Finally made it back down from Orkney.

Still not got back down from Orkney — with snow then a couple days of high winds, it’s been a week’s delay, though all looks fine for travel tomorrow. Did go to Sheila Fleet Cafe today, and had North African Chickpea Stew there.

In the meantime, managed to get out to Sakura Kitchen, a Japanese takeaway that’s recently gone from a home business to a shopfront. I had teriyaki bento plus apple gyoza (this restaurant’s own invention), while my parents had yakiniku bento.

Still not managed to get back down from Orkney — was due to fly yesterday, but the flight to Aberdeen was cancelled, and the next airport would have been shut anyway. Work’s being understanding, though.

Was meant to be travelling back down from Orkney today, but my flight’s delayed until Thursday owing to, well, look.

メリークリスマス、青空！

Done with the prison pictures. This is a food picture I forgot coming back via London. Visited Gulmi, a new Nepalese in Woolwich, and had Taas Lamb, marinated lamb with puffed rice. Ordered a bowl of pilau on the side since the waitress was adamant it’d be too dry on its own, though it was fine.

The Prison Museum Cafeteria serves what it says are the same meals served in the modern Abashiri Prison. These are a piece of either saury or mackerel with barley rice and pickles. Customers get miso soup where the prisoners get coarse tea. More randomly, you can have loco moco instead.

The prison’s lecture hall. Originally mainly used for Buddhist lectures (by the Pure Land sect) which were seem as part of reconfirming to society, in a more liberal postwar environment it was occasionally used for things like concerts.

A solitary confinement box, enforcing even harsher conditions than the row of indoor solitary cells. I *think* this one has enough room to lie down in, there’s a couple more which were smaller.

The prison bathhouse — even with a short regimented schedule of use, it’s something the prisoners looked forward to. The elaborate tattoos on some of the mannequins is implying they’re Yakuza.

The prison museum also had mockups of cells from the modern Abashiri Prison (not photographable). These had tatami flooring and rollup futons for bedding. The idea of a restricted view for prisoners persists — they had only two small reinforced-glass windows, both looking into the corridor.

Solitary confinement cells, of slightly later design than the others. Sorry this photo is a bit blurred.

One of the cells. These older cells were built with slatted diagonal wooden bars, which meant that the wardens could see into each cells, but prisoners couldn’t see across to other cells.

The main cellhouse of the old prison was built in a semi-panopticon style — there were five long corridors of cells branching off a central room, where this observation box stood.

The prison’s Shinto shrine.

An example of a temporary building set up for prisoners on assignment — besides the farming, they were also put to hard labour such as roadbuilding.

Barrels and other equipment for making miso. Abashiri was historically a farming prison which aimed at self-sufficiency, and miso would be an obvious product to include.

The magistrate’s office the prison was run from. In the present, an exhibition hall with museum shop and cafe.

The prison museum’s gatehouse — as with most of the buildings, it was moved to the museum site when the real prison a few miles away was reconstructed in the 60s.

While Abashiri isn’t the northernmost point of Japan — there’s a spur of Hokkaido to the west that goes about a hundred miles further north — it’s already far enough from the centre of the country to be intimidatingly distant, and along a coast that gets regular sea ice.

One bit of my Hokkaido trip I didn’t get round to putting up pictures for was the visit to the Abashiri Prison Museum, so I think I’ll do that now.

Lunch at Pizza Pilgrims on the way to the airport. Had pizza with sausage, sautéed broccoletti, and smoked mozzarella.

Travelling up to Orkney tomorrow for my Christmas holiday.

Airport lunch. Miso ramen with pork-rib meat. Slurping this down while waiting for my gate.

Smaller Gundam models, showing the main robot for the protagonist of pretty much every series. The main robot tends to be the base model for the series, setting the basic aesthetic for the series with similar colouring to other main Gundams, while supporting robots can get a bit weirder with it.

Gundam and Zaku statues at the airport. About 6 feet tall, or 1/10th ‘actual’ size.

