March 4th: Sapporo Nihonichi Event

This small “event” kicked off our tour. Held in a Pronto Cafe somewhere under Sapporo station (the underground tunnels reminded me of Toronoto) we were able to eat and drink and get to know eachother a little better. Actually, everyone except me seemed to already know eachother, but I was made to feel welcome.

First shock of the trip: when the food came, I searched my bag for my plastic portable chopsticks- I had figured that three meals a day for more than 3 weeks would use up a lot of waribashi (disposable wooden chopsticks) and didn’t like the thought of all of that waste. Prepared to be embarassed (since the average Japanese person would sooner eat with her hands than with portable chopsticks), I was instead surprised to see almost everyone else pulling out their own chopsticks. Only these weren’t dasai (uncool) plastic ones like mine- they were simple wooden ones and came with a triangular wrap made of beautifully printed cotton. Kaori kindly sold me a set for 500 yen- she belongs to a volunteer group who makes and sells the wraps, and had a bag of them, all in pretty Japanese-style patterns.

Then came the speeches and jikoshoukais. A jikoshoukai is a self-introduction, but is more like a min-speech than a simple “Hi, I’m Amy”. Confusingly, a jikoshoukai is usually proceeded by someone introducing you, so you basically just repeat what was just said. You’re also supposed to add other details about yourself, but I’ve never been good at this as I have no idea of what people want to hear. I survived though, but I took this is as a kind of preview of what the tour would be like. The little pangs of doubt about the trip I’d experienced that afternoon were getting stronger.

After the event we posed for pictures. Front row fom left: Kei, the tour magager, from Kobe and living in Okinawa; Yui, from Kyoto and going to school in Okinawa; Nakata, a tour leader from Hokkaido; Yuna, from Okinawa; a party guest; and Totetsu, from Okinawa. Back rows, from left: Ushi, from Nagano and going to school in Kanagawa; Hitton, a tour leader, from Hokkaido; me; a party guest; Kaori, a sub-leader from Hokkaido; and three more party guests.

When the pictures were done, I got to ride in the tour van for the first time. Even smaller and less comfortable than I had imagined, plus it made a loud vibrating noise when in neutral and had no seatbelts. The doubts intensified.

We drove to Hitton’s house where we stayed for the night. I just wanted to shower and go to bed, but I learned that upon arrival all members have to write in our diaries or notebooks about the day. And not just anything, there are set categories (like weather, people met, clothes worn) to include. After the diary-writing was the nightly meeting. The meeting involved tracing our route on a large map of Japan, discussing the days events and going over the next day’s schedule. Since the tour hadn’t officially started yet, the first meeting wasn’t so bad.

Finally, sleep. I’m glad I slept well because the next day was even more tiring…