"Don’t you think it would be wonderful to get rid of everything and everybody and just go to some place where you don’t know a soul?"
— Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

Photos taken in the train from Niseko to Oshamambe where I didn't know a single soul ~

In four hours I spent in Oshamambe waiting for my next train I only saw two or three elderly people on the streets outside of the station. The town was completely silent: most window shutters were down, shops closed, no taxis. Few cars passing through the central square made less sound than fresh snow crunching under my feet. Nobody cares to clean the snow off the roads; it just piles up indefinitely until some locals start digging out entrances to their houses with shovels. Dragging around suitcases [like I did] is not recommended.

This ocean/snow gradient was totally worth a 4-hour transfer in a god-forsaken town.

Japan is often portrayed as a country where ancient temples and ladies in kimono elegantly coexist with cutting-edge technologies, crazy robots, and cyberpunk-inspiring cityscapes. But the technologies are mostly “hard-ware”: you may indeed find all those neon billboards on Shibuya crossing, decorative robots in hotel lobbies, and iPads instead of menus in restaurants, but many shops and most transportation services still don’t accept credit cards (forget the contactless payments!), any kind of medical or governmental service requires a pile of filled out paper forms, taxi or food delivery apps didn’t get popular yet, and Google Maps oftentimes lead you to the most unoptimized path possible. Convenience stores are still the main venues where you can pay your bills, book event tickets, and buy food instantly — functions that are now largely being shifted online in Europe. Oshamambe town's convenience store also seems to be the only place where it's possible to socialize and get warm in winter.