imomus | In the wind, on the island of Hokkaido

I flew into Hakodate, Hokkaido on Saturday evening. From the plane I got my first impressions of the place; it's snow-covered, a medium-sized city framed by two low mountains and two sweeping bays. Rather spectacular.

Lehan Ramsay, the Australian artist / academic who's invited me here, met me in a 4WD jeep. She drove me into town (slithering across snow) and got me organised, lending me a heater and a coat (my suitcase still hasn't arrived, though it's now following me around Japan quite closely, and should be delivered today or tomorrow) and showing me the Art Harbour, the complex I'll be living and working in for the next six weeks. It's a hippyesque homebuild strip containing a club space where kids play acid-trance music, an ethnic-style restaurant, and the house I'm in, a wooden place on two floors, normally occupied by a couple who are currently in Okinawa researching 'the way of the noodle' with a view to turning their place into a ramen bar.

I suspect another reason they're in Okinawa is that it's bloody cold in their house. The walls and windows are mere suggestions, token efforts at resistance against the snow drifts and icicles and gales outside. You move from whacky room to room (the steep stairs are cut into funny fungoid shapes, which is terribly artistic but practically somewhat treacherous) and your breath hangs in a cloud in front of you. There's a kerosene heater, but I'm rather terrified to use it with all the wood around. Luckily there's a fire station just across the street.

I've camped in a small glass-walled room under the ladder that leads to the attic. In my den I have an electric carpet (like an electric blanket, but on the floor), a TV, a wifi laptop, and a huge heap of blankets. The little room is the only place where heat can be retained for any length of time. Hakodate is above zero right now, and that's good for the time of year. It's going to get a lot colder than this, and I must admit I'm going through some kind of culture shock thinking about it. I'm used to living in perfectly temperature-controlled environments and ignoring winter, but it seems that here I won't be able to do that. Luckily I've been given an office on the Future University campus, whose sleek airport-like building offers the perfect contrast to the hippy vibe of the Art Harbour. I'm all for la vie de boheme, as long as it's summer.

Over dinner in the ethnic restaurant, I met some of the local characters, people connected to the university as well as local bohemians; a post-grad student who raved about the music in Terayama's films, a student who loves Gameboy music and dreams of visiting Belgium, the chef and his wife who showed me photos they'd taken of Ainu homes (they always have to have an enclosure for a bear in their houses, because bears are kamis or god-spirits here). The chef decided I was a 'maniac' when, after talking excitedly about Ainu bears and the ice festival I mentioned the Namahage oni, a monster from nearby Akita who visits houses carrying a giant knife looking for naughty children.

If I'm into local lore, I'm much less into 'music', and I can see this becoming a problem. The people I'm meeting are huge music fans, and my mission here is really to avoid music, or at least music as generic and stereotypical as the trance techno that's seeping through from the Art Harbour youth hang next door. When the chef tells me he plays percussion (there are bongos and ethnic jaw harps galore here) I try to explain the Lost Radio, Found Sound concept: everything is permitted... except music. If music is organised sound, sound is disorganised music. If a thing's worth loving, it's worth loving raw. Music over-eggs the sound pudding by putting everything into patterns. What I'm here to collect, celebrate and web-cast is pure, raw sound. The sound of cooking, the sound of traffic, the sound of trains, the sound of icicles dripping, the sound of the sea, the sound of teeth chattering. I'm here to listen to Hokkaido, and to listen to Hokkaido listening to Hokkaido. As long as there's no trance techno involved.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Chilly, huh? Welcome to Japan and the rather baffling resistance to central heating, double glazed windows, insulation or any number of other cost efficient (over the long term) methods of building homes against the cold. And it's not just a bohemian affectation either, most homes in Japan are not built with insulating properties.

I'm a fan of your blog and a regular reader, but have been struck by what seems to be an entirely urban perspective of the country. One with (seemingly) very little exposure to what in America are referred to as the "fly over" states. Or here, where the "nihon no kokoro" resides, inaka living. I'm guessing now you can truly have an embodied experience.

Ha ha ha, yes, embodied as a character in a Hieronymous Bosch painting!

To put this in perspective, Hakodate is 41 degrees north, whereas Aberdeen, Scotland, where I went to university for four years, is 57 degrees north. But Aberdeen (or Montreal, for that matter) never felt this cold. It is all down to construction and insulation. Maybe Spartan Greece has influenced the Japanese more than we know? Is it all about endurance as something character-building?

Right, I'm going to pluck up the courage to take a bath now. Sheer madness.

I'm shivering at the thought. I must admit that the reputation for bad heating has put me off a long-term stay in Japan, feeble pampered city boy that I am. In fact, I'd have to say that one of the things I most love about living in the nearby peninsula is the ondol, or underfloor heating. As I am picturing you turning blue in your bath, I will refrain, out of compassion, from painting a vivid picture of the cosy, toasty warmth of my Seoul apartment.

