I also ate well before going to the uphill battle, so I didn't get so increbibly exhausted.

In Sounkyo, I spent some time resting and saw that going up on the mountain was pretty much useless - it was so cloudy I coudn't see the peak of Kurodake, the mountain Sounkyo is under. So I called Matias to find out about a nearby city called Kamikawa. I thought I could cycle some more, since I didn't feel so tired and I had lots of time on my hands. There was nothing to see in Sounkyo if the mountains were hidden, so I wanted to go to the next city. Matias found out that there was a rider house, or a camping ground or something you could stay in Kamikawa, so I got going.

When cycling to Kamikawa, it was a completely new road for me. The sights were beautiful while I was in the Sounkyo gorge, but what made it even better was that after a while, the sky cleared up and it seemed like a different world. After tens of kilometers of mountains, there were beautiful farmlands again... and a smell of poo in my nose.

There was nothing in Kamikawa. Just another tiny village with nothing special. I was feeling good, so I skipped it and continued to make my way to Asahikawa, in which I was actually planning to stay as well. I had asked in Sounkyo tourist information for accommodation in Asahikawa and got a name and an address of a guest house somewhere in the city, so I was kind of safe regarding where to stay.

The beautiful day became even better when there was a signpost directed to a cycling road headed for Asahikawa. It went on for 35 km at the end of the trip and made the trip all the more pleasant. The bad thing was that on the cycling road, there was not another soul to be seen. Just locusts, which inhabited all the spots on the road next to some fields. The jumped on my bike and on my shoes too, but I got rid of them soon enough.

All in all, the cycling part ended in Asahikawa after some 175 km when I arrived at my guest house. And to my surprise, my knees weren't even hurting at all. Even my leg muscles were pretty much okay, so I was really, really surprised since the longest distance I'd travelled so far was around 130km and that was by accident (as mentioned before). Now, though, with planning, everything seemed to go really well with regard to cycling. Although I drunk a lot, though, I still really underdid it, because the lack of salts made me fatigued for a part of the next day too.

The next day, I had a clear plan of what to do - go to the Asahiyama zoo, most famous of all animal prisons in Japan and fix my bike bags. I was also headed for a cleaning shop since my cycling outfit had to be washed and I was too lazy to do it by hand myself. So in the morning, I woke up and started cycling to the zoo. In the city, though, I saw another touring cyclist for the first time. A Japanese guy called Kenji was headed for Wakkanai, the northernmost tip in Hokkaido. We exchanged cell phone numbers, he showed me around to the cleaner's and went to a ramen restaurant. Then he went off, although it was raining like hell. Unlike me, though, he was actually equipped to cycle in a hard rain as well.

The zoo was such a disappointment that I don't really know why it's so famous. There were hordes of people and their kids, who were screaming and running around. If anything, the animals looked scared and most of them were sleeping. They were in somewhat small cages, especially the big ones, considering their size. After seeing Singapore zoo last year, I think I'm somehow spoiled, because the animals there have huge amounts of space as far as it comes to zoos, so here in Asahiyama, the sight of the poor animals was not at all impressive.

I don't know much else about Asahikawa thought, since I had to go sleeping early anyhow - I woke up at five or so and the road to Sapporo was 130km long, so it was going to take all day again.

Vacation

I haven't updated the blog in a long while. Never mind about that, I'm not going to start updating a lot now either, since it's time for summer vacation! I had the last exam on this week's Monday and was supposed to be going for Sapporo by bike to catch a ferry, but I didn't go. The reason - typhoon. Now that it finally reached here, it's been tamed by the mountain range west of Kitami and all that's left is a lot of rain. With any bad luck, the pipes in Kitami will be jammed again with dirt water.

I will definitely try to post updates from my holiday trip, since it's bound to be more interesting than whatever is happening here in Kitami. To put it short, nothing's been going on lately. I've been actually studying for my assignment at TUT every day for this week and the last, so there was nothing to write about them.

I did go cycling one time, to Tokoro, which is a small town by the sea. However, I deliberately chose not to cycle so that I could spare some time studying. After over 1100km on the road since May, I've seen a lot of Hokkaido, so I just haven't felt like going to take another look at some sights I've stumbled upon.

My holiday trip will be probably 1 month long, but I'm not at all sure yet. I think that's a pretty good estimate, though.

I'll post some computer-related stuff this time too. Ville, another exchange student from Finland, recommended this Firefox plugin called rikaichan to me. It is a Japanese dictionary for kanji and is really useful when browsing websites full of Japanese text.

Another thing worth noting is that since I own a MacBook due to my own stupidity or something, I'm using Windows now with Boot Camp, a program that Apple supplies. Of course, that software is beta right now and they don't have proper drivers for hardware of their own manufacture. So, for instance, the keyboard is recognized as "Apple keyboard" but it doesn't know that it's a Japanese model. In a Japanese keyboard, there's a couple of extra keys for writing katakana and hiragana more easily, as well as switching back to alphabet mode. These keys didn't work, which was a real problem for me.

I tried all kinds of things like updating the Boot Camp software to 1.3, which didn't work, testing Input Remapper which didn't solve the problem either and finally trying to install a new keyboard driver. So, Windows claimed I could install HID Keyboard driver, whatever that meant. That's what I tried first and it didn't work. Eventually, I just installed a 109-button driver for a Japanese USB keyboard. Windows screamed about incompatibilities but what do you know - it works better than the previous, "compatible" driver. For the record, this keyboard only has 80 buttons or something, and even now, some of the keys don't do anything, but it's still better than before. Thanks, Steve.

More pictures

Finally, I took the time to go through my pictures which have been piling up since May. So, http://www.kolumbus.fi/zombie/japan/2/ is the second gallery for the trip, spanning May, June and some of early July. I've commented almost every photo and there's a total of 270 pictures or so.

There were a lot more pictures to choose from, but let's face it - most of the pictures won't be browsed by anyone, they are only meaningful for me. Also, the majority of my pictures are scenery from Hokkaido, which reflects the fact that I've spent a lot of time peeking around.

Week 16 - Visit to junior high school

I finally got the longer headpost to my cycle from a cycling shop in Obihiro last weekend so I installed it and since the weather was great on Wednesday, I went cycling for the first time in almost a month. That it, the first long distance trip. I went to Chimikeppu-ko, a lake in the middle of a forest, in a national preservation area. The place looked just like Finland and its lakes.

The most important event of the week was something I had not paid a lot of attention to - a visit to Hokko junior high school in a suburb of Kitami. That is to say, I had not prepared for it at all so I only did it on Wednesday evening. Had I started before, I might've had an interesting series of photos with me but I really didn't think about that stuff too much, I just wanted to get the visit over with.

