Summer in Hokkaido

At the end of my two years’ teaching in Japan I decided to travel up to Hokkaido before I flew home. None of my friends could make it so I went on my own. The cheapest ticket up there was a Seishun 18 Kippu but that meant that all my travel had to be on local or rapid trains (no express or bullet trains!). But I had a few books, my iPod, phone, camera, snacks... I caught the earliest train from Niigata at about five in the morning and finally got to Hakodate more than 24 hours later..! It’s still the longest journey I’ve ever made – made longer however by having to catch a bus for a stretch because the tracks had been damaged by heavy rain.

By the time I got to Aomori that evening I was dead tired, bored with my own company and music – and out of snacks! But I got talking to a sweet, intelligent and thoughtful boy – he was in senior high, had just come back from an exchange at a school in the UK and had been backpacking around Japan in his summer break, even sleeping rough in a park with some of the homeless in Tokyo along the way. He said he’d been a problem kid but he was good company and I guess, with my own backpack and cheap ticket, I seemed more like a student than a teacher myself. His mom was coming to pick him up to drive him the last stretch back home to Hakodate and he insisted that I go with them, and I gratefully accepted the offer.

I met some really nice people in Hokkaido – some a little overly protective when they found out I was travelling on my own – but all so friendly, generous and helpful. And Hokkaido was just beautiful – the most unspoiled bit of Japan I visited...

I’d love to go back – and next time I’ll take my sketchbook...

One of Hakodate's western-style buildings

Hakodate: famous for ika (squid)

At the Botanic Garden, Sapporo

Cycling near Furano

On my bike

At the Nibutani Ainu Culture Museum (the ainu are an indigenous group in Hokkaido)

If you'd like to find out more about the Seishun 18 Kippu: http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2362.html

Memories of Japan

My friend Nuria made this for me when we were both living and working in Japan.

Kawaii desu ne?

And nightmares...

These are some details from some of the sketches in my dream diary. All kinds of nightmarish fears are in it – of riots, destruction, powerlessness, hopelessness, homelessness, harm, prejudice, judgement...

But I’ve also included two images of wonder and delight – a shoal of fish swimming near me and a flock of chickens freely wandering through the countryside with me at night.

Doodles

And a few sketches. Most of these were doodled in the margins of my high school maths, biology and Afrikaans notes, and a few I did in primary school.

Good friends

I’m a hoarder of words, especially handwritten words on notes, letters, cards and postcards, and I recently found this in a box of old papers. It’s almost twenty years old..!

It’s good to know that my friends thought of me when I missed a day of school... And of course I couldn’t wait to get back..!

Sketching taxis

This is another sketch I did just for me. We’d regularly go out and do location drawing around Grahamstown in first year, and I was sitting sketching the taxis. A man carrying a bottle of beer came and sat down beside me. He said he could take me to the township – that I needn’t be scared as a lot of wit vroumense (white women) like me went there. I laughed it off and kept drawing, and he finally lurched off to ask one of my classmates. The township was only on the other side of town, but it could have been another country to me and I only went there once – to an exhibition during the National Arts Festival.

I did that one from memory and these are the charcoal sketches I was doing that day.