My place in Kyoto was like that. I understand that it's difficult to compare Hokkaido-cold with Kyoto-cold, but those walls -- they're the equivalent to a windbreaker, when what one really wants is an artic parka.

it is hard to speak of the ainu and 'kamis': kami is very much a japanese word and concept and the history of japanese incursions into the north is marked by a specific policy of building shrines in a rather arbitrary manner. japanese policy towards the ainu in hokkaido during the meiji period was forceful and offered few real opportunities.

i'm surprised you didn't comment on the russian influence in hakodate! go up to that beautiful old church on the hill.

Well, although people like Nold Egenter do think that Shinto and Ainu ritual have historic links, the description of bears as 'kamis' came up in the dinner conversation last night when the chef was trying to explain Ainu customs to his fellow Japanese in terms they'd understand. So he said 'Bears are a kind of kami for the Ainu'.

As for the Russian influence, I did comment on it when I first saw pictures of the city (follow the link in Lost Radio Found Sound). I've only been here a few hours and I haven't seen much yet. I'm more interested in all the hot springs up in the mountains than western-style churches, though. I tend to think Japan has done well to keep churches out, so it's a bit odd to read a tourist description of a town boasting them as an attribute.

That be no "western-style" church on the hill. It was founded by St Nikolai (as in the Nikolai-do in Ochanomizu, Tokyo). It's nicknamed Gan-gan, I think, after the decidedly un-western tuning of Russian bells. The church burned down and was reconstructed in 1916, but remains one of several interesting examples of a pre-Revolutionary Russian church outside of Russia itself, such as the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in the Rue Daru, Paris. Un-western Eastern Orthodoxy was quite a success story in missionary activity in Meiji Japan and was second only to the Catholic church until the Russo-Japanese War curtailed much of its popularity. This success is surprising in some ways since Eastern Orthodoxy had no recent tradition or knowledge of missionary activity, unlike your Western proselytisers. Nikolai remained in Japan throughout the war and impressed many with his care for both Japanese wounded and Russian prisoners. His translation of the liturgy is still used by the autonomous Japanese Orthodox Church to this day. Orthodoxy may be considered a foreign interloper on Hokkaido, but no more so than the mainland Japanese. This is frontier country historically, the New World.

Other than that, make your hosts provide a decent kotatsu or a friendly bear to hold at night and in the meantime stomp around the flat chanting Accciiiiiiidd!

this has nothing to do with your post but
do you have any writings about nyc or living in ny?

thanks

If you go here (http://www.imomus.com/thoughtsindex.html) and work your way up from 'Nasty, British and Short' (2000) you'll find my NY writings.

Just as I mention elsewhere (was it Marxy's?) how houses in Hokkado do have central heating and insulation, (and often yield a winter that is considerably more comfortable than Honshu) I see you have landed in somewhere not quite built to the same standard.

(Even the high school I attended in Sapporo that was built in 1956 or so was double glazed and centrally heated, and the house I lived in was triple glazed, built by "Ki no shiro" (wooden castle), a local, high quality building company that designs for Hokkaido.)

The sound I miss the most would have to be that squeak that untrodden snow makes when tread on, amongst the hush of deep snow.

Have a great time.

"I'm all for la vie de boheme, as long as it's summer."

That's gorgeous.

I have to say I love the idea of living there under your heap of blankets and listening to the tiny noises outside. Unbirthing hoves into view again.

momus, how did you find aberdeen when you lived there? as a current resident, I'm interested in yr perspective. cozen

I quite liked it. It was different enough from Edinburgh to be 'exotic' for me. Grey granite and a certain gothic look, oil money, the tawdry charm of the Beachside Ballroom. I had a car and could drive to Banchory listening to 'Low'.

It's probably changed a lot. I ate at a vegetarian restaurant called Jaws, I bought records at Other Records, I lived at Hillhead Halls of Residence, then on Baker Street, then in a kind of hut in a back garden in Torry. Hung out a lot at Gray's School of Art.

i'm currently living in Akita, and lots of the more skeptical locals that i've met with have claimed that the Namahage demons were just Russians dressed up in an effort to scare the poor people of Oga and Akita's coastline. not sure if this is true or not, but thought it was interesting.

That photo brought up a memory of cold winters in a city on a peninsula between two lakes, Madison, Wisconsin.

Nothing like being snug and warm under the covers while the rest of the house remains cold as heck.

Makes it hard to get up in the morning: present warmth or a dash through the cold to get the shower on and hot water running.

In the wind, on the island of Hokkaido

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So much for Hokkaido building standards

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aberdeen.

Re: aberdeen.

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