In contrast, when we arrived to the junior high, we were received with the warmest welcome we've ever had by complete strangers. The children were totally unlike their junior high counterparts in Finland - they were friendly, funny, cheerful and really excited about people around them. (Finnish high school kids, especially boys, have a completely different attitude - they try to act impossibly tough; failing that, they are too shy to speak about other subjects than computer games or something equally nerdy).

We had a dance, gifts, songs, calligraphy, games and all around a lof of fun. I guess the children don't have such an opportunity to meet foreigners every day, so they really wanted to take out most of it. What the girls wanted to do was to touch Mika's hair all the time - his curly, soft hair was something really strange and beautiful for the girls so they just ran after Mika, touching his head all the time. At some point, they turned attention to my hair too and poked around Matias' head as well.

I really wanted to go to Obihiro by cycle this time, but what do you know - rain once again on the weekend. For a month, it has rained every Friday in Kitami. So, I decided not to even wait for Friday and hopped on the last bus of Thursday instead.

Week 15 - Even more studies

We had the second International C hour this week. The theme was a group of Japanese students visiting New York for a month to study English - they could learn something, but the whole presentation was held in Japanese, which I couldn't understand. Neither I can understand why would someone want to go to another country for just a month. You cannot learn much in such a short time. Well, at least I can't.

I finally finished studying through Minna no Nihongo I this week and I ordered the second book. I hope I can study through it with some kind of decent pace - ideally, during summer vacation would be a good time for that.

Once again, on Friday, it rained. I couldn't understand it anymore, it has to be some kind of curse or something.

Week 14 - More studies

Mika and Samuli said that the water they got from the faucet was all white on Tuesday morning when I got back to Kitami. I was happy to find out that the dorm suffered no problems whatsoever regarding the water issue. However, since Mika and Samuli couldn't even go to shower, we decided to go to onsen. A few other people had done the same decision as well, which resulted in really cramped pools of hot water and even more people than usual staring at us.

I also begun working on my project for Tampere University of Technology, finally. The project is a kanji writing system, not so much about recognition as much it is about learning how to write correctly (although the recognition obviously plays a big role in this). I had received the go for the assignment a long while back but didn't just begin working on it. I still have many months to write the documents, though - until April. I hope to finish most of this project, too, at least the documentation part, by the start of summer vacation. The programming can be done any time with the documentation finished, anyway.

On the weekend, it rained once again on Friday. I put my alarm clock on for early morning to leave by bicycle in case it didn't rain, but just glancing through the window made me change my mind.

Week 13 - Water shortage

I started to notice that my knees were hurting a little so I relaxed on the cycling thing for the whole week. I did start to look for a bigger seatpost, though, because the one I had now was just too short. There was none to be found in Kitami, though.

I could make good progress with our Japanese book, Minna no Nihongo I. I did all the exercise for a couple of chapters per day so I could finish studying that book by the following week. Of course, there are always things to interrupt studies even if you really wanted to concentrate on them. So, the daily life of us exchange students in Kitami is basically going to lectures, to lunch and around the city every now and then. Usually, if someone wants to go shopping for clothes, for instance, a bunch of people join him just to keep company.

I also went to onsen with Oeda-san, the Japanese guy I had done some jogging and cooking and stuff before. We could talk something in Japanese and some local people in the onsen were interested in talking to us as well. Mostly, they were interested in Finland, sauna and swimming in the snow.

On the weekend, I went to Obihiro as usual. I really wanted to cycle there, but it was raining on Friday, so I passed and went by bus. On Saturday, there were breaking news from Kitami on TV, about something related to water. It was easy enough to guess that the city was out of it and something didn't work since there were large stale pools of brown-blackish water being pictured by the cameras and following that, a shot of a woman trying to use the water in a kitchen, but nothing would come out of the tap.

In reality, about 80 000 people in Kitami were without water. For whatever reason, there was water in the dorm, but not in the school cafeteria and Mika and Samuli's apartment was out of water, too. They had to pick water up from in ten liter plastic bags from the university, to which water tank trucks had parked. There were same trucks in the city centre as well.

Week 12 - Out of Sounkyo

Because it started to rain in Sounkyo and I couldn't get up to the mountain, I decided to go to Obihiro instead. I took a bus, put my cycle in and off I went. I was asleep almost all of the way and when arriving to the apartment, I just crashed to the bed and didn't get up in six hours. Even then, I could sleep just as well in the night too. Mountain climbing is really tiresome, it seems.

After spending a long while not studying at all, I finally decided to get a hold of myself and start actually studying some Japanese. So, I spent the rest of the week studying and then some. There's not much more to tell about it. I really tried to do my best to learn Japanese although my mind wandered off to other things every now and then.

Finally, on the Monday of the next week, I cycled back from Obihiro to Rikubetsu, totaling about 115 km.

Week 12 - Sounkyo

For a long while, I had been studying the maps around Kitami and after talking with Mr. Bozek, the English teacher who'd done his share of touring Hokkaido in the past as well, I became convinced that Sounkyo was where I wanted to ride to. It was supposedly an onsen village in a valley right next to the Daisetsuzan mountain range, which was also the host to the tallest mountains in whole of Hokkaido. Asahi-dake, peaking at 2290 meters, was to be my final destination. So, after coming back to Kitami on a late Monday evening and spending a good while packing my stuff on the cycle bags, I was good to go and ready to sleep.

I decided to skip all my classes for that week, obviously. I just chose to leave on this particular week since the English lessons had been canceled and I didn't want to skip them any more than I already had, so it was the only choice for me until August to spend a whole week away from Kitami. That's not to say I wouldn't have been absent from the other classes, but it's just that the teaching methods of Mr. Bozek are quite spartan, especially when it comes to skipping class.

Petri was awake for one reason or another, around 7:30am when I was about to leave. He helped me carry the bags downstairs and at exactly 8 am, off I went. The morning traffic was not that bad and as soon as I got out of the central Kitami area, the cycling turned out to be quite enjoyable once again. I went about 40 km to a village called Rubeshibe, from where I bought the butane gas which I was still missing. By a coincidence, there was an English-speaking Japanese woman watering the flowers outside that shop and we had a chat for some time. It turned out she was actually a restaurant manager, but landed on a temporary job before heading for France to open a new restaurant.

I didn't make it far until taking another break, just around 15 km away from Rubeshibe, there is an onsen village called Onnenoyu, to which I had cycled before as well. In that village, I just filled my water bottle, ate a bowl of soba, the worst I'd ever had, really, and quickly escaped the tourist trap to make my way up to the mountains. I needed the energy, though - lately, I've been constantly hungry, which is due to a couple of things - cycling consumes a lot of energy and the portions in Japanese restaurants, fast food shops and even supermarkets are just too small. Sure, you can get a super size, but most likely, you can't afford it. The food is just too expensive here. On my backpacking trip a year back, there were a few 20-something English teachers who argued the exact opposite, but then again, they were working and could afford it.

