A ski town is no place for those who can’t ski. For a rest day or two it’s fine – everyone needs a break once in a while. But, go beyond that, and you start to realise there really isn’t much to do away from the slopes. A dispiriting trudge into town, a look-in at the gym or the shops, then home again accompanied by an Eeyore-sized cloud of snowflakes. When everyone else slides into the lodge, tired but exhilarated from a day in the powder, all the invalids can offer audiences is a litany of doctor’s appointments and travel insurance claims.
As the days turned to weeks, and my frostbitten toes remained stubbornly purple, I realised it was time to hit the road. Inspired by Will Ferguson’s late 90s account of hitchhiking across Japan, I packed up my backpack, traced kanji onto a cardboard sign and cranked my newly-acquired heated socks up to maximum. Winter storms and blackened digits be damned. I was going to thumb my way along the highways of Hokkaido.
Day 1 – Hirafu to Muroran
Mode of transport: Hitch X 3
On the map, it doesn’t look like very far from Hirafu to Muroran. Certainly no more than 40 miles as the crow flies. But the way the crow flies is not the way the hitchhiker rides. I determined my most promising course was a zig-zag path to the neighbouring ski town of Rusutsu and then down to the main traffic artery along the coast.
First, though, I had to escape my home town of Hirafu. After barely a mile, the snow-cleared pavement ran out, and I had a choice between dicing with the shuttle buses or wading through knee-deep, crusty powder. Fortunately, this dilemma did not last long before a friendly lodge owner spotted the sign wedged between my backpack straps. Two more rides followed, including one from a bald Japanese man with a fondness for western rock, and we thrummed into the port city of Muroran to the riffs of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers.
Day 2 – Muroran to Tomakomai
Mode of transport: J-Rail
Flush with the success of my first day, I was yet to learn the painful lesson that hitchhiking from the centre of an urban area is no mean feat. Japanese drivers will seldom pull over for a hitchhiker, so the best approach is to find a convenience store or rest area and approach as many people as possible.
But, in the middle of Muroran, it seemed everyone was either local or headed in the wrong direction out of town. Compounding my problems was an icy wind that froze my fingers and even wrenched my sign away, forcing me to chase it across four lanes of bustling traffic. As afternoon lengthened, I abandoned my post and succumbed to the ever-reliable carriages of the Japanese rail service.
Day 3 – Tomakomai to Takikawa
Mode of transport: J-Rail, Hitch X 4
Determined not to repeat the mistakes of Muroran, I took a train outside the urban sprawl and alighted at a middle-of-nowhere station where the silence of deep snowfall reigned. I walked a mile or so down empty country roads to join the main highway north. Once there, I hopped between towns with a succession of lifts from konbini to konbini, darting inside for a blast of warm air if I began to shiver. After lunch, the morning sunshine was replaced by a blizzard, and I caught a ride with a sympathetic salaryman, who was out placing mats under his tyres to stop them spinning in the fresh snow.
Day 4 – Takikawa to Asahikawa
Mode of transport: Intercity bus
I tossed and turned for half the night in Takikawa, debating whether to continue along the main corridor of civilisation in the centre of the island or to head west for the coast. In the end, I decided to take a punt on the coast, drawn in by the prospect of a cheap youth hostel that showed up on Google Maps.
After hiking for the better part of an hour, I set up shop outside a Seicomart, but the staff seemed agitated by my presence and few drivers were taking the turning for the western shore. To better assess the traffic volume, I started walking up the highway and found it to be deserted save for the occasional truck. The words “flogging” and “dead horse” came to mind, so I gave up on the coastal road and hopped aboard a bus bound for the welcoming izakayas of Asahikawa.
Day 5 – Asahikawa to Nayoro
Mode of transport: Hitch with a barbecue
In the small town of Pippu, the dark-haired driver shook his head sadly. He wanted to give me a lift, he explained, but he had to attend a party down in Asahikawa and wouldn’t be driving back north for hours. I suggested that I might wait, but the driver had a better idea – why stand in the cold when I could accompany him and his wife?
So it was that I found myself the honorary gaijin at the annual yakiniku convention of the Asahikawa entrepreneur’s guild. The event took place in a rather chilly former warehouse, but we warmed ourselves at a row of braziers onto which a seemingly endless supply of meat and fresh fish was piled. There was chicken and beef tongue, prawns and sausages, fresh scallops and fillets of mackerel, all washed down with an equally inexhaustible supply of cold beer and nihonshu. At the end of it all, my hosts deposited me slightly worse for wear at a business hotel 50 miles north in Nayoro. Undoubtedly, one of my favourite days of the trip.
Day 6 – Nayoro to Wakkanai
Mode of transport: Hitch X 3
Morning came bright and cloudless, but with temperatures down at minus 20, I soon noticed my left hand seizing up when I took off my glove to operate Google Translate. Two hitches saw me to a roadside rest area on the main road running all the way north to Wakkanai. Here, there was lull, with a lot of drivers giving me the wide berth one would apply to a rabid dog. Hungover and with senses further addled by the dizzying pills the doctors had given me to treat my frostbite, I began to wonder what I was doing all alone in Japan’s deep freezer.
