POLESTAR
Volume 13 Issue 20 January 2017 Photo courtesy of Colette English
Photo courtesy of Kelsey Woodford
Dear Hokkaido ALTs,
A new year in a world upside-down screwed up as always. In seemingly untouched Hokkaido, our task is to commit to real causes and passions. Ditch the sarcasm and social media to practice selfbetterment and authentic connections with others. And don’t forget to eat well out there. We hope you like what you see and consider helping us to make it better. Anyone can submit work to Polestar. Facebook message or email us at editor@hajet.org with any ideas, questions, or concerns. Thanks to the writers and photographers who made this issue memorable!
Jack Powers, Editor Isabelle Legault, Designer
Next submission deadline: January 30th
From the Pres. Ferfie Brownoff President | HAJET
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o, it’s January. Back when I was a university student, I often found January to be something of a tipping point for me. It always seemed to be the long stretch in the winter monotony. Granted, my attitude and lifestyle were quite possibly to blame for all of that. Regardless, the holiday build-up was over, the cold was only growing stronger, and the days were still not nearly long enough. Then I got into winter biking, and it gave a lot of purpose to my January. Actually, it gave a lot of purpose to whatever winter lingered late into spring even at its gnarliest and filthiest. When I moved to Hokkaido, I opted to not bring my
winter bike with me, and at first I was a bit worried. I wondered if I’d fall into a lull of boredom during the coldest months that would follow the winter holidays. However, I managed to find enough activities to fill up my weekends. Incidentally, they were things that were only possible when Hokkaido’s cold strikes down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger. On slower weekends, snowshoe romps and wintry forest meanders were a great way to feel relaxed, gain some clarity, and return rejuvenated. Winter festivals, boasting ice sculptures and hot drinks, made for pleasant times with friends. Even planning to go out and see some of Hokkaido’s seasonal visitors - Steller’s Sea Eagles in Nemuro or Red Crown Cranes in Kushiro - helped keep my schedule packed, all the while making me actually
resent the coming of spring. What I’m getting at here, is that keeping busy is a pretty damn good way of making winter work for you. I’ve talked about it before, and I still don’t think that I’m necessarily blowing any minds here. Even so, I like to constantly remind myself (every season and every year) that there are so many things that I want to fit into however finite of an experience my time in Hokkaido will be. Whether that’s getting one last winter hike in, catching some weird birds before they migrate, or one last snowy onsen visit. Which reminds me, HAJET’s Winter Meeting in Niseko is set for February 24th-25th. So I hope that winter in Japan’s great white North can be a rad experience for y’all. Sure it’s long, but that’s
the way it goes - we can’t do much to change that. What we can do, however, is find a way to make that length as attractive as possible. There are a bunch of wicked festivals that will be popping up here and there, so keep your eyes peeled for that. My town has a pretty quaint winter festival of their own, too. If you’re into Japanese comedy and Power Ranger shows, checking out the stars at observatories, or spending the night in a modest ice dome, Rikubetsu’s Shibare Festival might be your cup of tea. If not, come warm yer butts in the onsen glory that will be Winter Meeting 2017. Stay Safe, Ferf Photo courtesy of Nikolai Muth
First Year Rep. Photo courtesy of Michael Bugajski
Incoherent babbling: January edition Michael Bugajski First Year Representative | HAJET
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h, here we are. The JETs are back in town! *cue the music* Welcome back! I hope the holidays have treated you well (especially those of you who had the impromptu camping trip in Chitose airport!). As we all settle back into the comfortable groove of teaching and office chair warming, don’t hunker down too much! Its winter in Hokkaido, and there is much to do! Take advantage of the numerous outdoor activities going on around Hokkaido, hit the ski slopes, build a snowman, go out and explore in snow shoes! Or, if you are like me and not incredibly oriented to winter sports, do a little bit of exploring! Winter has a slew of festivals (Sapporo and Asahikawa, famously, many many others, less famously but still amazing). I seem to recall a list of a few going on in the Hokkaido Newcomer’s Guide, as well as a few which were mentioned at SDC last month If festivals or even being outside aren’t your thing (Hey, I’m not going to judge. It’s cold out there!) then it might be time for a little event planning! Recently, I hosted a potluck for JETs in my area to great success, and I have been hearing a lot of talk going around recently of these mythic things called board games. The point is, winter can be a harsh thing to weather alone, but your friends and colleagues around you can help those winter months be much more bearable! Even a regular dinner date with a friend can be enough to help break up the winter doldrums (If you are ever passing through Asahikawa, hit me up. I have a ramen shop hit list a mile long). At the end of the day, the real building blocks of the JET community start with each one of us as individuals, and the bonds we create can help make our time teaching here that much better! That being said, do you have a favorite place in your town or area that you would like to share? Don’t forget we have the HAJET Member’s Map of Hokkaido with spots that are added by us, the members, and can actively be edited to add your favorite places! I was just looking at it now and discovered a new place in my town that I didn’t even know of, so it looks like kebobs are now in my future! Cheers everyone!
