To Otaru

By Train from Hakodate to Otaru

I had been in Hakodate City seeing historical sites in the city and prehistoric sites of the Jōmon culture along the nearby coastline.

Now I was headed for Otaru, a prominent trading city of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I would ride a Limited Express train from Hakodate to Sapporo, and change there to a Local train to Otaru.

Google Maps dynamically generates this map when you load the page. You should see a roughly four-hour route by train — north from Hakodate Station to Mori, clockwise around the Uchiura Bay coast to Muroran, along the coast through Shiraoi and Tomakomai, then inland to Sapporo and a change of trains to continue to Otaru. But if you load this page when it's the middle of the night in Japan, or when Google simply decides to do something I didn't intend, you might see a different route by bus.

Starting from Hakodate

I had purchased my ticket two days in advance at Hakodate Station. I was ready to feed my stack of tickets into the machine at the gate — the end-to-end ticket for traveling from Hakodate to Otaru, plus the reservation ticket for my seat on the Limited Express.

I would pick up both at the inner end of this gate, and then feed them into the machine when I reached Otaru. Both would be retained there as I passed the gate into Otaru Station.

My train the Hokuto Limited Express soon pulled into the station. Hokuto Shichisei is the Japanese name for what astronomers call Ursa Major, Latin for "The Great Bear". Many Northern Hemisphere cultures going back to Homer's Iliad and the Rig Veda of India have said that it depicts a bear.

In Japan, Shintō associates the constellation with Ame-no-Minakanushi, one of the first deities who manifested when the universe came into existence. The mythology is described in the first Japanese "histories" which were written in the early 8th century CE.

An associated cult of the pole star, pointed to by two prominent stars of Ursa Major, had already arrived in Japan from China by way of Korea a century or two earlier.

Back to modern times, the Hokuto Limited Express manifests as a seven-car DMU or Diesel Multiple Unit train. There's no separate locomotive, each car has its own relatively small diesel engine. It's a KiHa 261 series design, a joint venture with Danish State Railways.

The purple stripe on the exterior and the purple upholstery inside reference the many purple flowers of Hokkaidō.

I had gotten up, packed, and walked to the nearby station. At the shop just outside the ticket gates I bought a bentō lunch for mid-journey, and a late breakfast for the beginning. Breakfast would be a rice ball with salmon inside and wrapped in a nori seaweed sheet, an imitation crab leg stick made from pollock with a strip of spicy pollock roe down its center, and a bottle of green tea.

I ate my breakfast as we stopped at some suburban stations and the Shin-Hakodate-Hokuto station, where you could transfer to the northernmost (so far) tip of the Shinkansen network. From there, the rail line paralleled the highway, climbing to a mountain pass north of Hakodate.

This map shows the first part of the route — north from Hakodate through a mountain pass, past the southwest end of a series of lakes, then past the mountain Komaga-Take. After a stop at Mori, we would continue northwest along the coast line. When I had purchased my ticket at Hakodate Station, I had asked for a window seat on the right side. The ticket clerk said "Ah, the sea." Yes, that was my reason, but I hadn't realized that it also would give me a great view of the volcanic mountain.

Small section of Tactical Pilotage Chart F10-C from the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection at the University of Texas at Austin. This map was compiled in 1964. In the past, Hakodate has also been spelled as "Hokodate", and Komaga-Take as "Komaga-Dake".

Past Hokkaidō-Komaga-Take

The mountain pass was thickly forested, with only brief glimpses of the lakes from the train. We soon came out of the forest into farmland with a dramatic view of Hokkaidō-Komaga-Take, a 1,131-meter volcano.

It's a stratovolcano, as opposed to a shield volcano. What's a stratovolcano? They're the ones that explode. Stratovolcanos have more viscous magma. So, the magma cools and hardens before spreading far, building up a steeper conical shape. And, dangerously, pressure.

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The higher viscosity of stratovolcano magma prevents volcanic gases from easily escaping. Pressure builds up and lead to explosive eruptions. Tambora, Vesuvius, Etna, Pinatubo, and Krakatoa (actually well to the west of Java) are all stratovolcanos notorious for dangerous explosive events.

This volcano started forming around 30,000 years ago. After about 5,000 years of dormancy, it violently returned to activity in 1640 CE. It was one factor in the Kan'ei Great Famine, a horrible disaster in which 50,000 to 100,000 people starved to death over three years.

Life in Japan was still in chaos because of the Shimabara Rebellion of the 1630s. At the same time there was an epidemic of rinderpest infection among domestic cattle. And, there was unrest among farmers, many of whom were impoverished low-ranking samurai.

