Hiking Around Sapporo

Since moving to Sapporo in July I’ve noticed that no matter where you are in town, the mountains are there. Sapporo is a big city with two million people. Yet, because it is situated right next to the mountains it means that each time you turn the corner around the buildings and skyscrapers of the city the mountains are there, seemingly hemming us in. 

In reality, the mountains hug the city to the west and south to some degree, but to the east and north the plain is more open. This a big reason why this city exists where it does, with plenty of fresh water flowing from from the Toyohira, Chitose, and Ishikari rivers bring fertility to the land and the wide spread of the flood plain. Of course, now days these rivers have been mostly tamed by construction of dikes and some dams, though much of the land is still agricultural. 

What this means in my daily life though is that the mountains are so close as to be a daily reminder of the hiking I can do! So, every couple of weeks I go hiking either by myself or with friends. As with any person hiking in Japan, I bring my trusty bear bell and more recently I bought some bear mace, though I don’t expect to ever use it. Bears are sited in the areas around the city, but the chance that I’ll encounter one and need to use the mace are incredibly low. In all of Hokkaido there are perhaps 1 or 2 maulings a year from bears and those are almost entirely on the east side of the island where things are more wild. Still, a bear is a bear no matter if east or west. 

What I think I love the most about hiking is that it is so easy to do. From my place I can hop a bus and be from door to trail in less than 30 minutes. The trails are well maintained and at least around the city’s mountains they are fairly well traversed. I use an app to find trails mostly, Yamap, but also blogs and google maps. It is fun to explore what is out there. People are friendly and as with other parts of Japan people say hello to each other as they are passing. The other day I even had an older woman passing me ask, “Have you seen any bears back there?” “No, not yet” I said and we both had a laugh. 

Perhaps the number two nice thing is the views. From the trailhead to a good view point can be as little as 30 minutes. There are great views of the city, the mountains to the east, and to the north the Sea of Japan and Russia! (ok, I can’t see Russia but maybe if my vision was better?haha). So far I've hiked Moiwa five or six times, Maruyama a few times, Sankaku, and a small mountain near Jozankei, but there is so much more to explore!

As winter sets in I think I’ll have to push pause on my hikes, and that will be a bit sad but I’m sure I’ll be back into the hills and mountains again soon.

A New Chapter - Sapporo

 

Last picture of our apartment building in Warsaw. 

Boarding the flight out of Warsaw was a bit nerve racking. Japan was requiring a negative PCR test 72 hours in advance of boarding. We had gone to the airport a couple days prior to get this test done and with results in hand we were confident we would be fine. We uploaded our results to our apps for landing in Tokyo and were ready to go. At the gate the airline was checking the results to make sure everyone had tests. I saw a couple of people get turned away. When it was my turn I showed them my results, but they insisted there was a special results form that Tokyo would be asking for and what I was showing them was not it. I admit, I was insistent that was the right one and they let me on but once I had taken my seat I realized there was in fact another form I had which was the one they were asking about. In my panic at not being allowed on I forgot I had it.

Shiro tucked under the leg rest

Kuma under the blanket. 

The flight to Tokyo was about 12 hours long, 6 or so hours longer than usual since we went around and to the south of Ukraine and Russia. The cats stayed with us in the cabin so they had that comfort, but the whole trip they were both quite scared. 

When we landed we were beat, but we weren't done yet. We rushed our way through covid immigration, a process we expedited by uploading the proper documents first to an app we then used at the airport. Going through immigration I was handed my spouse visa, 3 years! (some get only 1 year). From there we had to get a cab to cross Tokyo (no small trip) to transfer from Narita airport to Haneda. Once we arrived there we had to arrange for the cats to go in the cargo of the plane, they were not allowed on board. By now we'd been awake and traveling for 24 hours. The cats were very much not pleased with us. 

After about 1.5 hours we landed at Chitose Airport, collected the cats, and got a cab to Sapporo. About 30 hours after taking off we crossed the threshold to our temporary apartment. Being the seasoned travelers we are, we knew better than to crash. We ended up staying up another 5 hours or so to fall asleep once it was dark. 