After about 60km from Kitami, the steep, steep uphill started. Until then, it was all easy and even with extra 15 kg on the bike, it was no problem. However, the climbing lasted for a good ten kilometers and I can tell it was the most intense cycling I've done. I didn't time it, but from around sea level, I rose up to 1050m, to Sekihoku toge. Not stopping was hardly an option. I was all drained out of energy, just like in computer games. Luckily, I had the countermeasure, a power-up, handy. I ate half of a PowerBar, some kind of energy snack, a lot of peanuts, drunk a lot of water and I was ready to go again. On the top, I ate something with and odd resemblance to hot dogs and started the descent. In fact, all the way to Sounkyo was just that, constant downhill, occasional straight road and a tiny bump back up again.

There were some dangers on the way, though. A triplet of tunnels neatly divided the distance into something more bearable, because I knew that the next windless, completely even hole in the mountain was going to be always close enough to reach. It's just that the first tunnel, albeit short, didn't have a sidewalk at all, so it was really dangerous driving there. I had lights, obviously, but they were 100 yen lights. In euros, that would be something like 50 cents. They don't exactly provide illumination, just so that the car driver might see you, possibly. If you're lucky.

Still alive and breathing, I made it through the tunnels with ease and arrived to Sounkyo around 3 p.m. The total distance was 96 km and I had covered it, including a multitude of breaks, in seven hours. That was slow. Without counting the breaks, it would be somewhere around six. Still, the insane climb up to one kilometer was somewhat devastating for timing. I felt like not moving at all, but I never really wanted to stop, because every time I did, my muscles ached so badly that I didn't want to start moving again.

In Sounkyo, I had planned to get up to the mountain on the same day and lodge at the mountain hut, which was supposedly free or almost free. So, I went to ask around about them, but the reality hit me in the face right there - the huts were closed, too much snow. I had packed all my camping stuff with me and now all that was useless. I didn't know what to do about it at first, but a lady at the tourist information center readily suggested me to sleep in the parking center if I looked for cheap accommodation. I didn't buy it at first but the next alternative was spending 3000 yen on a youth hostel and after visiting that place, I had come to the conclusion that I didn't want to go there. So, I headed for the parking lot instead right after visiting an onsen in the middle of the resort town.

Sounkyo was really for tourists only. Some things in the city were aimed for long-term tourists, but it also served those who just stopped by while driving through the mountain range. There were restaurants, handicraft shops, other souvenirs, a post office and an easy access to all the main sights. Then, there was not much else, disregarding hotels. That's Sounkyo. It's still a nice place though and I might go there again while cycling to Sapporo in the summer. It's not like there would be much choice, anyway - the next town, Kamikawa, is even further away and who knows what kind of paths one must take to get there.

After a night of not many hours of sleep, I woke up early, around four in the morning, to climb up to the mountain, or at least as far as I could go. At least it meant going up to the ropeway's end station, up to 1300 meters. Bozek had said it would take only "a few hours" to get all the way to the closest peak, Kurodake, so I was determined to go there even if the cottages were closed. I started walking up through the ghostly, silent village to a road on the mountainside and upon arrival to where the map said the hiking path was supposed to be, I couldn't find one. All I found was a dried-up tiny stream which looked enough like a path to me to climb. So up I went and eventually, I managed to cross the real path too. I didn't know if it was the real hiking path or just a maintenance path for the ropeway towers and cables, but at least it would surely take me to the top.

I went up as fast as I could and since I had felt cold in the morning, I had put on my wind/waterproof jacket and pants. The pants were a good idea, since I didn't have any options in the first place, but the jacket was a mistake. By the time I was halfway through, I was sweating so much that the shirt I wore underneath was completely covered in sweat. Sure, the jacket was waterproof, both ways.

The path itself was really scary all the time. It was about 60 degrees elevation at times and due to that, there were ropes attached to some of the sturdier trees to help the hiker get up. Obviously, there were no fences or anything of the sort. Definitely, it was a real mountain.

By the time I got close to the ropeway station, more and more snow was on the ground. It was all solid, but slippery enough to lead a careless stride a long way down and to a certain paraplegic state. So, I went slowly and carefully for the last odd meters. It was around 6 am by the time I was almost on top, just about five meters short from the plateau. At this time, the first gondola brought the employees of the ropeway company up on the hill and I stopped too, since I didn't want to seem like struggling in the snow (which I really was). So I just stopped, leaned to the snow and holding my legs against a curved tree, bending up through the said snow. I looked around to seek for a path up. I figured out how to get there and the employees in the gondola figured out about my presence, too. They pointed at me and looked intensely, but after their gondola stopped next to the building and I climbed up at the same time, they didn't come after me or anything. So, I went to mind my own business, taking some pictures of the mountains.

Week 11 - Preparation

As it may be obvious by now, the subject of this blog has become less and less about studies and more and more about cycling. So, it is only proper to dedicate this post to list a few things required to do just that, cycle around Hokkaido and finally, all around Japan.

I spent this week looking for prices and buying lots of things. By the end of the week (that is, Sunday), I had bought two more cycling bags and a front carrier for my bike, a sleeping bag, an inflator mat, wind/waterproof clothes, a bear bell (for scaring them away), a camp cooker and gas as well as some kinds of dry food needed for camping. Then, I bought a map of Daisetsuzan area too and planned to go there on the week after. The only real important thing I lacked was a tent, but because the whole area around the mountains was supposed to be covered with mountain huts, I didn't worry about it so much. In fact, I counted on the fact that the huts would be there and didn't believe my ears when, after cycling 100km to Sounkyo, a valley resort between the mountains, the officials told me how the huts are still closed because there's too much snow. They were not supposed to open until after three weeks or so. I won't go so much into detail here though, just to point out that a person with any sense would call first and ask about it before going on such a trip.

Anyway, so, I didn't have any of this camping stuff before coming to Japan. I bought everything here, except for the big backpack. I will proceed to list some prices which may or may not be interesting for someone planning to do the same thing. The prices are in yen, obviously, and may not be exactly correct either, but should be close enough to.

