Snow shoveling is the number one daily activity in Hokkaido in winter. We are in the old harbor town of Otaru and the houses are snowed in up to the roof and the snow lies as a thick, closed blanket right down to the beach. The whole town seems to be busy shovelling snow and women come out of every corner and alleyway dragging red plastic tubs filled with snow behind them...
The men load the snow into small trucks at collection points and tip them into the sea at the pier. An abstruse spectacle for us, but all the snow collection points in the village are already overcrowded and can't take any more snow. Even on the pier there is half a meter of snow and the fishermen are laboriously loading their snow-covered fishing baskets with frozen fish as bait. This reminds us that we absolutely have to try the famous Hokkaido sushi. And here at the harbor seems to be the perfect place for it. There is no fresher place to enjoy the Japanese national dish. The weather improves and the airport reopens after three days. Mabo and Gori have announced their arrival for today. Now we hope that driving will finally become easier with Japanese help. The last few days we have been driving with a Japanese road map and Japanese signs, but unfortunately without any knowledge of Japanese characters and had to find our way by counting the streets. Somehow, with a lot of luck, this had always worked well, but it was also very tiring, especially as you could see very little of the surroundings apart from a high wall of snow to the right and left of the road due to the depth of the snow. Now the two of them actually join us and we drive on to the center of Hokkaido, to Mt. Asahidake, the highest mountain on the island at 2290 meters. This is also home to a national park that is very well known in Japan and an even more famous onsen area where the Japanese come from far and wide just to bathe. Countless natural onsen with small Japanese inns are spread around the mountain with its magnificent and beautiful nature. Unfortunately, the gondola is closed due to all the snow and especially the wind. The storm from the Sea of Japan, which brings the snow, hits the freestanding Mt. Asahidake and its smaller peaks all around with full force. We wait patiently until noon but the weather and the wind do not calm down and we spend the rest of the day in a beautiful onsen housed in an old traditional wooden house. Unfortunately, the ski resort remains closed due to the bad weather and we are slowly running out of time. We only have one day left and are desperate to get out into the snow again. So we have to look for alternative ways to go snowboarding without a lift. At Otaru, we are standing on the pier at the harbor and discover a perfect slope that leads from a small mountain directly down to the sea. Deeply snow-covered, with birch trees that are snowed in up to the forks of the branches and small hills for jumping, small gullies and a waterfall over a rock, it is a small but perfect snowboard mountain. Directly accessible from the pass road, we drive up to the beach by car until the evening. Sapporo is the last stop on our trip and the final test of whether the sushi here is actually better than in Tokyo. We are in a very traditional sushi restaurant and of course no Japanese here speaks a word of English. We only manage to order thanks to the fortunate circumstance that the Chinese waitress speaks a little English and brings us what we want. The sushi is extremely fresh and tastes incredibly good - as does the hot sake, a hot Japanese rice liquor that comes with it. And whether we enjoy it in Sapporo or Tokyo makes no difference to us. We can only state one thing unequivocally: Sushi in Japan is the best in the world.