The daimyō or warlords were under new requirements for annual trips to the Shōgun's capital in Edo, intended to limit their local power but also diverting spending away from their domains. It was not a good time for a major eruption.

The eruption in June 1640 laid a heavy layer of ash over farmland in the region, causing crop failures through 1642. There was unusual weather across East Asia in early 1641, causing drought in some regions of Japan and cold winds with frost and heavy rain in other regions.

By the summer of 1642, peasants were fleeing the hardest-hit region. The Shōgun ordered agricultural and economic changes, but it was too late. The rate of starvation increased through the winter of 1642–1643.

The area around Aizu-Wakamatsu was hit especially hard. Local farmers killed all their children less then seven years old, and lent out their older children as slaves, often to pimps, in return for money. The interest rates were so high that many became permanent slaves. If a child slave escaped, the parents were required to either repay double the loan in gold or provide another slave.

In Kyōto, where the Imperial Court was based, dead bodies were stacked along the streets. Infants were abandoned outdoors, starving to death or being killed and eaten by hungry packs of dogs. That famine was a nightmarish time across Japan.

Back to far more pleasant times, ask for a window seat on the right when traveling north out of Hakodate, on the left when traveling to Hakodate. Enjoy the scenery, try not to think of the geologically driven history.

Along the Uchiura Bay Coast

The rail line descended from the area around the mountain base to the coast line. Hokkaidō has the highest percentage of agricultural land within Japan.

Soon we turned to follow the coastline around Uchiura Bay.

I decided it was time to get out my bentō lunch. The shop at Hakodate Station had Japanese and English descriptions of the choices. There's an array of examples in a case, all of them cunningly crafted replicas.

I decided on the ¥1,200 bentō with salmon and salmon roe. So, I needed to look in the adjacent cooler for one with a picture of a salmon.

The shop had included hashi and oshibori, chopsticks and a moistened towel.

As listed in the display case in the station, this included:

• Salmon and salmon roe (from Hokkaidō),
• pickled lotus root,
• nori or a toasted seaweed sheet (from Hokkaidō),
• kintoki ginger,
• pickles (radish etc), and
• rice (from Hokkaidō)

Most of the towns along the Uchiura Bay coast focused on fishing.

Muroran and Tomakomai are larger ports.

Tomakomai had an intermodal yard where containers could be transferred between ships, trains, and trucks.

These are smaller containers which fit five to a rail flat car. So kawaii! At least as shipping containers go...

Changing Trains in Sapporo

The Hokuto Limited Express terminates at Sapporo Station. According to the schedule given to me with my ticket, I was to arrive at Sapporo Station at 14:41 and depart at 15:00 on train #95 which comes in as an Express from the airport and leaves as a Local to Otaru. So, 19 minutes, that should be plenty of time given the precision of train movements in Japan.

How hard could this possibly be? Don't panic, the electronic signs cycle through a kanji-heavy pure Japanese and romanji. Ah, there's train #95 at 15:00 on platform #3, that one is mine.

I was on the correct platform by 14:50, ten minutes before my train would leave for Otaru. It took me a while to quit being alarmed by OUT OF SERVICE being used to indicate that there wasn't a second train scheduled for that platform for a long time. Which, this being Japan, means perhaps an hour. I live where there are only three trains a week in each direction, so I tend to expect the worst.

My train to Otaru soon pulled in, it was time to hurry over to the end of the queue of people boarding.

The train was mostly full and it was a short forty-minute ride to Otaru, so I stood at the end of a car.

Settling Into Otaru

The Local train terminated at Otaru.

I was only slightly surprised to see a prominent Happy Science office across the parking lot from the Otaru Station. Happy Science is a cult and political party founded in 1986 by Ryūhō Ōkawa, who had been born in Japan and became a Wall Street trader in New York.

Happy Science followers believe that Ōkawa was born on Venus as the latest manifestation of El Cantare, the Highest Spiritual Being, who was first born on Earth 330 million years ago. His other past incarnations include the Buddha, Elohim, Odin, Thoth, Osiris, Hermes, a king of the lost continent of Mu, and a king of Atlantis.

The cult believes in reincarnation, angels, demons, heaven and hell, and aliens and UFOs. It has sold "spiritual vaccines", media of Okawa's lectures with claims of preventing and curing COVID-19. Members attend training courses and "qualification seminars" to increase their level within the group's hierarchy.

Its political party supports Japanese military expansion, nuclear deterrence, denial of historically documented Japanese atrocities including the Nanjing Massacre and the forced labor and forced prostitution of Korean civilians, "fiscal conservatism", and "virtue-based leadership".