Camping gear

Backback (70l) - Brought from Finland
Warm clothes - Brought from Finland
Cooking unit - 4000y
Cooking gas (butane) - from 400y to 900y, depending on the can size
Bear bell - about 1000y
Sleeping bag (Mont Bell) - 11 000y
Inflator mat (Coleman) - 5000y
Wind/waterproof clothes (Mizuno) - 11 000y
Map of Daisetsuzan - 1000y
Map of Hokkaido - gift from a Japanese man, real cost probably 500-1000y

So, the total cost here is around 40k yen, depending on how much gas you intend to spend. Here, you need to remember that the tent will be costly - from 15000y to 30000y, obviously depending on its quality and size. Since sleeping in a youth hostel costs around 2500 y/night on average, sleeping ten nights in the tent would pay its money back. However, other options like the cheapest capsule hotels might be as cheap as 1000y and on urban areas, camping is difficult (or costly) anyway, so it's a good idea to really consider if you need the tent or not.

Cycling gear

Bike - Panasonic MTB - 5000y (from a recycling shop in Kitami)
Helmet - DGK, 7000y
New tires - 7000y
Front carrier - 6800y
Front bags - 6500y
Rear bags - 6800y
New saddle - 1600y
Cycle bag (for transport in bus, plane etc) - 5000y
Bottle holder and bottle - 2500y
Tools and front/back lights - 1400y
Cycling clothes (shirt/pants) - 12000y

So, the cycling stuff is about 60k yen, including the cycle. This is still pretty cheap considering that a new cycle is actually around this price range, and you'd still have to buy the touring gear anyway, which counts for the most of this sum (my cycle has only cost about 14000y and it is still well below even the cheapest good cycles which could be considered for touring).

I only know of two good cycling shops in the places I have went to. One is in Kitami, Satou Pro Cycle Shop (or something), on the main street, about five kilometers from the Institute. The other shop, a zillion times more well-equipped one, is in Obihiro. It's called Kakouchi Velo and has all kinds of cycling gear available without a need to order anything. The prices are not too bad, either, so it's obviously a better choice of the two. However, I guess this is not a good option for most people wanting to go on exchange program in Kitami, since they probably don't have much of a reason for going to Obihiro.

In euros, the total sum for both sets of gear I currently have is around 620e, so it's still quite feasible, and I only really need the tent until being able to go pretty much anywhere. I still have to make plans about it though - I don't want to spend that amount of money unless I really can't avoid it. In comparison, just the living costs of staying in cheap hotels, hostels or even dorms can easily go above 500e in one month, not to mention the travelling expenses. So, my summer holiday is about two months, from August to end of September. Aside that, there's a great deal of free time for me to spend all around Japan during this summer and next autumn, both good seasons for travelling. So, why not?

Week 10 - cycling tour to the sea

This week was spent mostly preparing for the future. I spent most of the Tuesday going shopping around Kitami. I had to find out about prices on camping equipment and cycling stuff as well, so I went out to buy cycling shorts and a helmet, order touring bags for the bike as well as look for camping stuff. It seemed that when bought shining brand new, everything from a tent to a sleeping bag would cost above 40000 yen (around 250 euros). Since this stuff is obviously going to be useful back in Finland too, I don't think it would be all that bad to take it with me. However, I do have some doubts about buying all that stuff, so I will still consider about it before actually buying especially the tent.

So, most of the preparing was about Wednesday, which is when I had planned to go cycling again. I wanted to go to Memanbetsu by myself, a city about 40km away which seemed to have some nice hot springs around it that I wanted to visit. However, I could talk Matias into coming with me and we decided together to watch the sea. That would be just 45 km away in Abashiri, the closest coastal city. Ville and Petri had been there two months back, representing Finland on a food festival. They made mashed potatoes and meatball sauce, a traditional Swedish food. Well, you can't blame them for not trying, at least.

So much for insults, though. As for the cycling trip, it started a bit slowly for me, since I was expecting to go much faster than Matias could keep up with. However, it turned out that Matias was not slow because he was in such a bad shape. Well, at least it was not the whole truth. Instead, his bike really sucked; the saddle being too low, the back wheel waving around a little and especially having something wrong with his gearing transmission. When going on the same cadence, he was going much more slowly. Another reason might've been due to tires with too much friction, but they were pretty much of the same kind, so I really don't know. In any case - he was behind me all the time, which provided me with so much free time that I could take long breaks and rest so I really didn't even break a sweat during the way to Abashiri.

Cycling is not a pissing contest, though, so I really don't mind that he was slower, because it was really nice to just have company. When we finally got to Abashiri, we went to eat in Victoria Steakhouse, a chain serving quite cheap steaks all things considered. A full-blown steak meal with all-you-can-eat salad, soup and even drinks (soft ones, though) for about ten to fifteen euros is a steal compared to prices in Finland - you'd be guaranteed to at least double the price over there.

We had chosen the shortest possible route to Abashiri, ranging at 45 km as mentioned. However, I didn't want to go back on the same route, since the road was not that good and it went winding back and forth, bumping up and down with some serious climbs at some spots. Plus, I wanted to see more of the areas close by, so I wanted to choose another route. So we went on a 55 click-long main route back to Kitami, through Memanbetsu and Bihiro, another small town.

The scenery was all beautiful and well, scenic, all around the whole trip. There was just one place which didn't quite look pretty to me. It was this three-kilometer long climb up a road with a constant elevation seeming well above humanly limits. After making it all the way up though, I felt incredibly relieved and good about my ridiculously slow performance. At the top of the hill, in the middle of nowhere, stood a Coke vending machine, an all-too familiar sight in Japan. Next to that was another machine, covered in plexiglas and advertisements about DVD video or something. So, behind the covers was a porn vending machine. On the top of a hill, next to a main route, with at least eight miles to the closest town. I can see how Japanese are supposedly shy about these things, but they have their XXX sections even in video rental shops like Geo and Tsutaya, so the purpose of this particular piece of machinery was kept hidden from me. I guess it's for the farm people.

Well, after a few more moments of cycling and battling against the last hundred-meter rise which seemed far longer, a car stopped next to me and the window opened. My immediate thought was that it'd be a Japanese person asking something about me, like where I'm from or whatever. Instead, it was Samuli with a big grin on his face. I proclaimed the Finnish "mita vit-" until stopping right there as I saw who was riding the car. Our English teacher, Christopher Bozek, had taken Samuli for a ride to see some flowers. Also, Mika was sitting on the back seat, but I was so dazed and tired that I really didn't know what to say, so they said byes and just drove away.

It was really windy and consequently, cold outside, not to mention that cycling over a hundred really strains your body, but I had to stop for Matias who was far behind. In fact, I had not even seen a glimpse of him in about half an hour or more although I had made a few stops after battling up to the vending machine mountain. After waiting for what seemed like a lifetime (15 minutes), he finally caught me and we went to onsen, a Japanese bath. He'd never been to one before and as for me, that was all I wanted at the time. Nothing is so relaxing as a bath in those places and the price of 2 euros for using those facilities makes it all the sweeter.

