When A Plan Comes Together

Dearest Rachel –

It probably goes without saying, but I’m going to say it anyway: there’s a marked difference between a tour and just wandering about a city. With a tour, you have a guide who generally knows the territory – or at least the territory they’re taking you through. You may feel like you’re being railroaded through a certain specific route, with no deviation or improvisation, where even they can be unprepared for the random offbeat question, but there’s an undeniable efficiency and professionalism about their approach to the sights you are meant to see.

When we go out on our own, by contrast, we have no idea what to expect. Even working off of a map, which keeps us from getting too lost, isn’t enough to assist us with the look of a place from on the ground. What a place looks like from the sky just can’t prepare us for what we see when we’re in the middle of a place. But when you know of something you want to do that you can’t do anywhere else, you’ve got to make arrangements to do so with the limited time you’re given, and just dare reality to stand in your way.

My plan to catch some shut-eye in the middle of the day worked to perfection; almost too well, in fact. Rather than an afternoon nap of an hour or two, I drifted off some time before noon, and was basically out cold until some time between four or five. I’d basically slept through lunch entirely. Then again, neither Daniel nor I do lunch at home anymore – there’s just this sensation of having ‘missed out’ – and the whole point of getting out to Sapporo this evening was a dining experience like no other.

At least having gotten started on this extra sleep so early meant that we still had time to indulge in a little dawdling over videos while we watched the ship make its way into port. We even got a chance to feel a momentary twinge of impatience as we waited in the atrium for the ship to clear customs and allow us to go ashore.

Once the matter was resolved and we were allowed ashore, the walk from the port to the train station was as brief as we were informed it would be. However, as usual, we had a bit of difficulty navigating the ticket kiosk; we couldn’t figure out why one ticket to Sapporo would cost ¥800 and another would be ¥1,800.  In hindsight, it may have been because the pricier one was a more direct line with fewer stops, but since it didn’t leave for another twenty-plus minutes after the cheaper, ‘local’ train, it really didn’t seem to make much difference.  Either way, we would be in the city by about eight o’clock; later than we might have liked, but there was nothing to be done about it.

Upon boarding the train, we found ourselves sitting there, waiting to go, for a good twenty minutes.  We were beginning to think we were on the wrong train, but the fact was, the ticket kiosk had indicated that the local trip that we were on wouldn’t depart until a few minutes after seven – and it did leave at precisely the time that it claimed.  Full marks for JR North.  Still, it seemed odd to be sidelined for such a long time, even at a terminus such at Otaru.

By about the fourth or fifth stop, night had already fallen, and hard; there wasn’t much to see out the windows at all.  Even rested as I was, the darkness still has a tendency to work its will on me, as I could sense a creeping lassitude as we sat there.  Then again, that might have been as much due to having to sit around and wait for each stop as we passed through, knowing there were that many more to go.  There were others aboard the train that had actually appeared to have succumbed to their exhaustion; most of them likely had the excuse of a long day at the office or school, unlike myself.

The streets of Sapporo, once we arrived, were wet and sloppy, with no sign of letup in the rain. Granted, it wasn’t pouring down in sheets – just a nuisance drizzle, in fact – but there was enough on the ground to slowly soak into my shoes and socks, much to my surprise (I really thought my gym shoes were better waterproofed than all that) and chagrin.  We didn’t notice until we were a couple of blocks in that we discovered an underground pedway, and followed it as far south as we could, coming up at Odori Park. I probably should have taken a picture of the Sapporo Tower, as it was well done up in blue lights, but I was busy filming, and couldn’t do both, as I’ve mentioned to you before. It’ll be in the next tranche of videos, but as I’m writing this on the following morning – and we still have another excursion into the city in a few hours – you’ll forgive me if I don’t release it for a bit.

At least we’d checked our GPS before emerging from the pedway; the phone cached the map, and still tracked us as we made our way further south.  Which was a very good thing; if hadn’t known exactly where we were going, we would have been hard-pressed to find the place.

But find it we did, on the fourth floor of a building chock full of little hole-in-the-wall restaurants. This place was no different from the rest in that description, I should imagine, containing a counter with maybe ten seats at most, and perhaps three or four tables off to the side, each suitable for four people.  We expected to be seated at the counter, but the head cook (chef?  It seems disrespectful to refer to him as a ‘cook,’ but he was attired far too casually to be taken for a chef) indicated that we should take the table next to the door, before bringing out a card with a QR code for us to reference a copy of the same menu at the table in English.

It took us a little bit of effort to let him know what it was we wanted – in particular, I had to ask three or four times as to whether one particular dish (listed as having “limited availability”) was, in fact, available – but one of the regulars was eager to assist us by explaining what was on the menu (which, mind you, we could already see, thanks to the QR link) and conveying my question about availability to him.

Yes, much to my surprise, we were offered bear meat on the menu. I had been informed by Copilot that bear was likely to be out of season by a month or so – which, I assume is why it was listed as having ‘limited availability’ in the first place, and why I had to inquire. Honestly, I couldn’t believe our luck, and once it was confirmed that it was, in fact, on offer, we snapped it up. At this point, we should have gotten two orders of it, as it turned out to be our favorite dish (while Daniel and I did enjoy the venison curry, the actual roast venison in a cream sauce was less than well-received by him, and I had to agree that the texture was rather an acquired taste, not unlike liver). And each of the dishes were fairly small for a couple of American appetites, especially two of us who’d slept through lunch.

At the same time, we couldn’t have known how much better the bear dish would have been in our opinion; and in any event, part of the point of visiting this particular restaurant was to sample various forms of wild game preparations. We’re well aware that this isn’t standard fare in Sapporo – for that, we would do well to visit either an establishment serving crab (not an option with Daniel in tow) or ramen (there’s a famous alley full of shops serving varieties with butter, corn and curry, among others) – this is something we would only ever be able to find in a place like this. America just doesn’t have a culinary culture involving game meat.

At least this proved to be well worth the trip, for the most part.

Despite arriving in town so much later than I’d expected to, and taken our time (relatively speaking) over our meal, we were back out onto the street by ten o’clock, with about an hour to make it back to the station. We took some time to wander through the Tanukioji shopping district – which was busy with people wandering through most of it – but since the majority of the establishments that were open were either bars or restaurants, we didn’t have much reason to do more, other than the fact that, with the arched awning, we didn’t have to worry about getting wet.

Eventually, however, we did make it back to the underground pedway, and took it all the way back to the JR station leading back to Otaru. We caught the train with no more than two or three minutes to spare this time (although technically, there was another train departing in half an hour if we’d missed it), and made it back in time to get aboard the ship within a minute or two of midnight, walking the mile from the now-deserted station to the ship through a downtown that was utterly devoid of people (like I’ve said, Japan just shuts down at night, unlike some places). We’d squeezed everything we could out of the day, and still made it back just in time.

I’m sure it would amuse you to hear me say it – you told me more than once that you’d had a childhood crush on George Peppard – but “I love it when a plan comes together.”