“Take Me Out to The Niseko Circuit®.” — An Invitation to the Gourmet and Hot Spring Cycling Trails in Western Hokkaido, Japan. 北海道西部「自転車グルメ温泉旅行周遊路」=ザ・ニセコ・サーキットへのお誘い

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Dear Cycling Enthusiast,                    
                     October 2, 2024. Sapporo, Japan.
     Hello, welcome! Niseko is not all about powder snow, skiing and snowboarding in winter. It is also great for cycling. The average highest temperature in Niseko in summer is 25°C (77°F). The town has been ranked No. 1 the people in the country want to visit as a tourist destination for many consecutive years.
     Do you like sushi or ramen? What about traditional or contemporary Japanese cuisine or sweets? Are you a lover of hot springs and a stroll in a yukata to cool yourself off? A gourmet and thermal spring island is awaiting you with its full inventory of local delicacies and spas to choose from. Its name is Nonchalantly Spacious Hokkaido, or でっかい道 (Dekkaido) in Japanese. It is one of the most blessed paradises for the seekers of culinary excellence, palate pleasures and spine comfort in the world. It has also been featured in a lot of literary works, movies, TV dramas, and manga serials. A remarkable advantage this island has over the other three major islands of the country is its cleanliness: it is almost free of cockroaches! Can you believe it? No boars inhabit this island. Not a single monkey, either. You will therefore be quite safe from these menaces if you make a tour in this prefecture by bicycle. We have a lot of camping sites. Prefectural Route 66 runs through Niseko Town.
     Now, look at the illustrated map above. It is the western peninsular part of Hokkaido. This largest prefecture of Japan is nearly 9% larger than the Benelux countries in area, and is comparable to New Zealand in population (5.2 million). The circular trail depicted pink is the standard trunk routing of The Niseko Circuit®. It is a registered trademark owned by me, Atarashi Toshiharu (新　壽春), LL.M. My brief self-introduction will follow later in explaining how I hit upon its idea. I will omit the ® indication from here on.
     I was wondering if I could invite you to:
     1. Come and enjoy cycling between Sapporo (札幌), Niseko (ニセコ) and Hakodate (函館), as well as Lake Toya and Lake Shikotsu.
     2. Contribute handsomely to medical research through cycling:
         “Ride the Bike, Help Medical Research, and Let Every Patient Get Well.”
        3. Immigrate in Hokkaido and join us in making it a better place to live in and live for.
     The Niseko Circuit is basically 666km (414mi.) long. The actual distance covered would vary from person to person depending on the combination of particular routes each cyclist opts for himself or herself. For comparison, the Eighty-Eight Temple Pilgrimage in Shikoku is roughly 1,400km (870mi.) long, the German Romantic Road 400km (250mi.), and the Taiwan Cycling Route No. 1 around 970km (600mi.). These three renowned examples give us a reassuring stability in life otherwise susceptible to drift in any unforeseeable therefore often undesirable direction that those routes will always be at their respective current geographical locations. I would like to suggest The Niseko Circuit to follow their suit. Its principal route shall eternally be the same between Sapporo, Niseko and Hakodate no matter what.
     Can you spot these three places on the map? Pin up a map of Hokkaido on the wall and play darts in imagination (or in reality). Sapporo is at the northeastern tip, Niseko at the kinked point southeastward inland from the Sea of Japan, and Hakodate at the southernmost end of the land route. The straight distance between Sapporo and Niseko is 62km (38mi.), between Niseko and Hakodate 115km (72mi.), and Hakodate and Sapporo 153km (95mi.), respectively. See other distances in Appendix I.
     Sapporo, a sister city of both Portland, Oregon, and Munich, is where ramen was “invented.” A bowl of ramen costs about ¥900 - ¥1,100 ($7.5). Located close to the Sea of Japan the city has reasonably priced kaiten-zushi (conveyor belt sushi) restaurants here and there.
     The highest temperature in the city seldom exceeds 30°C (86°F), and the average highest temperature in July and August is 26°C (79°F). In Hokkaido you can travel comfortably for seven months and a half a year by bicycle. We have no apparent rainy season that normally persists in other prefectures from late May through the middle of July. This period, called la belle saison in French, is indeed the most beautiful and agreeable time of the year not only in Metropolitan France, but here in Hokkaido as well. College festivals tend to be held during the best season of respective regions. The University of Hokkaido, my alma mater, holds one in early June, Waseda University, Tokyo, and the University of Kyoto in November. It is as if the location of the Equator were redefined and partly shifted to the Tsugaru Straight at longitude 41 north between Honshu (mainland) and Hokkaido, incorporating the former in the Southern Hemisphere anew. The average annual precipitation in Sapporo, Zürich and New York is 1,100mm against 1,600mm in Tokyo. The numerical values cited in this document are basically all in approximate figures for simplification’s sake, except where an exact figure is necessary or seems preferable.