In total, our trip lasted 11 hours, five and a half of which was spent riding. A++, would go again. But I think next time I'll have to go by myself, since Matias wasn't too cheerful about riding the cycle any further than around Kitami in the next year. Can't say I blame him, I wouldn't ride either with the kind of bike he has.

On the next day, I felt so sleepy all day that I really couldn't do anything sensible, but I managed to go shopping again anyway. I wanted to prepare better for the next trip, so I bought cycling gloves and a shirt this time. Now, I just need to buy a decent jacket and long pants to cover me from the rather violent winds, as well as new tires for my cycle, and I'll be set to go again. I hope to find the time soon, since next week is supposedly good weather all around and I don't feel like wasting such precious time.

Week 9

Back in Kitami, I was determined to head for a mountain by myself. I asked the other Finns to join me and while two of them said yes, they bailed out on last minutes. So I just went by myself, using my paper map and Google Earth as planners. The closest mountain, Nikoro-san, peaking at 829m, is about 15km away from Kitami as the crow flies, but about 30km on road.

I went on to cycle the road that was supposed to get me there and found a really beautiful cemetery along the way as well. I stopped by there to take a few photos of Kitami which could be easily seen from the upper hills of the cemetery, as the whole place was built on the hill in the first place. After that, I kept on going closer to the mountain.

In fact, my original plan was to simply go to take a look at a camping site right next to the mountain, since there was supposed to be a lake next to it, but as I arrived to the camping area, there was a path all the way up to the mountain too, even though the map didn't show it. Of course, I took the path and started to walk up!

On the journey up to the mountain, clouds started to gather, glooming above Kitami and nearby villages. I thought I was going to get soaked, but none of the rainfall actually came on the mountain. Instead, just the areas close by received some showers, but nothing too serious.

When I was climbing up the hill, I passed a few people heading down and one elderly gentleman going up. We talked a bit in Japanese although I can't really speak that much and then I headed up again. He gave me his card, though, and told me to visit his website. I didn't think much of it at the time, just thought that he was another friendly Japanese face.

I finally got on the top around 3 p.m., but couldn't have the mountain to myself, since there was someone else sitting on the peak too. After a while, he left and I had the seat all to myself, as well as the freezing wind with no cover from it. I didn't mind the weather that much, though, since the sights more than made up for it. It was absolutely beautiful in all directions. Even though the sky was getting cloudy, I could still see all the way to Kitami and across to the mountains on the other side of it.

When I started to head back down, the same old fellow, Satou-san, was still heading up and we crossed paths again. I told I had written a note to the diary on the peak, which is when he said that it was his and he had visited the mountain a lot lately - last year, 2006, he visited the mountain about 300 times and this year, by May, he had visited it for 100 times. He really seemed to like that place and explained that since he didn't have any work anymore, being in his seventies, he had all the time he wanted. I can imagine he didn't have a wife anymore, either, which made me gloomy for a while.

We parted ways with Satou-san as I headed back down and went on to cycle back to Kitami. The trip was totaling about 60km and I really didn't feel so aching in my legs after it, so if I can keep up taking such journeys, I hope to be able to manage a 100km in a day by some time. If I can do that much, it will make it possible for me to cover a huge area around Kitami and still make it back within the same day. By the summer vacation, I hope to have visited many more spots all around Hokkaido.

Week 8

After recovering from the stomach ache, I decided to spend the Saturday in Obihiro by doing something I had wanted to do for a while. On clear days, the mountains are easily visible on the horizon of Obihiro and that's where I wanted to go. I looked up on Google Earth for some directions since I didn't have a paper map at all and went cycling. Now, my bicycle isn't the best of its kind - the saddle is really hard and too low, the rear gears don't work at all and as a result, the bike only has two gears. Nonetheless, I was determined to go, even though the map software displayed that the distance to where I was going was about 30 km away.

After cycling all through the rural landscape, horrendously thick smell of dung and across the farm fields, I finally got to my destination which I'd seen on Google Earth. There was a big waterfall and a mountain stream with crystal clear water, flowing somewhere from the mountains. The stream was a tributary to Tokachi river, which is supposed to be kind of well-known - at least some locals I've talked to have mentioned it.

All the way to the waterfall, the road was covered in tarmac, so it was a rather pleasant ride, but after getting to the waterfall, that luxury was over. I decided to take a dust road which took me nowhere, but I only figured that out after cycling on it for a few kilometers.

After turning back, I visited another spot along the tributary, which was meant to be a canoeing starting point. After admiring the sights, I started to head back. I stopped by the only shop in the whole rural area to ask for a map and to my surprise, they gave two different ones for free! It was a really happy surprise for me, since I really didn't want to take the same route back as I had come from and those maps helped me in figuring out other places of interest as well.

Eventually, I got back to the city and being really hungry, I decided to head for McDonalds. After eating three double cheeses, I was full and headed back home after a six-hour trip and 80km.

Weeks 6 and 7

The Japan-wide holiday, Golden Week, started for me on Friday of the fifth week. I went, of course, to Obihiro. However, that week didn't really turn out all that well. First, we had to spend three days just making some basic arrangements with Tomomi regarding the apartment and her settling down in Obihiro - going around various companies, buying furniture and so on. Nothing exciting, really, but I didn't mind too much about it. What I did mind, however, was that I got a stomach ache on Wednesday and I still had it on the day after. On Friday morning, I started to vomit and couldn't hold anything inside, not even water.

During the rest of the week, I went to two doctors, both of which gave me different kinds of medicine and contradicted each other. The doctor I went to see on Sunday put me on infusion since my stomach wouldn't just stop hurting. It was not any mild pain, even - I couldn't sleep at all, so we actually went to a small clinic in the middle of the night. Afterward, I didn't feel any pain that night, but it came back on Monday.

I didn't go to school at all on Tuesday since I only came back around 8 p.m. from Obihiro. I was afraid to go to the bus on Monday because I felt like having a diarrhea attack, so I just watched TV all day instead, being too tired to do anything else.

Every time I ate during the sickness, I got the shivers and I lost weight a couple of kilos because of not being able to eat anything. It was the same thing with drinking, too, so I was really thirsty and hungry at some times, but at least I didn't hurt so badly. On Wednesday, 9th of May, I went to a Kitami hospital too with two men from the International Student Center. They just sat in the same room with the doctor, listening to everything I told him, not really minding about the doctor-patient relationship which could be argued to be sort of private, at least most of the time. Not in Kitami, no sir - the boss's got to know every detail too.

In any case, what the English-speaking doctor in Kitami prescribed me seemed to work, because the next day I was feeling much better already, marking the first day I could eat normally without having to just stop because of the hurting. I had been like that for six days though, so it was really about time. As of writing this, I still don't feel all that sharp but recovering from this kind of illness takes more time than just a day or two.

