Friday, 24 October 2025

Still in Sapporo and today was a “cultural” day, i.e. I went to a couple of museums.

First up was the Hokkaido Museum as I wanted to see how they approached Japanese colonialism with respect to the Ainu (the indigenous people of Hokkaido).

First up there was a train ride on a suburban train, 6 carriages with seating parallel to the walls, so a high capacity train.

Today’s first train

This would be followed by a bus. It was sort of curious that this was quicker and cheaper than taking an express train and bus option as while the train was quicker it stopped further away so the slow bus wrecked its time advantage.

Anyway we end up here.

Hokkaido Museum

There was another sign in Kanji for those wondering. Only 800 yen. The relatively small museum is split over two levels and when you enter you are “greeted” by skeleton of a Naumann’s elephant and one of a Mammoth indicating that Hokkaido has been influenced from the south and the north.

Neumann’s elephant

Mammoth

One thing of interest. The signage on the exhibitions are largely only in Japanese but they direct you to download an app “Pocket Curator” that has content for multiple museums in multiple languages. Just look at the reference number and look it up. They also had an audio tour but I didn’t elect to use it.

From here I just followed the suggested path and if something interested me I looked it up.

Naumann’s Elephant entry in the app

Lots of displays about geography and then the ancient peoples and their tools (mostly replicas in the cases) and then there was this one on trade goods.

Ezochi Trade Goods Collection

Perhaps the most interesting thing here is the size of the Steller sea lion pelt compared to the black bear next to it.

Diorama of an Omusha

Part of a dwelling

another view of the dwelling

an alter outside the dwelling

A restored dwelling and a Nusa (an alter) outside the dwelling.

So I didn’t note down what these were but I liked the look of them

And a couple of photos of the Memorial Hall, the second one is a wall adorned with horseshoes and I can’t explain why.

memorial hall

a wall of horseshoes in the memorial hall

And that was the museum “done” so it was off to wait for a bus to take me back to the station, and here’s the inside of the bus.

inside a Japanese bus

I got back to the station in time to see a Limited Express zoom through the station. It didn’t seen all that fast when I was riding in one but as it passes you it is moving.

limited express train

and then my slow local train arrived. This time only 3 carriages and with seats in groups of 4. Clearly not the peak hour, pack ’em in train but it was full anyway.

suburban train

The second museum of the day was “Sapporo Beer Museum”. The self guided tour is free and the guided one is in Japanese only so I saved money for later. Each of the displays had information sheets in multiple languages so it was fine.

Sapporo beer museum

Nice building (and it opens late, although sunset is early too).

A series of panels describing stuff

You just walk though about 12 panels describing the history of the company.

advertising

I could relate to this advertising from 1908 and so …

The sampler

I had to get the sampler. You order via ticket machine. Select how many, which product and then pay via a credit card. Give the ticket to the nice barman and he gives you the product which you then enjoy.

The bar area closed at 6:30pm so after that it was a pleasant walk back to the hotel.

I move onto Otaru tomorrow and this will be the first time I split my luggage, my suitcase goes with Yamato Transport to Hakodate while I take a smaller bag (which was in it) and the camera kit to Otaru. This avoids taking a larg(ish) suitcase on commuter style trains and dragging it around town.