     Niseko used to be primarily a vast agricultural country town little paid attention to till a small number of people, including me, came to appreciate its unfathomable potentials for the future even the locals had not noticed. There could be various viable route settings for cycling in this area. I reflected on how I would be able to help you find and plan your best route there. Then I wondered if it would not be presumptuous to do so given each cyclist has his or her own preferences and that the process of research and preparation itself is an inalienable part of the joy of visiting an unknown place especially in a foreign country. So, I settled on simply suggesting you consult a lot of pieces of information available on the Internet, guidebooks and free brochures yourself rather than referring to only a fraction of them here like an around Mt. Yotei course. Wait for Hakodate a little while.
     The Shikotsu-Toya National Park, with the area of almost 1,000km2, 35% more spacious than Singapore, extends from Mt. Yotei in Niseko to Lake Toya, Noboribetsu Onsen (Spa), Lake Shikotsu, and Jozankei Onsen in Sapporo.
     New Chitose and Okadama airports provide gateways to and from Sapporo by air, while Hakodate Airport is located only 20 minutes away from downtown. In winter, the Goryokaku, the old pentagon-shaped fortress in Hakodate, stands out like a pentagram star when seen from the sky because of the snow, making it a clear landmark for pilots and possibly also for astronauts.
     New Chitose and Hakodate airports are linked with major cities in east Asia, Australia and Hawaii by scheduled flights. New Chitose had a regular air service with Scandinavia, but it has been suspended for some time. We will need to expand their aerial scopes to airports in Europe, the UK, and North America. Dear lovers of cycling in these areas, we share similar northern climatic conditions among us. Differences will add to your amazement of discovery. Therefore, I hope you could fly to New Chitose or Hakodate directly soon, and not via Narita or New Kansai airports any longer.
     Densely scheduled ferry lines connect Hakodate, Otaru, Muroran and Tomakomai with Honshu. You can for instance travel from Kyoto Prefecture directly to Otaru through the Sea of Japan, which is on the west side of Hokkaido. If you first landed at Narita and have seen Tokyo, Nikko, Yokohama, Kamakura, Hakone, Mt. Fuji, Mishima, Nagoya, Takayama, Kanazawa, Kyoto, Nara, Osaka, Kobe, and Himeji, you can entertain yourself viewing the Inénofunaya fishing boat houses directly on the calm water surfaces almost encircled by the round bay at the northern coast of Kyoto Prefecture without skipping Amanohashidate; then you can cruise to Hokkaido from Maizuru, which means “Dancing Cranes,” by ferry. A toast! Otaru west of Sapporo is on the main route of The Niseko Circuit.
     You can view cherry blossoms twice in a single year if you first do so somewhere in the southern parts of Japan, and then make a trip to Hokkaido in the north roughly one month later. This is because the first blossom of them occur in Sapporo on around April 25 on average. Blossom fronts travel from the southwestern regions to Tokyo and kinks to move northward in ever accelerating advances. 
     There are dual national highways leading to Niseko from Sapporo: the shorter one running inland is 90km (56mi.) long and the longer one running partly along or close to coastlines 119km (74mi.). The distance between Niseko and Hakodate on National Highway No. 5 is 171km (107mi.). Infos on Hakodate will appear soon.
     If you are a dedicated hill climb rider you may want to try out some of the following locations:
• Mt. Teine (in Northwestern Sapporo):
    1,023m (1,119yd) above sea level commanding the partial view of the northern quarters of the city, plus a gorgeous scenery of the Sea of Japan. It was a site for the 1972 Winter Olympic Games. When you begin to pant heavily with exertion halfway on a steep slope put up with it. Show spirit. Teine, only seven minutes away from Sapporo Terminal Station by train, is a convenient base for surfers to commute to the nearby beaches from.
• Nakayama Togé Pass (in Southwestern Sapporo):
     835m (913yd) above sea level on National Highway 230 between the southwestern end of Sapporo and Kimobetsu. You can see Mt. Yotei from here. At around 35km from the highway’s starting point in the center of the city at North 1 West 4 (北1西4), the Muine Bridge in a wide arc over a deep ravine appears. I find this section breathtakingly beautiful especially in autumn colors. The pass is 10km+ ahead. If you reversely travel northward from Hakodate, riding across this point is like entering Bavaria from Austria at Berchtesgaden. Grüß Gott! Servus!