So, the vacation was really ruined, but I don't personally mind too much about it. Just being here every week is vacation by itself, since I'm not really doing all that much on any given day.

Pictures!

Now, there's finally some pictures on the web taken by me as well. nothing too exciting, but at least they'll give some idea of what all the text is about. So,

http://www.kolumbus.fi/zombie/japan/

Weeks 4 and 5

I nearly lost count of the weeks, possibly because the fourth week was really short for me in the university. I arrived back to Kitami on Monday, but since Tomomi was getting really sick, I already went back to Obihiro on the first bus on Thursday morning. Since I didn't have school on Tuesday anyway, I ended up not doing much at all during that week. On Tuesday though, there was the International C hour, a meeting between some enthusiastic Kitami residents and exchange students from various countries. In the meeting, there were mostly old people from Kitami, at least compared to us - in their 50s, at least.

Basically, all we did there was a game where you had to interview as many people as possible, asking some basic questions like their home country, favorite food, favorite place in Japan and so forth. In the end of the meeting, I even forgot my paper there so all those new names ended up not being all that useful. Oh well.

I also went running with Oeda again during that short-spun week. Although we can't communicate that well, he's a really nice guy, one of the few level-headed ones, it seems. Most Japanese people that Ville and Petri know are somehow twisted, like, otaku, ero-otaku, chronic masturbators or something like that. This guy is really helpful and doesn't try too hard to be funny or forthcoming, unlike some Japanese, but instead acts just casually around me and other Finns when he meets them, so it's great to have him around. As a plus, I can learn some Japanese from him as well.

I went to Obihiro on the first bus on Thursday and obviously missed my classes for that day. No harm done though, since the somewhat strict English teacher, Mr. Bozek, didn't seem to mind about it and the other teacher didn't even ask about my abscence.

Week 5

By the time I left Obihiro again, Tomomi's sickness had gotten better so that she could go to work on Monday. That was a real relief for her since she wanted to go and for a good reason too - no work equals no money in Japan. Newly arrived employees don't get paid for being sick and in her company, the time it took to get a permanent employee status in that sense was something like one year. Shoop-da-whoop.

Well, when I got back to Kitami, I wanted to really go to another Japanese class on Monday since they had moved the classes around. However, that wasn't an option, since I didn't even know where the class was being held. I just went back to the dorm and relaxed. After a while, I asked Oeda to go running and he was all for it, so we went to jog around Kitami for a little bit. I remembered a friend in Finland, Jimi, talking about "interval exercises", so we did some of that - sprinting for all we could and then slowing down to normal jogging speed again. Oeda couldn't keep up the pace that well but he did the best he could.

On Tuesday, every new-arrived exchange student had to partake in a medical exam. It was really nothing more than a blood test, which I really don't enjoy, but it had to be done. Hopefully nothing bad comes up from them, but I really doubt it.

We went jogging again with Oeda on Tuesday, but we also cooked some Ramen. On the day before, we'd been talking about ramen restaurants and he said we could cook some ourselves, too. So we went shopping for some foodstuff and cooked it pretty soon afterwards. It was definitely much better than the typical cup noodle ramen that can be bought from almost anywhere - the noodles themselves were from a different planet, much softer and more tasty. Our choice of soup was made solely by the price tag, so the soup didn't cater to my tastes, but all the fresh vegetables and the fresh meat, too, were really something else after only eating instant noodles since... always.

On Wednesday, I had Artificial intelligence class in the morning, so after that, I thought I should spend my time usefully. I studied kanji for about 6 hours and some Japanese too. I can't say I would actually remember all the kanji I've studied so far by heart, but I can memorize most of their meanings for sure as well as recognize the rest of them and draw them in the dictionary. By this time I have studied only 76 kanji though, so I'm still far away from being able to read most things. Yet, it's a whole new world in this country when all of a sudden you're actually able to read those lunatic markings of a crazy language.

Finally, on Thursday, the last of our introduction procedures was to be finished. We went to the city hall for the alien cards which were due to be finished on that day and got them too very quickly. I went together with Mika and we were supposed to get the phones right away too, but that proved to be more difficult.

First, we went to eat at the school diner to wait for Kenji, a tutor of Petri, who was supposed to have all the Finns talk some Japanese during that day, a casual conversation. However, everyone else had disappeared, so we were by ourselves. Kenji came there anyway with a bunch of friends - Hachi, Tera and Keisuke, who introduced themselves in English. We did our best to do the same in Japanese and talked for a while about nothing, until someone thought it was best to ask about our girlfriends. After that, the conversation was almost only around me, since everyone thought it was incredible I had a girlfriend in Japan. I was a bit bothered about it since I really want to choose myself who to talk to and in this situation, we had just a meeting with some guys who seemed to be very interested in me. But I guess it was good though, at least for the sake of the conversation.

After lunch, me and Mika went to the city to find a cell phone. We went to "au" store since everyone had recommended them to us. They have student discounts for 50%, so it seemed like a good idea. After cycling there, we found ourselves in a tiny, empty shop along the main street with four girls behind the counter, shouting "Welcome!" in Japanese to us. After what seemed like half an hour, we decided not to buy the cellphones just yet since the deal they offered us was a 8400 yen payment at first and then the typical 2000 yen / month tax for the account itself. The two thousand deal was what we were looking for, but we were not going to pay the 8400 for some half-assed cells.

We went to another shop, DoCoMo, in which they offered much cheaper phones (0 yen, in fact) but a much higher monthly fee, 3500 yen. All this took something like a hour and a half, after which we were both pretty pissed off about the whole deal and thought it best to just go back another day with a Japanese guide. To feel like we'd have accomplished at least something, we went to Mr. Donuts to consume some of the most unhealthy, yet the tastiest donuts of all.

While drinking our coffee and thinking about getting back, it started to pour rain with no warning. We thought it was better to skip class than go to cycle back in the rain, so we went in Tokyu, an expensive department store, to buy rye flour. I wanted to make Karelian pies at some point, so it seemed like a good idea to get some. We bought them straight from the bakery which used some rye in their own breads, but the price was somewhat steep for just rye, so to speak. For one kilo, I was charged 1500 yen. That's over 9e for just some flour! What the christ... Well, I will make some excellent pies with that flour for myself, the other Finns and some Japanese as well if they want to have any.

