Hokkaido’s erased past is a reminder that picture-perfect snow globes are never as they seen. Dig beneath the surface, and shadows emerge. The island looks pristine, but no place ever is.
For all the time I’ve spent in the Arctic, I’ve never come across as much of a winter wonderland as Hokkaido, where I spent a couple of weeks in March. In places like Svalbard and Alaska’s North Slope, the snow lays flat and low across the horizon. The Arctic is ultimately a desert, and most parts receive less than 50 centimeters of the white stuff per year.
But on Japan’s northernmost island, the powder towers above the trees. Some winters, the island’s rugged interior receives almost 16 meters of snow – enough to blanket a five-story building. Near the coast sits the capital of Sapporo, the world’s snowiest city. To shield themselves from the fickle flakes, pedestrians hold clear umbrellas overhead, which glow pink and yellow in the neon street lights. Many people also have in hand a cone of Hokkaido’s famously creamy soft serve. Its richness is attributed to the island’s cool, sub-Arctic climate, which makes for happy cows.
A great deal of Sapporo is hidden from view, reflecting an urban environment adapted for deep snowdrifts. Underground, the Pole Town Mall stretches for several blocks, full of people coming and going as they snap up piping hot cheese tarts and perfectly buttered sandwiches.
Aboveground, giant animatronic snow crabs scuttle up and down building facades, hiding smoky yakitori joints and lovelorn karaoke bars. I wandered inside one of these labyrinths in search of a standing-only sushi bar with room for only four customers. Against the back wall of the postage-stamp sized restaurant, where a a documentary about Japanese fishermen played on the corner television, I inserted a 1000-yen note into a machine. A few gears whirred, and within moments, the chef was passing me five delectable pieces of nigiri over the wooden sushi bar, one by one. I ate the fresh shrimp, tuna, and salmon while standing next to a young couple quietly enjoying seafood sourced from the Sea of Japan, where snowflakes dissolve into foamy waves.
After a night spent strolling Blade Runner backstreets, the next day, I was skiing through powder at Teine, a resort reachable by train and bus from Sapporo in just under an hour. On skis I’d lugged halfway around the world, I floated down its white slopes while gazing down onto the azure ocean. Occasionally, I ducked under the ropes, as seemed common practice, to find stashes of powder between stands of trees.
The next day, I took two trains and a bus to Asahidake, a volcano in the middle of the Hokkaido. When I arrived with my 60 kilograms of baggage in tow, I could barely believe my eyes. Enormous snowbanks flanked rushing rivers, transforming them into precipitous canyons. The classical Japanese paintings of winter landscapes that I once thought were fits of fancy turned out to be faithful representations of an archipelago blanketed by snow. All day and all night, more of it fell.
Evening Snow at Kanbara. Utagawa Hiroshige, ca. 1833–34
In Asahidake, for three days in a row, I skinned up to the fumaroles towards the top of the volcano. I was absolutely mesmerized by the steam and sulfuric vapors billowing into the sky from gaping, moss-covered holes in the ground. The infernal scene reminded me of the streets of Sapporo, where I spent many an evening wandering around eating piping hot curry bread and kaisen chimaki: steamed glutinous rice dumplings stuffed with shrimp, scallops, squid, and leeks.
At the top of Asahidake was a hut with a vending machine. I inserted a few coins and out came a hot can of Hokkaido milk coffee. The sickly sweet concoction coursed through my veins as I floated down the mountain, slashing S-turns through spruce trees shorn of their leaves by winter’s winds.
One morning, I decided to try out the cross-country course at the foot of the volcano. As I rounded the first bend, I came across a temple hidden by snow drifts softened by weeks of wind. The sight again seemed straight out of a painting. One other skier came by, seemingly from Korea. He asked me to snap photos of him from nearly every angle, and I obliged. Later, I encountered him skiing down the highway, which the rapid rate of snowfall had transformed into an impromptu ski course. Again, he asked me to take a few photos as he posed in the river of white. Though feeling a bit impatient — especially as it turned out that his phone was full, leading me to have to wait a few minutes as he deleted some photos to make room for more snowy snapshots — I indulged and wished him a wonderful holiday in a place that is a bucket list destination for many.
At the end of my trip, I experienced the best powder of all in the Tokachi Mountains. My Chilean guide and I crossed two snow bridges stretching over rushing rivers — him confidently, carrying both of our pairs of skis, and me gingerly. On the other side, a forest beckoned us to enter. We slowly pushed through the trees before skinning up soft scoops of vanilla ice cream under periwinkle skies. I discovered more shades of white than I ever knew existed. Pearl, ivory, bone, chiffon, coconut, eggshell, parchment – the spectrum was infinite despite its desaturation. Skinning up made for a breathtaking slog, while skiing down offered niveous transcendence.
Sometimes, though, the snow shook. Midway through the morning, a low rumbling reverberated across the range. Fearful of avalanches, we traversed to another slope for safety.
After four tours, my guide and I decided to call it a day and headed to a nearby onsen. I immersed myself in boiling outdoor baths surrounded by piles of snow. A few little snowmen that previous bathers had moulded with their hot, wet hands lazed on the walls of the tubs, their rounded bodies leisurely melting away.
On my final day in Hokkaido, I visited Furano, a large ski resort. The weather was finally starting to warm, and the snow at the bottom of the slopes was turning slushy. But up top, in the afternoon, a sudden blizzard blew through the valley, refreshing the runs. As the snowflakes fell, quickly piling up on my parka as I rode the chair lift, I decided to take shelter inside a mountaintop restaurant. An elderly group of Japanese skiers had decided to do the same, enjoying plates of saucy hamburger steak served atop piles of rice. I wolfed down a late lunch of snow crab udon accompanied by an ice-cold beer I had stashed in my backpack, courtesy of my guide the day before.
Warmth restored, I headed out into the snow again. As I skied over to the chairlift that led to the summit, I noticed the Japanese elderly skiers doing calisthenics on their skis before they started sending it. Hopefully, I, too, can still be skiing black diamonds in my 70s.
As closing time approached, I rode the last chair up. I hopped off and found a quiet place to bask in the alpenglow suffusing the space between snow and sky. I watched the ski patrol sweep the slopes. With no more skiers around, silence settled over the summit, broken only by the occasional crunch of my chocolate-covered potato chips. Although the sun was setting, the clock seemed to stop. I knew I had to get down before dark, but I always feel safest of all when I’m in an alpine embrace. The mountains may kill you, but they’ll never break your heart.
All of that snow-capped sublimity belies the suffering of people who have long called Hokkaido home. The island’s swirl of powder and neon hides a darker history. In the late eighteenth century, fearing Russian encroachment to the north, particularly on nearby Sakhalin Island, Japan decided to move in. After the 1868 Meiji Restoration, the new government colonized Hokkaido and the Indigenous Ainu people with the help of American expertise. In a place where people had relied on hunting and fishing, experts from Massachusetts introduced dairy farming, brewing, and cold-weather agriculture. These techniques laid the foundation for food products cheerfully marketed with smiling cows and simple outlines of the island stolen from the Ainu.
Hokkaido’s erased past is a reminder that picture-perfect snow globes are never as they seen. Dig beneath the surface, and shadows emerge. The island looks pristine, but no place ever is.