Nemuro Bird Land Festival Kelsey Woodford Eastern Representative | HAJET
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he Nemuro Bird Land Festival is held every year at the end of January. By this time, Lake Furen is frozen and a variety of birds including the rare Steller’s Sea Eagle have migrated to the Lake area for winter. Even if you don’t get a chance to go on one of the various guided tours available, the last weekend of January and early February is the best time to come to Nemuro, because the birds are well fed and plentiful. The fishermen of Nemuro have an important relationship with the lake and the birds. On some of the tours during the festival, you can get a chance to observe ice fishing and it interacts with the birds of Nemuro. Nets are placed under the ice, some up to three metres long. Seafood is popular, especially in Nemuro. But occasionally the fishermen have too great of a haul, and the excess fish are left on the ice. Birds linger in the trees nearby waiting for their moment, and when the ice fishermen are a safe distance away, the hawks and eagles swoop down upon the easy fish left on the ice. Luckily for the birdwatchers, there are plenty of the beautiful black and white Steller’s Sea Eagles around, and avid birdwatchers flock to the area in this season to capture a shot. Nemuro’s roadside station is a good place for anyone to get a chance to observe the eagles. There are great glass windows looking out over Lake Furen. The birds can also be spotted resting on large chunks of ice in the lake and ocean, among other animals such as seals. As well as many other tours, the Bird Land Festival includes a small indoor market where you can meet and support people from organisations working to help the local birds and some lectures (in Japanese) on the subject.
Photo courtesy of Kelsey Woodford
Poll
(star)
Studio Ghibli
Best Onsen in Hokkaido
Mori no Yu Hanakagura
N E
C S
Higashikagura 650 yen SW
Kura no Yu
Sapporo 420 yen
S
Fukiage
Kamifurano Free
Yu no Kawa
Hakodate 400~1000 yen
SW
N
C
Yoroushi
Nakashibetsu 650 yen
E
Poll
(star)
Maruyama Zoo aruyama Zoo has come a long way in the past 20 years. Hell, it’s come a long way in the year I’ve been visiting the zoo. And, while it still has a way to go, you can see the work happening and the plans in place to keep the zoo moving forward. And that’s uplifting.
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cage, complete with metals bars along the base. Giraffes and zebra housed together in a big grass paddock no trees, no shade, no stimuli. Monkeys stuck in a pit with a pile of rocks in the center. A beaver compulsively gnawing at the side of its small enclosure, trying to chew its way out of the murky water. And this was autumn, I hate to think about those animals in winter. Even looking back now, I feel the emotions welling up.
Zoos in Japan often have bad reputations, and there’s good reason. One zoo I visited here in Hokkaido, in a bigger, regional city, had me in tears as I left. Animals in inadequate housing. An elephant surrounded by concrete. A tiger pacing an old fashioned, under-sized
Maruyama Zoo was awful once, too. The zoo first opened in 1951. It started after a travelling show from Ueno Zoo in Tokyo visited Sapporo to the delight of local people. After the success of the show, Maruyama Zoo opened in 1951 as the first zoo in Hokkaido.