• Chisenupuri Pass (on Prefectural Route 66 towards and within Niseko area):
     832m (910yd) above sea level. Head for Iwanai Port after going through the fragrant orchards growing various kinds of plump and savory fruits including cherries, grapes, and apples in Yoichi and Niki, and take the Prefectural Route 66, a.k.a. the Panorama Line from there. The total distance from Sapporo to reach Niseko will be extended to 141km (88mi.). The uphill long and winding road offers uncongested hot springs on the way including Kombu Onsen, or “Kelp Spa.” The highest peak along the heavenly path is 1,300m above sea level, while the highest altitude on the road is at this Chisenupuri Pass (832m=910yd). Buried under a thick layer of shining pure white snow, this plateau section is closed for several months between locking and unlocking (to follow Kurt Vonnegut’s terminology).
     Other possibilities close to downtown Sapporo include:
• Mt. Okura Jump Stadium:
     (307m=336yd above sea level, the height of the starting point for ski jump competitions).
     This is by far one of the best treasures our city is proud of. It faces east, the side of downtown. You can see Odori Park and the TV Tower beyond Mt. Araiyama (185m=202yd). Odori means a boulevard. It divides the city into the northern parts on your left and the southern parts on your right. In return, the stadium is clearly visible from the boulevard. A visit to this facility is highly recommended whether you go there by bicycle or not. A lot of photographs and video clips are available on the Internet focusing on the horrible excitements of “jumping onto the city” at Mt. Okura.
• Asahiyama Memorial Park:
     Asahi means the rising Sun, yama a mountain. From its observatory at 137.5m (150yd) above sea level you can see the city lying in its east. This is the handiest and most accessible hilly place for cyclists and pedestrians alike from flat areas in the city to reach. This park is sometimes compared to Montmartre, Paris, at 130m (142yd) above sea level, because of its ease of access and the view of the city. An infrequent bus service is available from Maruyama Koen Station. When I was living not so far from this park I used to often visit it by bicycle for exercise.
     There should be a lot more trails and lanes suited for hill climb rides waiting for your endeavors between Sapporo and Hakodate.
     Unfortunately, Mt. Hakodate (334m=365yd) is open for cyclists only during authorized cycling races, and usually not for ordinary bicycle lovers. Yet a visit to this place is an absolute must if you are going to this port city for the first time. A ropeway is available. If conditions allow, you should be at its top twice a day during your stay in the city, especially for an illuminated night view. You would daily see the sight of the city from this mountain-top in weather forecast programs on TV.
     While it is not allowed to ride a bike to go up the mountain itself, the hilly Motomachi District on the foot of it and its environs are accessible without any restrictions. Nearly twenty short and steep slopes are at your disposal.
     Hakodate is situated at a vital strategic position linking the Sea of Japan and the Pacific Ocean, and was founded as a base for fishery and trade five centuries ago. It was the final battle ground in the Boshin War (1868 – 1869) that put an end to Japan's feudalism in bloodshed in favor of the newly establishing Meiji Government troops against the last-remaining defiant portions of the Tokugawa Shogunate (1603 – 1868). Hakodate rivals Gibraltar, Istanbul, the Suez Canal, the Strait of Malacca, and the Panama Canal for its geopolitical importance. Entry into Mt. Hakodate by civilians had been strictly forbidden by the military till summer 1945 with its area forcibly left blank on purchasable maps, resulting in preserving its nature to a great extent. The Royal Navy used to frequent Hakodate Port to avoid the summer heat in Shanghai. In 1888 approximately 2,500 crews in a dozen vessels had anchored and stayed up here for two months. You can visit the former Consulate of Britain established in 1859 on a wide tree-lined slope leading to the comma-shaped port, perhaps for instance for a tea break with a scone with blueberries on top.
     The Niseko Circuit is not going to be a race or competition that necessitates you completely shutting out general traffic from penetrating the race tracks for the designated period of an event. Ambulances should always be given a priority.
     You will not be required to cover all its constituent sections suggested in my drawing at one time at a stretch, either. Visiting these “tripartite” places, Sapporo, Niseko and Hakodate, alone cumulatively sometime in your life should constitute the minimum prerequisite to call your quest of Western Hokkaido The Niseko Circuit. It is customizable; you could skip any other byways or branch off to enter any trail from the trunk route of the Circuit. Along with national highways, extensive prefectural, municipal, town, and village roads also form a mutually intertwined network to turn off into less known regions and even to crunch across gravel paths.