Third week - About classes

After getting back to the dorm, I was internetless just for something like 20 minutes, after which I went to visit Mika and Samuli to their apartment. Mika was sleeping as I rang the doorbell and Samuli wasn't about. The guys had spent some good time on their weekend, at least judging from the pictures and videos that Mika showed me from his computer. They'd been to a few bars, one of which was a drink-all-you-can, "nomihoodai" equipped with karaoke, a couple of guitars and a drum set. The bar visitors were allowed to play the instruments themselves, but although Mika was able to play the guitar, he didn't get drunk enough to actually get up on the stage and play some music. Instead, one of the two daughters of the bar owner sang while the bar owner played the guitar himself, grouped with a bunch of other people on the drums and the bass. Judging from the pictures, the evening rocked - especially after Mika had thrown up in another bar as they moved on through their epic journey of being drunk in various places.

After Samuli came back, we strolled together to the first Japanese class. First, there was an introduction given by a different lecturer, who basically told us in Japanese that we have three choices regarding the courses and should choose the one appropriate for our own level. Me, Mika, Samuli and Matias went to the basic class among with a Thai woman called "Waraporn" and a Chinese guy "Tanriwa" or something - I really couldn't be sure about his name. In fact, there was another Chinese guy, who wanted to be called Tom, because to an uneducated ear, his name sounded very much like "Tan" as well.

In the Japanese class, there was a Japanese woman in her forties teaching us about "konnichiwa" and "sumimasen" and other very basic words in Japanese. Most of the stuff we went through in the course of one hour and a half was really basic, but the homework didn't seem so easy. There were many words I'd never heard of before, three big pages of them. What made it seem especially bad is that I didn't have a dictionary. In the introduction, we had been given books called "Minna no Nihongo", which contained some of the words, but it seemed difficult to find them from between the lines. I thought that to really study Japanese, I would have to buy a dictionary anyway. Without it, studying kanji would be really tiresome.

After the class was over, we went back to the dorm, talking about the class and how it seemed too easy at least for now. We wanted more lessons than just 1.5 hours per week, but after asking about it, it wasn't possible all that easily. I knew that in some other Japanese universities taking exchange students, there are much more lessons in a week, so we would have to spend huge amounts of time on self-study due to the lack of education.

Back in the dorm, I tried to login to the internet, and like magic, it worked. Petri had spent some time getting it to work by using another person's cable and after a while, we decided to change the cable and move the WLAN router to my apartment, because it was closer to the person actually sharing the internet connection.

In the evening, Ville asked if anyone wanted to go to a ramen place just down the street to eat some noodles. He'd never been to it before and granted, I hadn't ever eaten real restaurant ramen either, so I was in. Matias was coming as well, so we all took bicycles and went down the street to check out the ramen place. When we got there though, it was closed. There was no menu or anything, just a text saying "ramen" in Japanese, no opening and closing hours either. So we thought it was best to find another restaurant, since we were all hungry and on the go.

After cycling for what seemed like a few kilometers, we reached a large supermarket called "Tobu". It was just about to close, so we could grab something for really good prices - usually, when the markets close, they have all the bentos for half price, so that's what me and Matias bought. At the same time, I got the idea that to live cheaply in Japan, all one has to do is to benefit from the half-price sales around closing hours. Doing that, there would be little need for cooking and one would still be able to taste all the mysterious and sometimes highly dangerous delicacies of Japanese origin.

After getting out of the supermarket, we still wanted to go to a restaurant. So cycling back, we strolled to an expensive-looking place, not really knowing what to expect from it. It was a nikuyaki restaurant where you fry the various types of meat above a charcoal pot. The restaurant personnel were really friendly for us, or at least we got their attention. How? By being white. They said "gaijin, gaijin" and started to serve us with even more vigor than your typical Japanese waitresses, which is already saying a lot. The food seemed to be actually quite cheap here, so we took a couple of sets of beef slices and fried them to our taste. The heat of the red-glowing coal really warmed up our hands, frozen in the cold evening air and the food tasted really good. After we'd finished, the waitress who had first greeted us came to us, offering a plate of seashells. I'd never eaten them fresh before, so it was an experience by itself, but the actual gesture of giving them was really friendly. When we got out to pay our bills, she wanted to offer us a bag of onions too, but Ville declined the offer. I didn't understand what she was saying, but I would've at least liked to have them.

With Matias, I went to buy an electronic dictionary on Wednesday. I didn't know much about them, other than what Johan, a Swedish guy studying at APU whom I had visited last year, had told me about it. He recommended the Casio EX-Word series, so I was inclined to buy one of those as well. When we finally reached the store by bicycle and got to look at the different models, it became clear that buying a model without a stylus, a kind of digital pen to write text to the screen with, was a bad idea. So I took the cheapest EX-Word model with a stylus, priced around 28000 yen. I hope this was my last expensive electronic purchase, because I cannot afford much more. I calculated that I have about 1300 yen per day to spend, which sounds like a lot, but it really isn't. So I have to severely cut on my expenses in order to cope with daily life or I'll be broke before summer.

On Friday, I was going to Obihiro again. This time, I packed a bit more stuff with me, so I wouldn't have to bring my clothes back and forth between Obihiro and Kitami. I skipped a voluntary seminar on the afternoon because I was just too tight on time and went cycling to the bus terminal on downtown Kitami. When I stopped in the last traffic lights, I was next to a group of schoolgirls. They glanced at me and said something about "kakkoii" and "ryuugakusei", which mean "cool" and "exchange student". I didn't understand much else about it, but I could imagine they talked about me. That imagination was confirmed later to be true, though.

In the bus, there were also a lot of schoolgirls in the bus. I couldn't get to the back seat, being already taken by three girls, but the seat next to it was free, so I went there. After the bus started moving, I could easily hear the schoolgirls talk in English: "Where are you from?", "What is your name?", "How old are you?" They were just practicing the lines and I paid no mind to it, but couldn't really help smiling. After a while, they had mustered enough courage to start talking and promptly asked "Excuse me" loudly enough so that I was supposed to hear it. After that, me and the three 15-year olds talked about Japan and Finland until each of them left off at a different stop. They had more courage to talk than many of the university students, which I thought to be great. I tried to encourage them to keep it up, too, and keep talking English in the future as well.

One of the girls left off at the last stop of the first bus, Rikubetsu. She was kind enough to show me the only restaurant of the whole village, a soba noodle place. I'll have to visit it in the future if I go on such a bus that has a longer exchange time than 10 minutes.

Second week - About Obihiro and the Japanese people

On the second weekend, I went to visit Tomomi in Obihiro. It's about 150-200km south of Kitami, but while one might think the trip takes only 2 hours, it really takes four. I had to take two local buses to get there and all through the trip, they go really slow. It's not like the roads are in a good condition, either, but it still takes a long, long time. Luckily, there's usually not too many passengers on the buses, so I can relax and sleep on the back seat. I consider it my private bus and my private back seat as well, since there's really not any other frequent users that I've noticed so far.