Karisa Whelan Production Coordinator | HAJET
Photos courtesy of Karisa Whelan
In its early days, the zoo paraded its animals like play things, as many zoos did in those days. Looking at historic photos of the zoo, it made slow progress for many years. It wasn’t until the late 1990s that things started to shift and the zoo began to focus more on animal welfare and move away from its exploitative practices. Now the zoo has completely shifted focus, marketing itself on its “natural habitat exhibitions”. When I first visited last year, the remnants of Japan’s antiquated attitudes towards animals were still evident. The old, inadequate internal housing of the animals in the “Tropical Animal House” was upsetting. The external areas of this exhibition were better, but far, far from
perfect. But after seeing the hippos wallowing in small swimming pools, I realized that the remaining “tropical” animals were awaiting a soon-to-be-completed new home. The zoo was hard at work building an entirely new Africa exhibition, pumping a lot of money into the multi-level facility. Many animals that once lived in the depressing concrete bunker had already found new homes in the zoo’s newer facilities. I was hopeful things would get better for the remaining animals soon. The zoo opened new areas, including the tropical rainforest, high mountain, and frozen zone houses in recent years that were very well designed. The wolves also have a large, modern home to roam
around. The Hokkaido bear seems to be the star with a large, luxurious home all of his own. Along with this is a new reptile house, where the animals, while in smaller enclosures, have their needs well catered to. Each animal is featured in an environment that aims to simulate it’s natural home. The new Africa area opened in August. Most of the animals had moved into their new homes by the time I visited at the start of December. The hippos seemed positively playful in their new enclosures, swimming around their pools, thrusting their faces into the glass viewing panels to the delight of the large crowd. They were in their indoor enclosures, thanks to the cold. I can’t wait to see them next spring when they move outside again and have even more space to enjoy. With the fluctuating climate of Hokkaido, many animals have to spend part of the year living in only part of their enclosure for warmth. And that’s not ideal. Some of the animals are still waiting for better days, with enclosures that are dated. The seals and the polar bears have another year to wait before their new home opens. The kangaroos are stuck inside for the winter, but will have a revamped outdoor area to explore come summer. And the old Africa area is currently being torn down, as it deserves, to make way for a new elephant area. Maruyama Zoo is not perfect. It has further to go. No zoo is perfect because seeing an animal in captivity is never the best way to see them. Animals should live free, in their natural environments, untouched by the impact of humans. But, with the harsh realities animals face in trying to survive in what’s left of the wild, zoos play several important roles. They play a role in breeding these animals, a role in raising money for conservation, and a big role in educating people on the realities of our impact on the world. And Maruyama is doing just that. You see many young families visiting the zoo, children shrieking in joy to see the animals from their books come to life. And, parents patiently reading the signs at each exhibit, doing their best to answer their child’s questions, to sate their curiosity about each and every animal. Learning about these animals and the threats they face. You see big smiles on the faces of the kids and adults alike. And you can hope. Hope that these people will keep coming to the zoo and that the zoo will keep spending that money the right way.
Photo courtesy of Karisa Whelan
Miso Koibito Jack Powers Editor | Polestar
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t’s midnight or way past and where would you rather be. The ground’s dirty and what are you going to do about it. If you don’t know where to put your bag, you’ve succeeded. You’ve picked the right place. Umami bliss in a bowl of ramen is your reward, drunken sailor. With apologies to soup curry and genghis khan (both lovely), miso ramen is what Sapporo is all about. And it’s clearly not hard to find. Maybe the place looks practically boarded up or not, either way you’ll smell it. The only hazard is being coerced into thinking there’s something else you should be doing. Sure, those snow sculptures are neat, but as long as you look long enough to say you saw them, you’re good.
From my vantage point, Sapporo is the ramen capital of the world (you tried, Fukuoka). But how did the frontier metropolis take ownership of one of the national dishes of Japan? Largely because, like Hokkaido, ramen’s a relatively new addition to Japanese society. Ramen is originally the food of Chinese immigrants in Yokohama and was seen solely as an ethnic specialty until well after World War II (it was known as “Chinese soba (chuuka soba)” and still has that distinctive katakana). After World War II, the American Occupation imported large quantities of Midwestern wheat to assuage Japan’s post-war food shortage and continued to subsidize wheat shipments for decades thereafter. Inexpensive and full of protein, ramen became a common blue-collar lunch in the post-war era of rapid industrialization. As a rapidly expanding city
Photo courtesy of Jack Powers
without much of an established food culture, Sapporo was well-positioned to catch the ramen craze.
All sorts of ways of serving these wheat noodles coexist
Ramen was the food of blue-collar manufacturing and construction workers and poor rural migrants, the type of people who formed a considerable portion of Hokkaido’s population during the post-war era. It’s no coincidence that Hokkaido claims three of the 19 recognized “regional ramen of Japan” (Sapporo, Asahikawa, and Hakodate.) The ramen houses of Hokkaido, like many other areas of Japan, started as mainly push-cart vendors (yatai) that responded to local tastes to create local flavors. Indeed, the creators of Sapporo’s miso ramen style were largely small independent push-cart vendors that sold unofficially on the black market. The dish’s humble utilitarian beginnings are still clearly reflected in the cozy Bolshevik décor of its restaurants.
miso is the big dog. Sapporo’s quintessential dish
in most Sapporo ramen restaurants, but the Sapporo is made from pork-bone broth, thick miso paste, and crisped pork belly, and includes some strange, suspect additions, mainly butter and corn, another sign of the strong influence of American agricultural produce on Hokkaido. Sapporo’s ramen makers also tend to use far more kansui, baking soda-infused salt water, in their broths as compared to cooks from other regions. The product is a warm, rich concoction well-suited to freezing temperatures. Top it off with a glass of Sapporo Classic and you’ve got the goods. Boys, get after it. Ladies too.
Photo courtesy of
Matthew Jones