     Bicycle tourism can be compared to a pilgrimage. While anyone is free to personally regard it as such, The Niseko Circuit will not be subject to any religious orientations, bindings or restrictions to honor. I would rather suggest it to be simply a secular, circular, cumulative traveling opportunity in Western Hokkaido by bicycle open for any lover of freedom as an individual regardless of each person’s faith. The pilgrims painstakingly toiling to reach Canterbury, Santiago de Compostela, Jerusalem, or Mecca assume there is a definite goal in their respective linear voyages. In contrast, the pilgrimage route in Shikoku forms a circular course with no particular beginning point to start with nor clear end to finish with applicable for everybody concerned. You may commence your own pursuit of “beating” the constituent sections in between as many temples that constitute the Hachijuu Hakkasho at any place at will. Even while you are trekking as a solitary voyager, you will be accompanied by Kukai or Odaishisama (774 - 835).
     The Niseko Circuit is partly inspired by this heritage with the history of more than 1,200 years behind it. My grandmother Nasa, reduced to leading a hard life, had a wish to go to Shikoku for a pilgrimage. But she could not set foot on the island. I will return to her a little more in detail later along with my self-introduction.
     As in the example in Shikoku seen above there is no fixed predetermined starting point with The Niseko Circuit, either, and you will be free to improvise your route anywhere at any moment, too. You may want to hold a dart again. Here and there you will find street cafés, roadside restaurants, convenience stores, and shopping malls on the way, most of which are provided with free “water-jet” toilets incessantly maintained sparkling-clean.
     You will also find lovely walking gems: school kids by twos and threes with school bags called randoseru in various colors on their back, front, or sometimes even both looking like stiff-faced parachutists ready (or forced) to jump into the sky or as if intending to use them as shock absorbers in an emergency, chatting, giggling, fooling around, or suddenly dashing towards their respective homes after school if you happen to be traveling after around 2:30 in the afternoon on a weekday. They may wave their hands at you with radiant smiles on their faces. You may grin them back like a Cheshire cat in appreciation of their attention to you.
     Water itself in many parts of the island is delicious with traces of minerals dissolved in through the strata forming the mountains for decades of time after rainfall or snowfall. The Fukidashi Park, which literally means Gushing-Out Park, at the northeastern foot of Mt. Yotei (1,898m=2,075yd) towering east of Niseko, is an ample example of this. The properties of water tapped there include: pH 6.7, 7°C (45°F) and 25.4mg/L in hardness.
     Water in Hokkaido keeps its people healthy and makes good beer, wine, saké, and whiskey. Tea and coffee made with our water tastes excellent, too. Sapporo, with the population of 1.97 million, has two huge reservoirs within the confines of the city each standing more than 100m in height with the total capacity of supplying water for up to 3.5 million inhabitants. Immigrants are always welcome! You will not suffer from a shortage of water in our city. Did you happen to know you would live three years longer if you had a chance to drink Hokkaido water once? Six years if you drank it twice. Then, can you perhaps guess what kind of luck you would be able to have if you drank it one additional time? You will live till you pass away. That will be for sure.
     Hot springs, which come in all sizes and various minerals contained, have great curative effects lying behind them. Your blood circulation will be improved. Your skin will get softened and smoother, making you fitter from within. Kombu Onsen and other hot springs in greater Niseko area as well as Noboribetsu Onsen, which lies east of Muroran, are famous for containing a high concentration of metasilicic acid dissolved in hot water that promotes metabolism. Some of the hot spring facilities are like a huge hangar or sports gym with a high ceiling. Once in a spacious bathtub unavailable at home you will feel reposed and relaxed and alpha waves will appear more dominantly in your brain than in a small one. Also, the parasympathetic nervous system will be stimulated. There is an expression people often instinctively utter the moment they entered a hot spring and feel liberated and exalted: gokuraku gokuraku (paradise, paradise).
     An easy and inexpensive access to hot springs should be part of the reasons for the frequently longest life expectancy of the Japanese people in the world. They function miraculously well to satisfy the visitors with the spine comfort great to experience, and hard to part with once you got to know it. That is an initiation into a terrestrial heaven of no return. A visit to one is more valuable than simply washing your body. You will set you free of mental as well as physical tensions. Staying at a quiet rustic inn at a remote place from a highway with a hot spring, you may feel like a retreated professor of philosophy. Urban spas, or hot springs dug within a city, are also popular among the city dwellers. I am a regular visitor to one of them by bicycle. The not-so-long return ride home blown in the wind is also comfortable.