Hotel breakfast just before leaving.

Okay, time to get on with my last few sorting-things-out tasks before flying back tomorrow.

One place I didn’t go to is Wakkanai, at the northernmost tip of Hokkaido. Am reminded of the apocryphal stories about asking a local for the name of a place or animal, being told “I don’t know” and writing that down.

Minor placename notes: Chitose’s original Japanese name (like many in Hokkaido, based on an Aynu name) was Shikotsu. While it’s written with different kanji, this sounds like it means ‘Deadbones’. The national park and lake nearby are still called Shikotsu but the city changed it.

Chitose manhole cover. The plane’s there because this town, a little way out of Sapporo, hosts Hokkaido’s major airport.

Spa-katsu, a Kushiro specialty, for lunch. Consists of spaghetti on a hot plate topped with fried pork cutlets (tonkatsu), and meat sauce on top of that. Arrived with the meat sauce sizzling and indeed spitting.

Kushiro manhole cover. There were also these embossed-metal designs on the ground in places. The flowers are irisess.

Today was almost entirely a travel day, from Abashiri on Hokkaido’s north coast to Kushiro on the south, then over to Chitose near the airport. Some views from the train along the way to Kushiro— there were much better hill views, but lines of trees kept getting in the way before I took a shot.

@toukochan.bsky.social Have arrived in Chitose, but don’t see the Ramune bottle anywhere, please advise.

Tomorrow heading back to a hotel near New Chitose Airport. While I could take a route that’s basically retracing my steps back via Asahikawa to Sapporo, there’s a more circuitous route that gives me the cheap satisfaction of having passed through more of Hokkaido.

The kamameshi was topped with silver flatfish. The advice on eating it was to eat half the pot, then add the jug of dashi broth, light a small wickless candle under the pot, and wait until the candle burns out for it to heat up the broth-and-kamameshi mix.

For dinner, went to a place that did robatayaki (charcoal-grilled items) and kamameshi (seasoned rice cooked in a pot with various possible toppings, though this restaurant stuck to seafood). As robatayaki I had venison sausages plus salmon grilled with garlic.

After the Drift Ice Museum, I visited the Abashiri Prison Museum. Think I’ll hold this one over and do the writeup another time, though. In lieu of that, here’s the theme from a series of films about an escapee from the prison: youtu.be/5YEHm84q9vg?...

The drift ice room is kept at -15 degrees Celsius. Visitors are given damp towels before entering, and encouraged to spin them round and see how they quickly freeze stiff. I acknowledge that I probably should do up my coat.

The room in the museum that holds pieces of drift ice. Not clear whether they’re real or not, but fetching actual chunks in season would probably be easier than creating large irregular pieces with convincing bits of dirt on them.

The reason for there being a Drift Ice Museum in Abashiri is that in the coldest part of the year (around January-February) ice from Siberia makes its way south to the coast here.

Aquarium in the Drift Ice Museum with sea angels. They’re about the size of a fingernail.

View down to Abashiri and another to the lakes next to it. Abashiri is along the north coast of Hokkaido, though as it’s in a large curved bay more hills can be seen across the sea behind it.

Lunch at the Mount Tentozan Observatory after the Museum of Northern Peoples and just before the Drift Ice Museum (which shares a building with the Observatory). Had Pizza Bianca — well done with a good base, but I think I like more contrast than this had without tomato sauce.

Fishing implements. The two-pronged harpoon in front is an Aynu seal-fishing harpoon, and apparently the only one of its kind remaining in Japan.

Pacific Northwest boat.

Inuit snow goggles.

Pottery of Hokkaido’s Satsumon and Tobinitai Cultures. The Satsumon pots, from a pre-Aynu culture across much of Hokkaido, are decorated with scratch-line markings. The Tobinitai pots have Okhotsk markings but a shape like the Satsumon pots (Okhotsk pots bulge more with a thinner neck).