TTT2019: Day 34--Wild Hokkaido

There is a sense that Japan is a crowded but small country.  In fact, it is larger, in geographical size, than the UK or New Zealand, and just about the same size as Germany.  One difference is that Japan is composed of islands, with Hokkaido at the northern extreme, thus colder, and naturally wilder.

Japan has 6500 islands, and four main ones.  Next to Honshu, Hokkaido is the second largest, but with only of 5.5 million people.  The country's population began to decline in 2011, and now is down to 127 million.  The expectation is 97 million in 2050.

My two favorite islands are Miyakojima, in the Okinawa chain, and Hokkaido.  I helped Miyakojima gain status as the solar island for the nation, but the reason I'm semi-famous there is that their biggest event is something called All Japan Strongman Triathlon.  I once had dinner with the mayor of that island, and he practically gave me the keys to the village because I knew Judy and John Collins, who founded the Ironman Triathlon.

Hokkaido is important for me because that is my origin.  My father's father, Kenjiro (my namesake), was born there.  I did a thorough roots search, and found out that:

• his parents came from Akita
• around 1870, they left for Otaru where he was born
• family moved to Sapporo when the population was not quite 2000 (it is now approaching 2 million)
• they then went north to Utashinai
• this detail is not clear, but Kenjiro was sent to America around 1895 to learn something

• on his way back to Japan:
• he stopped off on Kauai
• got married
• produced my father (1903)
• was in charge of the first hydroelectric plant built on Kauai (1906)
• but before the commissioning, fell at the plant site and died (that's me at the site a century after it was built and is still producing around 3 MW)

The searches I attempted sought one of Kenjiro's grandmothers, who was rumored to be a female samurai.  I caught a ship from Akita to Otaru.  Then a train to Sapporo, transferred to another train to Takikawa, then to a bus to Utashinai.  Japanese city offices only keeps records for 82 years.  I got there at least a 100 years after Kenjiro passed away, but they still had a treasure chest of information about he and his family.  Some time while I'm on Hokkaido, I would like to make a final trek to Utashinai.

So returning to the present, to get to Hokkaido, we first caught the Hayabusa from Tokyo to Shin-Hakodate:

Cherry Blossoms began to appear around Morioka, one of stops on our return.  

We stayed at Hotel La'gent Plaza at the Shin-Hakodate Station:

In the past I caught another train into Hakodate, for there is a Sheraton adjacent to the station:

While the population of Hakodate, like Japan, is declining, there must be more than a quarter million people living in this port city.  Shin Hakodate has almost no population.  Tomorrow, on to Sapporo.

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