But, once more, the travelling Gods smiled upon me with two sets of strangers. The first group were heading south, but were happy to gift me some battered octopus on a stick. The second, an elderly couple and their tiny dog in a cage, offered to take me all the way to Wakkanai, Hokkaido’s northernmost city.
Day 7 – Wakkanai to Cape Soya (and back again)
Mode of transport: The Wakkanai – Hamatonbetsu Bus
It is only 19 miles from Wakkanai to Cape Soya – a rather modest distance by the standards of the past week’s hitching. But the buses are infrequent and, having come so far, I wanted to be sure of reaching Japan’s most latitudinally-advanced protuberance. So, I treated myself to a ticket and joined the handful of other tourists bound for the pyramid sculpture marking the last gasp of the country before it slipped into the Sea of Okhotsk.
When the others had gone, I slithered over the ice-covered boulders beyond the sculpture and plucked a stone from the slowly solidifying ocean. I dried it on my trousers and stowed it safely inside a pocket. Then, I turned south.
Day 8 – Wakkanai to Rishiri Island
Mode of transport: Ferry, Island Bus
Boarding the ferry at dawn, we sailed out of Wakkanai’s harbour beneath a deep orange sunrise. Though the sky was mostly clear, a grey dome lay over the peak at the centre of Rishiri Island, like the ash cloud from some monumental eruption.
Later that day, I began hiking with my heavy rucksack towards the mountain. After only a mile so, the road was buried in deep snow and impassable to traffic. But its surface had been compacted by snowmobiles, so I was able to reach the Mikaeridai Observatory, just above 400m. From there, the only tracks were left by touring skis, but I ploughed on, sinking sometimes as far as my thighs. As the afternoon lengthened, I turned tail for town and the scalding waters of the local onsen. I hoped one day to return, perhaps in a warmer season, to conquer the peak.
Day 9 – Rishiri Island to Sapporo
Mode of transport: Island Bus, Ferry, Intercity Bus
A day mostly spent travelling, as I made my way back to the mainland and then all the way down to Sapporo, Hokkaido’s largest city. After so long in the remote north, I was startled when the hostel check-in staff responded to my enquiries in perfect English. Although half-zombified from a 5:45am alarm, I managed to meet up with an American Couchsurfer and his Japanese girlfriend for evening drinks followed by takoyaki.
Day 10 – Sapporo
Mode of transport: Shoe leather
The 2024 Sapporo Snow Festival was spread across three separate locations. I made it to two of them. The first was in the heart of Susukino, the city’s nightlife district, and showcased intricately carved ice sculptures. I passed gryphons and dragons, owls and eagles, centaurs and sea horses, all sparkling in the sunlight. Walking north, I reached the second venue in Odori Park. Here, the medium was not ice, but snow. Many of the sculptures were heads on plinths from famous games and anime series, but there were also some vast, theatre-set sized creations, including a winter palace fluted with towers and turrets.
In the afternoon, I visited a dojo on the far side of the Toyohira River. I was greeted by a performance martial artist in black robes, and he introduced me to the ancient ways of the ninja. We practised throwing shurikens, launched uppercuts with wooden sticks and learnt how to draw and sheathe gleaming longswords.
Day 11 – Sapporo to Otaru
Mode of transport: J-Rail, Hitch
Sapporo’s urban sprawl stretches for miles along the base of a mountain chain to its south and west, so I boarded a train out to a quieter suburb. I was picked up by the second driver I approached, a fisherman with a car full of rods, bound for a quiet spot on the coast beyond Otaru. In the city, I wandered along the snow-covered banks of the old canal quarter, slurped a gigantic spiral of Hokkaido soft-serve ice cream and visited the saké brewery for some free samples.
Day 12 – Otaru to Hirafu
Mode of transport: Hitch
When it came to check-out time, my host in the small ryokan invited me to stay another night. I was sorely tempted – I didn’t want the adventure to come to an end. But reality beckoned – I was due back at the surgery to assess how my frostbite was healing.
After watching the bizarre spectacle of a blue-haired mascot called Snow Miku and her animal companions marching around a shopping centre, I headed to a 7-Eleven on the outskirts of town. The sun was already sinking, and I wondered if anyone would be heading up the winding mountain road to Niseko this late in the day. A family eventually took pity on me, and I squeezed onto the backseat with my rucksack perched on my lap.
When our Google Translate assisted conversation faltered due to dodgy signal, the father flicked on the music station. The song was a Japanese cover, so most of the lyrics were unintelligible to me, but I recognised the melody at once. It seemed that 1980s fantasy dragons could travel across the ocean as well as aeroplanes. I was listening to The Never Ending Story.
