Quote:
Originally Posted by HatterMac
Just out of interest Nagoyankee, would you say the feel of Sappparo is simlilar to other large cities in Japan or would you say that it's more provincial, owing to the fact that Hokkaido is a popular holiday destination, as you rightly mentioned.
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That is a good question. If you go directly from where you are to Sapporo, I don't think you will feel anything so special about the city. But if you go there after having spent some time in larger cities on Honshuu (the main island), I'm pretty sure you will feel that you've come a long way.
Sapporo doesn't exactly feel 'provincial' because it is a large city and it does have some skyscrapers. But if you go just a little outside of Sapporo and start seeing the huge ranches and corn/potato fields, then you will start wondering if you aren't actually in Idaho or Iowa.
Hokkaido is in a sense like the Wild West in North America. Many people there have been living there only for a few generations (that is a short time by the Japanese standard). They are the descendants of the pioneers who had moved from other parts of Japan. If you're interested in Japanese dialects or in linguistics in general, you will be fascinated to find that in Hokkaido, people speak very much like Tokyoites despite its location, which is nowhere near Tokyo. This is the result of those pioneers trying to communicate with one another better by dropping the most distinct features of their own dialects that they had once brought to Hokkaido.
Sorry I went off-topic. I'm very language-oriented....
If you ever go to Sapporo as a tourist, make sure you go to the near-by Otaru. You will see very attractive old brick buildings, excellent souvenir stores, lots of big Russian sailors/fishermen, etc. Otaru once was the center of Hokkaido before airplanes replaced boats as the main shipping method in trade between Hokkaido and the rest of Japan.