Over the next few days we slept a lot,  but our jet lag was very mild. A nice surprise. Aya began working again, I was doing some course writing as well as exploring the city. Hiking, running, and just generally being out and about is a nice feeling. Sapporo is a very livable city with cool summers and easy access to nature, but still big enough at about 2 million people to feel like a large city where anything can be found or experienced. 


We've now gotten into a routine of sorts. I have Japanese lessons on Monday and Wednesday afternoons. Most mornings I work from home, then go running, work a bit more and then study until Aya gets off at 2pm. We then do something for the new apartment, like furniture shopping and have dinner early-ish. She takes her bath in the evening and I watch the news and that is pretty much our day. It is really nice that my schedule is flexible. On days when the weather is nice I can put any work or study to the side and go hiking, or whatever catches my fancy. 

We have more or less remained in that mode until the present. We are now just two weeks away from moving into our own place, that we decided on every appliance and piece of furniture as well as the design. This is such an odd feeling since for all of our adult lives we've lived in rented places where we put up with the most unusual or shoddy things. We've gotten so used to just shrugging and living with it that it will be extremely strange to have everything that works and is in place as we wish it.

So, a new chapter begins. Here, in Sapporo. 

The Last Days in Warsaw

 As 2021 wound down and 2022 began I was once again looking to the horizon, thinking of what adventures may be in another land. Our time in Warsaw had been fun and productive, but like many people during the height of the pandemic, we had a mind shift. I'd seen people in my school get sick, and some died from covid or other reasons. Education had a whiplash change that I think was positive on the whole, but the constant tension of the past few years weighed heavily on myself and the profession. As the summer ended and I returned to work we started to formulate a plan. Apply to only X,Y, and Z jobs because they were place I really wanted to go to. If that didn't work out, take the other option. 

As it turned out we took the other option. So we would both working remotely/ from home and that would free us to live anywhere we wanted. At the same time it meant that we decided to make that space the best possible for us since we would be working and living in the same space. That, and like many of the international community we work with, we had begun to have a yearning for a forever home to find a place of refuge in. By January we had decided, we were heading to Sapporo. 

We laid plans for Aya to go first to buy an apartment and to set up renovation. Everything was in place and she was about to fly when the war broke out with the Russian invasion. The following months were quite tense in Warsaw, but she rerouted to fly south of Russia and made it to Sapporo to begin our move mission. As she toured apartments and sent back pictures and videos, Ukrainian refugees poured across the border to Poland and elsewhere. For a time we were not even sure if she would make it back before my contract ended in June and it was time to go. Throughout the spring we kept our options open and in Warsaw I continued to work and help out with the refugees where I could. What started as going to the central station to hand out some envelopes of cash turned into a near every weekend routine of going to wholesale stores to donate and volunteer, then spending time updating everyone on what was happening on the ground in Warsaw and how funds could be put to good use. I teamed up with my friend and co-worker Rebecca whenever possible and she has since done much much more work in helping. I think by last tally she had collected over 100,000usd.  

Most weekends we would load up Rebecca's car with whatever was listed as needed. This included all sorts of things like diapers, sanitary pads, juices, apples, etc. Whatever was needed, we got it. 

Rebecca also was coming up with other ways to donate. She hosted families in her apartment, giving up her bedroom to sleep on the couch. She bought backpacks and school supplies for refugee kids in Warsaw, books in Ukrainian to send across the border for kids still there, and medical supplies for those were were dealing with the wounded in directly on the front lines of the war. Money was coming in for her so fast that at times it was difficult to spend it fast enough, but she is now a fixture of volunteering and relief and she has been featured in her hometown paper as well as local news channels in upstate NY. 

I also gathered a lot of donations during that time, but nothing like Rebecca. Still, I did a lot of volunteering and large donations from my family and their extended networks rolled in over the spring. In total I believe we gathered about 20,000 usd in donations that went directly to people in Warsaw who needed it most.

The community at American School of Warsaw also made a massive effort. Everyone kicked in to high gear and within a couple weeks there were massive amounts of food and clothing for refugees coming in as well as sending it across the border. The school community also took in hundreds of refugees to their homes. By May Warsaw had absorbed about 400,000 refugees. There was so much attention on this that the vice president came to the city and while here stopped by our school to meet with a group of refugees and talk to our kids and staff (See Rebecca, right of photo). 