While sleeping in the bus, I sometimes wake up to look around the scenery. On the second trip, I was scared fgoor some time that I had take n a wrong bus since the scenery was exactly the same as before. Really, the quiet suburban areas between Kitami and Obihiro are all exactly the same, broken only by some vast fields and farms scattered between them. I only recovered from my shock after the bus arrived to a familiar bus station, followed by miles and miles of fields. They say that the area around Kitami is famous for producing two things - onion and mint. So I guess that in summer, it's either of those two that will be growing on those fields.

As for the weekend itself, it was not all that exciting to tell about. Tomomi had to go to work for every day except Sunday so I simply waited for her to get back by working on a website project and taking a few long walks around the city. On the first trip, I strolled around the suburban area which is where Tomomi lived too. After crossing the supermarkets, there were just houses with bonsai gardens, schools, vending machines and an occasional restaurant. I walked for about 10km around this area and really got my fill of the Japanese housing. The only thing that kept me going was that I had to get back to the apartment as well. I lost my way a few times, but the huge dome of a pachinko parlor guided me back to the main road and from there, back to our apartment.

The reason I went walking was that I saw really beautiful mountains out of the apartment window in the morning. I wanted to get closer to them, but having no map of the area, I didn't know how far they even were. After walking for about five kilometers and seeing how the mountains were not getting any closer, I gave up and turned back. Later, I found out that they were actually 35km away from the city, being a part of a much larger mountain range far away from anything.

On one evening, Tomomi mailed me that she would get back home from work in half an hour. Then, I started to make pancakes to surprise her. I like making them since I'm not a very good cook and that's one of the few recipes I can easily memorize - just some flour, milk and an egg with a pinch of sugar and some oil or butter for cooking. While it all sounds really easy, it is not in Japan, at least not for me. Everything went well until I reached for the sugar. Tomomi had bought salt before and I had put it next to the sugar pack. Since I cannot read Japanese text or at least understand it, I just took the first package without looking at it at all. After all, sugar and salt do look the same, but one might argue that their taste differs somewhat. Did I taste the white grain? No. I just poured it in the dough and started making the pancakes afterwards. I only noticed after eating some of the first pancakes that they were very, very salty. After that, I realized my mistake but continued making the pancakes anyway, since I think throwing away any food is a bad thing. Thinking about the issue now, I should've just poured the dough away, because neither of us could eat all that many of the pancakes. Tomomi said the pancakes were not too salty, but I think it was just out of the standard politeness to which Japanese people are accustomed to.

The same kind of politeness and not being able to understand the language is also something really noticeable in my daily life. Everyone is really friendly and although I say "wakarimasen" (I don't understand), they somehow do what I wanted to, anyway. But at the same time, everyone keeps staring at me constantly, especially in Obihiro. I think there are probably foreign, Caucasian students as well in that city, but only few and far apart. In Kitami, there are only six. We're definitely outgunned, but in the staring content, we usually win, because when staring back, they usually turn their eyes away. Some do not, though. It was another Finnish exchange student, Petri, who said that we are like black people in that sense. In Finland, many people stare at blacks who are equally few and far apart in our home country, so in Japan, I imagine we feel the same way.

Whereas old people stare, teenagers and young adults sometimes say "Hello!" in English. In a country where almost no one can speak English properly, this is probably an act of great courage. Sometimes, in the bus, people peek at me through the seats. The best I can do is to peek back, but that's about the limit of my communication skills in English. I'm lucky that at least my girlfriend speaks decent English, but on the other hand, we couldn't have a relationship otherwise at all.

Back in the dorm, there was no internet access due to some renovation work in the apartment through which we go the Internet access from. There is internet access on the campus in the International Lounge, but that is only open until 8 p.m. or 9 p.m., so we actually had to figure something else to do than just internet for all the time. Studying is one thing, of course, but I'll see if I can pull myself together for such an endeavor. After all, I didn't come here to study. I think most of the previous exchange students from TUT had noticed it as well - to really study, one might have to think of another college.

First week - flu :-(

While I was in still in Kitami with Tomomi, she called a number that the airline manager had handed to me. She asked for the model of my camera from the other end and indeed, they did have it! They said to ship it to Tomomi's address because I wasn't aware of my own address at the time and that it'd take one week. I felt very relieved after hearing it, because the camera was not even mine, but my parents'.

The first week was definitely the most straining one, but hopefully not the most exciting one. This is why - after Tomomi left for her work training to Sapporo, I got sick. I met the other Finnish guys, first Ville and then later in the same evening Petri. We went to buy a rice cooker since I needed one in my nearly empty apartment and to get that, we had to walk a few kilometers. In the shop, I managed to drop the glass cover of a saucepan which broke in pieces, but we didn't have to pay for it. I felt bad for it, but the shop personnel just went to get a new cover for the pan and that's what I got instead.

On the next day, I guess I was already getting a bit sore throat when waking up and felt really cold in the morning. But regardless of that, I wanted to get to know the Finns better and go around Kitami, so in the evening, we took the bus to an electronic shop far away across the city. I bought some plug converters from there, after which we started to walk back. I was really hungry, so we went to a nice-looking restaurant, Victoria Steakhouse. After finishing the dinner, we continued walking and kept on going for a long, long time, only stopping by at a shopping center and then getting back on the road.

Next morning, I felt like shit, really cold and my nostrils either dripping or completely stuck. I couldn't do anything at all, so I just stayed at the dorm and arranged my stuff together for living in Kitami for year. There was a bunch of basic stuff to be done like getting trashbags, buying some basic ingredients for cooking and of course setting up my computer, which took almost a full day by itself. A word to the wise - Macs Don't Just Work. Fuck 'em. I will never buy an Apple brand computer again. I have two external hard drives filled with music I cannot even listen to, because plugging them in slows the computer down so badly that using it becomes unbearable. That's just one of the many problems I've had with this MacBook. However, most of the internet is full of whining about computers which is fueled by more nerd rage than I could ever cope with, so if you're interested in reading about how other computer companies except mine suck, head for Google.

Anyways - after a few days, I had gotten much better and within a week, I was almost completely cured. I just had a dripping nose, but that was all. I think I've built up a good resistance against all kinds of sicknesses by just eating all kinds of food and by trying to keep healthy habits in terms of exercise and whatnot, so the sickness was no such a big deal. I don't know how I got it though - Ville got the flu same day I did and after that, Petri caught it as well from us. I attributed it to just stress, jetlag and sleeping in mold-stinking sheets and bedding. I changed the futons in the International office and washed the sheets, after which I was alright. I think Samuli, a late-arriving Finn, was the one to get the old futon, though.