Out and about in Sapporo

Last Saturday I went for a hike up Moiwa yama. It sits just on the outskirts of Sapporo and has a ropeway (cable car) and touristy stuff on the top of it along with a few hiking trails. I jumped on the subway near my house down to Maruyama koen and walked up the begining of the trail. Its a very popular hike, so there were many "Konnichiwa's" on the trail up. Mainly retired folks,decked out in full hiking gear complete with bear bells(- apparently the 531m mountain is equivalent to Everest), and a few families. This is the first time I've hiked up Moiwa this year. I went earlier in the year with a couple of friends, but we took the wrong turn on the way to the start of the trail and ended up taking the cable car up (it was free on that day luckily). This time it was just me, and the other hikers.

I really like living in Sapporo because although its the largest city I've lived in, its still has a small town feel to it and the mountains and countryside is so easily accessible. The trail wound up the mountain with plenty of nature to look at- mostly insects and birds though.

There's a popular rest area just before the final km zig zag to the top and stopped for some tea. There was a family there having a rest with some small children (2 years to 8 years I reckon). I think this was their first close encounter with an "alien" cause I got saucer -eyed by the kids. Eventually ,with the parents egging them on, we exchanged sweets and 'hellos' . This is the first time in ages I've had the meet the foreigners conversation so I'm guessing they were from out of town.

I stopped at the top to warm up cause it was windy and chilly too. The top has an amazing collection of tacky Hokkaido souvenirs- hello kitty Susukino and Marimo algae men key rings, magnets, towel- you need it they have it. I headed East down the mountain aiming for the ski runs and met an entire High School year heading up the mountain in there track suits. 300 Konnichiwa's and Hallo's later I started down the trail. By now the wind was really quite strong and the path seem quite corroded with lots of little rocks, but I had the trail to myself. It was weird walking down the ski runs, this was where I first learnt to ski this winter and now instead of m's of snow it was a huge meadow.

Unfortunately the buses that run from the subway station to the ski jo don't work out of season so I ended up walking another 4km to a bus stop in the middle of the edge of town car salesrooms. It was a nice hike, though tiring at the end.

Beginning of the challenge

I don't know at what point last week I finally decided to start a blog but here it is. Last week was a slow week in work, many people were away- I assume back to their families for O-bon. It  was hot too, well actually its been hot for the past 3 weeks, which for me gets tiring after a while. Sapporo (and Hokkaido) is way much cooler than rest of Japan in the summer, but for a lily livered Brit like myself  I become sloth like.  So I spent some of my time last week planning stuff for when my friends  come in September on holidays, and as I looked around the internet I came across a site that describes all the routes up Fujisan and I came to the decision that I wanted to climb it.  Not this year obviously, since the official season is almost over for one, the other being my general unhealthy ness. 

I bought a Wii fit about 2 months ago and I still haven't improved my age on it- I'm currently 55, which is way much older than I am  really - let me just state. Though I don't suppose that not being able to understand the Japanese instructions on the the balance exercises help (Obviously this is where I'm going wrong, not the whole being generally over weight and unhealthy). Anyway the combination of a slow week in work and finally deciding to get fit has led to this- This blog and My Fuji challenge. 

This weekend, I went back on the Wii fit (the temperature dropped to a nice 25C again) and I was full of plans, so I spent the weekend watching 5 DVDs and going shopping- a great start to my fitness regime I think not. 

Ah well..... there's always next week.

Random Drink of the week- Lucky Cider (as I didn't win the lottery and nearly got hit by a car on my bike I'm not sure its all that lucky) it even has extra kira kira (sparkle).

Random thoughts- why do Japanese fire engines and ambulances have sirens on at 3am when nothing is on the road?