A Winter's Lunch by the Sea of Okhotsk

A WINTER’S LUNCH BY THE SEA OF OKHOTSK

January 2017

The family decided to close 2016 (a truly awful year, by most counts) by visiting the Sea of Okhotsk (hereafter ‘the Sea’). ‘Where and why?’ you would no doubt be asking, and ‘does a bad year have to be seen out via such a drastic step?’ At the outset, this note is not aimed at addressing these questions (though I begin with a cursory attempt at doing so), it is to describe the impressions from the visit.

So, where - the Sea is bounded by Russia’s eastern coast, the Kamchatka peninsula, the Kuril Islands, Sakhalin (all Russia), and the northern part of Hokkaido in Japan. The Kurils, an island chain between Hokkaido and Kamchatka, separate the Sea from the Pacific Ocean. The area is somewhat historic for both Japan and Russia – this is where their respective empires clashed; where they fought wars (1905 and 1945), where they screwed indigenous people (such as the Ainu and Nivkhs) over, and where the sovereign status of some of the areas mentioned above continue to be disputed. The Sea itself is known to be intimidating – it is misty, rough, and has large ice flows (apparently its freezing point is increased by fresh water inflows from the Amur River that serve to reduce its salinity). It was a whaling paradise until the tragedy of the commons played itself out, and it continues to be of strategic importance because of its location – the vessels of the Russian Navy’s Pacific Fleet, headquartered in Vladivostok, have to use it to reach the open ocean.

The Old Man by the Sea (of Okhotsk)

 Why – the only explanation I have is that holiday planning in the family observes no logic or reason, is always done at the last minute, and anyone voicing temperance or caution is treated like a sissy in the playground. The resulting holidays tend to be experiences that end with nobody speaking with anyone else, with a common consensus that we will never do this again (until we do it again), and with all round relief to be back at school, college or work where we can respectively recover.

We chose to see the Sea from the Japanese side; Mumbai-Delhi-Tokyo by air, Tokyo to Sapporo and onward to Wakkanai (at the northern tip of Hokkaido, on the Sea) by train before returning to Sapporo, a flight from Sapporo to Nagoya (where we brought in the new year), a train to Narita, and finally back to Mumbai by air.

Our first inclination that we may in over our heads was at the Japan Rail (JR) ticket counter in Sapporo, when we were making seat reservations. “Why Wakkanai?” was the refrain of the booking clerk, “too cold, too much snow.” (And she lives in a place that has hosted the Winter Olympics). When we said that it was for a holiday and would she recommend it she emphatically shook her head. Our next one was when the train to Wakkanai stopped in the middle of nowhere because of excess snow. Now, there had been heavy snow on the tracks from Sendai (about two hours from Tokyo) onwards without any train going even a minute off schedule – what was happening here? It waited for about 45 minutes, during which the conductor came several times and made long spiels in Japanese (all announcements in JR are in Japanese and English until something unscheduled happens) before moving on again. We were wondering whether to be worried, and make enquiries, and then decided against it given that our co-passengers appeared completely unconcerned.

Wakkanai itself was interesting – a town of 30,000 people of whom nobody was visible during our long walk along the Sea, probably not unreasonable given that there was a blizzard on, it was bitterly cold, and there was a lot of snow on the ground. The Sea itself looked like it would soon be freezing over – grey, rough, and miserable – not a tourist attraction. We did find an open eatery (using the old fashioned technique of peering in through the window), it must have been a take-out because there was just a counter and an old lady chopping something up on it who smiled, waved us in, and then served us our food in her kitchen. We ate a wonderful meal consisting of very fresh fish in various Japanese sauces washed down with rice and hot green tea. We later found a coffee shop run by an old man who spoke a little English – it turned out to be the local geriatrics’ adda, with all of them curious about our origins and reasons for visiting. They assured us over many coffees and cigarettes that, while it was quite a happening place in summer, we were fortunate in being here at a time when we could experience the ‘real Wakkanai’.

Lunch by the Sea of Okhotsk

A word about Air India, on which we had reluctantly and rather fearfully travelled (the first time I had used it for foreign travel beyond the likes of Kathmandu and Kabul) and which has since earned itself the distinction of being rated ‘the world’s third worst airline’. It was the best long flight I have done – Delhi-Tokyo-Delhi was bang on time, the planes were Dreamliners (and the connecting Delhi-Mumbai flight on our return was a Jumbo), the food and service (the first time I have been offered a third beer with a smile) was excellent, and the small things were done with thought (we had to clear immigration and customs in Delhi on our return, and then check in again for Mumbai – the ordinary baggage handlers guided us on where to go, and then advised us to transfer our precious duty-free booze into our check-in bags before clearing security in Delhi). The only suggestion I would make on the basis of this visit is that they point out the flush in their planes’ toilets in Hindi and request its usage.

I have waxed eloquently about the Bullet Trains (or what the Japanese call ‘Shinkansen’) before, and I am going to do so again. The Hokkaido Shinkansen is particularly awesome, both the journey and the train itself, even by Japanese standards. It is a new route that connects Japan’s main island with its northern-most one via the world’s longest undersea tunnel. The long journey northwards from Tokyo crosses several climatic zones, and we had snow from the northern Tohuku region of Honshu onwards. The only downside is that the beautiful landscape is interrupted by frequent tunnels (Bullet Trains need to go straight to maintain their 300 kmph speed and therefore go through rather than around barriers) and this is a bit disconcerting for one’s enjoyment of the scenery. The train is called a ‘Hayabusa’ (the Japanese word for a peregrine falcon), with an engine that has a longer body than other Shinkansen possibly because it has to plough through a lot of snow, and even if you are inured to the sight of a Bullet Train pulling into a station, this one will still make you go ‘wow’. I am not sure how this route makes any money (even though a Tokyo – Hakodate – Sapporo ticket is seriously expensive, about three times the cost of a Tokyo-Sapporo flight) and I suspect that some of the cost is state subsidized because the Hokkaido Shinkansen ensures the presence of a very Japanese symbol on its northern most (and Russia facing) island.

Some scenery between Sapporo and Wakkanai

A momentous occurrence in the family annals happened on the evening of 31^st December, in the city of Nagoya. We had planned to bring in the New Year together, and were a bit sentimental given that the children were growing up and leaving the nest and therefore the occasions in which we were all together were becoming rarer and should be savoured, blah, blah, blah! The afore-mentioned children, however, had other ideas – they managed to procure all-you-can-eat-and-drink passes to a restaurant called Hooters for the evening (if you haven’t heard of this restaurant chain, please look it up) and left us old fogeys at 10.30 pm. Their mother and I spent the rest of the evening questioning our suitability as parents, and wondering how to address questions from our own parental generation (‘Oh, how nice that you were together at New Year’s? What did you do?’ ‘Well, we slept and your grandchildren effed off to Hooters. We don’t know when they returned.’) You know what I mean!

Our last night of the trip was at Narita, the town eponymous with the airport. We were given a resounding send-off at a local Thai eatery, where the old gentleman at the pay-counter decided to give us a ‘50 percent off’ on the already-low prices and we decided to respond by spending double what we had originally planned, mostly on Sapporo Draft (super stuff, and 50 percent off on this too), with the consequence of a decrepit and dishevelled look when we boarded our flight next morning.

“Never again!” we swore, as always, once we returned to the sanctuary of home and hearth, “Let’s go to Goa next time.” But I can already discern some all-too-familiar churning – my elder son has sent me a travel brochure for North Korea and his mother, instead of freaking out, has noticed that we can visit Sakhalin, Vladivostok and possibly Petropavlovsk as well if we take in a few more days. Watch this space!