And the Poles? Polish people have been uniquely steeled against Russia by half a century of occupation. While relations in recent years has improved, the Poles have not forgotten and when the war started they opened their arms to those in need. Though the country is now overflowing with Ukrainians, they are welcomed. Their resilience in the face of tragedy has continued to inspire me and hold them closer in my heart. 

As May came around Aya secured our apartment and set up the renovation plans. She was clear to come back and the war seemed to be grinding to a stand still with Ukrainians putting up fierce resistance. By the end of May Aya was back and we were winding down our belongings and getting our documents in order. Both of the cats had to make multiple visits to the vets for vaccines and documentation. No one was happy about that. The final day of work came and I said goodbye to my school community. The end of a three year chapter. While I was sad to leave I was also excited as the new chapter was taking another step forward. 

At the end of June my mother came to visit. A much welcome and overdue event. I'm sure if the pandemic hadn't occurred she would have come sooner and we would have travelled more. Still we spent time in Krakow and Warsaw and got some good mother - son time together. She even met the ever famous Rebecca and we managed to make a run to pick up a load of goods for the refugees at the central train station. Of course, as many tourists to Poland do, we went to Auschwitz and many sites around Warsaw from WWII. The past was not so far from the present and that was certainly not lost on either of us. 

By the beginning of July we were almost ready to go but decided on one more trip before leaving Europe, to Norway. It was very beautiful and I'm glad we went. We rented a car and did a loop out from Oslo, nearly reaching Bergen but turning back around to return by a different route. 

Even in Norway, the echos of the holocaust were not far away. Here you can see gold plates in the streets of Oslo, each with a name of someone who was taken by the Nazis. 

Finally, in the last days of July our flight time came. We packed up our luggage, caught the cats and put them in their carriers, and cleaned the apartment. Time to go, to turn the page. 

Dubrovnik and Beyond

 

We were in Dubrovnik for just a short 3 day weekend. Why Dubrovnik? We are Game of Thrones fans and we had heard that the town was quite beautiful. Given that we weren’t going to have a lot of time we decided to keep it pretty local BUT because I’m so keen on getting passport stamps we did spend an entire day driving to Montenegro. I’m tempted to say we wasted the day since we spent about 5 hours in total just sitting on one side of the border or the other waiting to get through, but still it was fun to drive around and we saw the city of Kotor. We stayed at the Hilton which, in a later photo you can see was destroyed just 30ish years prior. It had a great view with a seaside balcony part of which face the old town and fully facing the sea. 

 

The next day we had a Game of Thrones tour scheduled for the afternoon, but I should note that during the peak of the day temps were reaching 40C and so it was really not fun to walk around. Most of our day we split between 7-11am and then 4pm and after in order to avoid the worst of it. So that morning we hopped a ferry to the island of Lokrum and spent the earlier part of the day walking around there and seeing what we could, old fortifications and some scenes from Game of Thrones. I don’t mean to be demur, the island was beautiful as was the sea. It just wasn't a whiz bang type of thing. You could easily, EASILY, spend a couple days there if you want to take it slow, swim a lot in the sea, and sip some expensive drinks. It was nice. 

 Arriving back around noon we headed to the comfort of our hotel the later headed out for the game of thrones tour. Our tour did not disappoint. The guide was knowledgeable and friendly and most of the other people on our small tour were also fans so knew enough about the show to make it fun.

 

On our final day in the city we woke early so we could be the first ones on the city walls. There is a counter clockwise walking path on top of the city wall and both for reasons to avoid people and to avoid the heat we started right when it opened at 9am. We moved pretty fast, but it still took until nearly 11am to complete the loop. I suppose we could have taken quite a bit longer but it is mostly wall and parapets and not much else along the way

Having some time to kill in the afternoon we did see a few more things, small museums in the town and such, but not much more.

The picture of our hotel, bombed out in the war and burned down. It is always interesting to consider time and place. It was not lost on me where we where and the history attached. I considered many place we could have gone to reflect that, but decided against it and to have a "nice trip" However, the war is in the cracks of society as we saw in this photo. Had Aya been sitting on the balcony as in the first photo of this post, things would have been very different.