well, let me say that for a while i was worried.  i mean, i'm fine hopping on an 8-hr bus to cairo in a country where i don't speak a WORD of the language (well, okay, ONE word), and NOBODY speaks english... but this was far worse.  at least at first.  it's at least partly my fault -- i decided to fly into hokkaido, which is pretty much the most remote area of japan (saving random tiny islands, etc), and once i got here i realized that no english people ever come here.  i was the only non-chinese/japanese person on the flight from taipei to chitose, and the whole time i've been here i've only seen 2 non-orientals, a couple in the train station, and i don't think they were english either.  none of the bus drivers, train conductors, etc speak english -- and even most of the school-aged kids don't.  at least hotel and tourist information employees do (to some degree at least).

so, anyhow, i get held up in customs for a while and when i get out, i spend a while walking around trying to find someone to tell me how to get to the hostel i looked up online while waiting in LAX.  i finally run across the JR information office, where they sort me out.  they tell me to go outside, turn left, and wait for the bus at stop 3.  fortunately, my destination was the last stop on the line so i didn't need to worry about that.  UNfortunately, they forgot to mention that 3 different bus lines stop at bus stop 3... so of course, i get on the first one.  i ask the driver if it's going to my destination, and he says yes, but i forgot to specify the second name of the stop, and apparently just about everywhere in the area has the same first name.  yes, of course, it was the wrong bus.  it took me a while to figure it out, and here i learned another important traveler's tip for japan.  at least in hokkaido, people will more or less studiously ignore you in public.  trying to talk to them (or get help from them) will result in them nervously dismissing you.  however, in *private* they have no problem being helpful.  so, when the last passenger (other than me) got off the bus, the driver came back and we (eventually) figured out what was going on.  he dropped me at a stop and told me to take the next bus to come by, in about 10 minutes.  he was even kind enough to refuse payment for the ride.

which brings me to another problem.  the bus systems (again, at least here in hokkaido) -- as well as most signs, don't have any english.  to make things worse, the announcements are made so quietly that even if you are carefully listening you can BARELY make them out about half of the time.  add that to the fact that you don't really understand what they're saying, you're just listening for keywords, and it's a nightmare.  rest assured, after waiting a while, the next bus arrived and when i got on i confirmed that it was going to my destination (correctly this time).  which brings me to the next little mishap in my adventure.  it turns out that, despite being listed as "chitose-shi", the hostel i had found was NOT in chitose.  in fact, it was a good half hour to an hour (time tends to be slippery when tired on long bus rides) away.  furthermore, it turns out that it was closed (the website didn't mention this, or have an online reservation system so i could book in advance).

while at this point things had been going almost universally badly, my luck turned around.  there was a hotel right next to the hostel, and while it was a luxury hotel (much too expensive for me), they were nice enough to not only tell me that there was a cheaper hotel in town, but call the hotel, book the room, and DRIVE ME to it.  i'm still unsure about the whole tipping thing in japan.  most of my exposure to japanese culture has, of course, come from pop culture, and thus either left out tipping, or it is taboo.  i AM familiar with korean tipping, and tried to spot any similar signs, but there weren't any.  by the time i left Shikotsu, i was fairly sure that i wasn't supposed to tip them.  the room was about 10$ more than the hostel would have been, but it included a VERY NICE breakfast (albeit the hostel included breakfast too, i doubt it would have been as nice) and the hotel itself was great.  in comparing it to an american hotel, i would say it would have been about a 4 or 4.5 star rating.  i hadn't eaten since the flight from taipei and i couldn't finish the breakfast, which included salmon sushi fresh from the lake, what i can only assume was caviar (it was wrapped in fish so i didnt see the stuff inside but i think it was), and of course the usual stuff -- mushrooms, miso soup, tofu, rice, and a few other miscellanies.  another advantage was that i picked the traditional japanese room, which let me start to get used to it (i don't mind the futons; heck ive slept on more than my share of floors, couches, and hotel bathtubs), and, more importantly, public baths.  there was one person in the bath when i entered, and he left a few minutes later, then a second person showed up just as i was getting ready to leave -- which allowed me to observe pretty much the entire bathing ritual.  putting that together with what i've already seen in anime/manga/liveaction, and having done it once without anyone scrutinizing me, i'm pretty comfortable with it.

anyone traveling to at least this part of japan (again, i'm not yet sure how representative hokkaido is) is bound to be shocked by just how insanely polite the workers are.  i mean, yes, i know japanese are polite, and employees even more so, but every time i walked down to the main foyer of the hotel, everyone on duty would run out and greet me profusely.  after breakfast i had a couple hours before the bus left, so i walked down to the lake and around the bird sanctuary (though of course most of the birds were long gone).  it was one of the most beautiful places i've been, and i certainly don't regret the mixup... it was just disorienting.

next, i had to figure out how to get to sapporo, where i DO have a reservation at a hostel (for 2 days too so i can have a day without travel), so i hopped on the (only) bus out of Shikotsu (which was full of old people as apparently it's a very small tourist/fishing town that hasn't had much population growth) and and got off at the Chitose main rail station, found an information place where a woman (these things seem to be exclusively stocked with women) was nice enough to lead me to where i needed to buy the ticket.  unfortunately, i didnt realize that the english sign in the ticket room wouldn't be repeated after i went thru the ticket stall, so i had to go through the agonizing process of finding someone sufficiently alone to ask for help (which consisted of my pidgin japanese, Sapporo desu ka, which literally means more or less "is it Sapporo" while pointing to a track).  fortunately, the JR trains use the same system throughout the country, so there was enough english for me to figure out what i had to do, and i was wise to the fact that shin in Japanese means "new" and thus "Shin Sapporo" is NOT the same as Sapporo.  after exiting the train, i found another of those obscenely useful help desks and asked for directions to an internet cafe (one of the many words/phrases the japanese have appropriated from english... though it is usually pronounced more like in-tah-neto cah-fey).  after spending a few minutes finding where it was (she marked it on the map but didn't mention it was on the second floor of a bank building), i found it, and that is where i am as i write this (i needed to look up directions to the hostel).