On the streets of Sapporo

In the evening we set out to walk the streets of Sapporo.

Seen from Italy, Sapporo is the name of a beer. A Japanese beer, of course.

Seen from the inside, Sapporo is a rather large city, the key urban center of the island of Hokkaido, the northernmost of the islands that make up the bulk of Japan.

The structure of the city is surprisingly western: the center has a well-regulated checkerboard layout, and in the middle is an avenue that is also a park, but it remains an avenue. It has something to do with the fact that when Japan reopened its borders after centuries of isolation a few hundred years ago, it did so by starting in Hokkaido.

There is a beautiful tower, made of metal, from the time when Japan seemed to be playing at making a lot of somewhat disproportionate and not so successful replicas of the Eiffel Tower. At first I'm sure they were a little clunky, but now they've gained dignity. Now you go up in an elevator, leaving a kind of little beer festival at the bottom.

From above you can see Sapporo all around and, also, you can tell that where the city ends in winter there is skiing: you can see the resorts on the sides of the mountains. And even if you don't see the lifts-maybe you can see them, I can't remember-you can tell that there is skiing there in winter, because to get to Sapporo you have to have crossed half of Hokkaido and it's hard not to notice that, even though it's sweltering hot in summer, in winter it's all about sweeping roads through walls of snow.

So in winter it snows: it is the Siberian currents, blowing southeast and then slowing down when they meet this unexpected island, with its mountains, which even the Siberian currents did not expect, there, placed sideways right in the middle of the sea. And they slam into it, slow down, cool the suspended moisture, which turns to snow, comes down, and covers everything.

I would like to go back there in the winter, to Hokkaido. To understand more about the Ainu, about their returning pride, about their patterns.

I would like to go back because of the snow.

But also because underneath the city center, underneath the main streets, there is an underground city, made up of stores, heated, specially made because in winter, outside, it snows and is very cold in Sapporo. Did I already say that?

I bought a pair of used pants in Sapporo that I really wouldn't have guessed. Near Sapporo I ate chips at the beach and photographed booths at some kind of Mad Max-themed party, but light-heartedly. In the interland I bowled with Greta, who won.