We were collected from Tokyo at the weekend and taken north by a couple of education officials. They were both very lively, and spoke good English. They spent the hour-long plane journey telling us about Hokkaido’s dairy products; they did not, however, mention that we were to spend the next few days in Sapporo, the island’s capital city. This we found out just before the plane landed.
Unannounced and unexplained was the trend for the entire weekend, which turned into a bewildering, mostly enjoyable series of surprises that simply swept us along, leaving us to figure out what was happening after it had happened. We were bundled in and out of taxis, urged to look at pools of carp, clocktowers and views, taken to eat unfamiliar food in strange restaurants, or left with sudden, unexpected periods of spare time on our hands that we didn’t know how to fill.
Though the delay irked, I liked Sapporo. The multi-storeyed buildings of the downtown area were white and new; and the streets, which were laid out in a grid system, were easy to navigate. Underneath the city ran a fast, clean metro system, complemented by a massive underground network of shops and restaurants, ideal for the cold winters. There were mountains and pine forests at the edge of the city limits that made me think of Canada and hinted at the wilderness beyond.
At the end of every mini-tour, our minders escorted us to our hotel and clearly expected us to stay there until they collected us for the next adventure. They seemed concerned that we would get lost if we went out on our own. We began waiting until the coast was clear and then sneaking out of the hotel by ourselves, feeling mildly guilty, like naughty schoolchildren.
In the daytime, we explored the department stores and souvenir shops, where we mostly bought postcards but not much else. Shopping was rather beyond our ambitions: we knew enough Japanese to ask how much things were, but not enough to be sure about the answers.
In the evenings we explored Susukino, the entertainment district. It was an exciting mish-mash of cinemas, bars, restaurants, Pachinko parlours, short-stay love hotels, massage parlours and other, more dubious establishments. It was a happy co-existence of the respectable and the disreputable, and seemed totally safe for two young women to walk around in; the shadier side of the so-called ‘water trade’ was kept well off the streets and behind closed doors.
It was the multitude and diversity of Susukino’s neon lights that attracted us most. On one corner, a busy intersection, the buildings were almost invisible under advertisements that were more like elaborate works of art. None bore a product name where a picture made entirely of brightly coloured lights would do. The images were of whisky bottles, elaborately robed kings, and more abstract designs that flashed on and off, each shifting, moving, changing as if alive.
On all of my subsequent trips to Sapporo I always tried to stay until after dark. I had to make time for the lights, drawn back to them every time as if by a magnet.