Happy Science had a rivalry with the Aum Shinrikyo cult through the early 1990s. That led to Aum Shinrikyo attempting to assassinate Ōkawa by injecting the VX nerve agent into his car's air conditioning system.

Somehow the cult and political party continue, despite Ōkawa having been dead since late February 2023.

I made my way across the station's parking lot and the attached bus station, crossed the main street, then walked toward the waterfront in search of my lodging. I had a bed reserved at the Otaru Taproom and Hostel. It's in a cluster of old wooden merchant buildings near the waterfront.

The tap room is in the front, looking out onto the street.

They're not a brewery, but they offer beers and ciders from various breweries across Japan.

Check in at the bar, then continue back the passage beside the bar to the hostel.

Take off your shoes in the entryway and store them on the rack, then continue. There are my kaiju-sized sandals on the middle shelf. Notice the number of stored shoes and the relative abundance of unused slippers.

The clientele here was almost entirely Japanese. Everyone certainly removed their shoes in the entryway, because no one wants to walk through tracked-in mud and water. But almost everyone simply went shoeless indoors — I was barefoot, and most people were in socks. Compared to my first visit 30 years before, the new generations are selecting useful pieces of tradition while discarding ancient rituals.

I was in the first room inside.

There's my bunk, bottom right. On this trip I had a variety of lodging. A bunk in a shared room in Tōkyō at both ends of the trip and also here in Otaru; a private room with shared toilets and showers in Sapporo and Kamakura, a tatami-matted room with shared toilets and showers in Hakodate, and a room with private toilet and shower in Aomori and Yamagata.

There's a shared washroom area, the showers are adjacent along the hallway to the shared kitchen and lounge area.

You can examine the complexities of compact Japanese heating systems.

Dinner in Otaru

On my way from the train station to the hostel I had passed Hamayaki Hokkaido Uoman and made a note of it. I went back that evening, more carefully examined the menu posted outside, and went in for dinner.

The hostess cringed only slightly before having me sit on the bench in the entryway for a while and then sending me to the upstairs dining room. It was the sort of place where you put your shoes into a locker before venturing into the dining area. I think their intent was to wait until they could put me at an isolated table in the far corner, which I totally understand. I hate to imagine the Ugly American disasters that many visitors from the U.S. must cause.

I had already examined the menu out on the sidewalk, and found what I would order — shyake donburi, a bowl of salmon sashimi on rice. I can't read Japanese at all, but I can pronounce katakana and hiragana, and thereby stumble my way through parts of menus without having to rely on Google Translate in camera mode.

So:
Shyake donburi onegai shimasu
to ask for the main dish, and then:
Hai, hai, ... ah! Dōzo... haiboru onegai shimasu
to stumble a bit and then ask for a whiskey-and-soda beverage. I have no idea how to say "Oh yeah, and also..." in Japanese, and actually doubt that there is such a vague and informal construct.

And, yes, I could have used the provided tablet to bring up an English approximation to the menu and point to things on that. But (A) where is the challenge in that, and (B) won't an attempt, however flawed, at asking in the local language be seen as an appreciation for the local culture?

As it turned out, yes. When I returned on the following two nights the hostess clearly recognized me as "Oh it's this guy again!", and immediately waved me to take a seat on the ground floor with the locals and regulars. If they find me harmless and welcome, then I have succeeded.

I had asked for haiboru or a Highball, a Scotch-and-soda in a pint glass. Don't panic — it's titrated to be very similar in ethanol content to a glass of beer. But it is an alcoholic beverage.

Multiple times I've heard someone in a Japanese izakaya say "Don't be English", meaning don't guzzle booze without eating anything, quickly getting blind drunk as the English are notorious for doing. A Japanese innkeeper pre-empts that problem for someone who orders an alcoholic drink with dinner (as almost everyone does) by bringing a starter. Such as, well, whatever mine was:

Two small fish, gutted and pressed and dried into a jerky-like consistency. Beneath those were a fish-paste patty and a fish-paste ball.

The waiter brought out a small grill and threaded a gas cylinder into place, lit it, and indicated that I should grill my with-the-drink starter. OK!

So what was it, specifically?

I have no idea. The two silvery thin pressed dried fish were, um, thin and pressed and dried, sort of like fish jerky. The others were a mix of fish paste and some vegetables, I would guess some onion and pepper and I don't know what else.

Before I had finished that, he brought out the rest of the full meal. Salmon donburi and edamame.

The salmon-and-rice bowl included gari or pickled ginger slices, and small strips of nori or roasted seaweed sheet.

A great meal, and I returned the next two nights. They recognized me, and realized that while I was pretty clumsy they didn't have deal with me using especially long-handled tongs.

Next❯ Exploring Otaru