     When you had a chance to get into a hot spring, close your eyes and calmly tell yourself to:
• Draw a pair of eyeballs on the eyelids, in a color different from that of your own eyes if you like.
• Not efface them.
• Not think.
• Not look back.
• Not remember.
• Let concerns roll off your back.
• Live in the present.
• Remind yourself you are protected by the “here and now.”
• Not let your repentances, anxieties, or annoyances make a mess of the present moment.
• Remind yourself you can throw out everything and switch to lead a simpler life.
• Forget about everything, including the very fact you ever exist in the Universe.
• Exhale slowly and thoroughly, then inhale even more slowly to the fullest.
• Evil Out, Fortune In.
• Repeat deep breathing.
• Count your breaths like a four-year-old kid, out loud and at random if you would like to, even in the presence of other visitors with startled eye(lid)s and varied awkward expressions on their steaming faces close to you.
You’ll find yourself an inch closer to Heaven at every breath you take: gokuraku gokuraku.
     Foot baths or hand baths are often provided free of charge in open-air public spaces at various spas for you to be able to casually soothe muscle and tendon fatigue without bothering to take off your clothes. If you dared to, and in public at that like in a streaking craze during the 1970s, you would be given a free ride to the local police station, a sudden and abrupt form of an adventure travel you might always have subconsciously wanted to experience once in your life. How thrilling it would be. Remember to take the fifth. Remember also to inspect with utmost aesthetic care the interior of the patrol car you are ushered into to see if Hokusai woodblock printings are used for decoration inside of it. In your imagination there will appear successive surges of stubbornly gigantic waves to agitate your peace of mind and an artistic desire to hold a brush in front of a canvas. A splash!
     Now let us go back to town.
     Sapporo Agricultural College, now the University of Hokkaido, was established in 1876, the year Bal du moulin de la Galette was drawn by Renoir and milk chocolate was invented in Switzerland, as the oldest national university in Japan. It will celebrate its 150th Anniversary of the Foundation in 2026. You do not need any permission to enter its 177ha campus shaded by huge elm trees, part of which being estimated to be more than two hundred years of age. You can simply walk or ride through its main gate at North 9 West 4 (北9西4), only 550m away from Sapporo Terminal Station. There are also other gates. If you are fortunate enough you may be able to come across a squirrel. The university campus is the de facto Central Park of Sapporo. You would be convinced of this notion if you climbed Mt. Moiwa and spotted it in the northern center of the city for a spacious green patch of land among the built-up areas around it.
     It is in fact a kind of non-religious “pilgrimage destination,” almost imperative for a first visitor to Sapporo. Why is this? It is because close to the Central Library stands a bronze of Dr. William S. Clark who played a key role in the education and management of Sapporo Agricultural College during its earliest days. He came from Massachusetts after obtaining a doctorate in Göttingen, Germany, and taught chemistry, botany and zoology as professor. He has been deeply revered by the populace because his contribution to higher education in this country has been widely taught to pupils at school.
     Mandarin ducks are witnessed from time to time, too. They visit a winding short river that flows through the campus or float (who’s flirting?) on the Oono Pond full of lotuses. A visit to the Botanical Gardens is strongly recommended, too. I frequently encounter squirrels there. Sapporo was selected to initiate the beer brewery industry and promote dairy farming by the Meiji Government from the 1870s onward.
     Places of interest abound in between these three major places, Sapporo, Niseko and Hakodate.
     Otaru, the port city neighboring Sapporo on its northwest, boasts a heavy concentration of sushi restaurants downtown. You can treat yourself to a variety of sushi at a much lower cost than at Ginza, Tokyo, or Gion, Kyoto. Some of the rarest and most mouth-watering sushi ingredients are available solely in Hokkaido.
     Yoichi, lying between Sapporo and Niseko, is where whiskey production was introduced from Scotland by Mr. Taketsuru Masataka, the father of Japanese whiskey. He went there alone, but when he returned he was accompanied by someone else: Rita, his wife. Their life was made into a serialized popular drama on TV. Some brands of whiskey are purchasable exclusively at Nikka Yoichi Factory, where with a reservation you will be treated to a free tasting of whiskey at its restaurant. A toast! New wineries have been increasing especially in Shiribeshi region, which embraces Niseko, Sorachi region east of Sapporo, and in the vicinity of Hakodate. The climate of the island resembles that of the notable vineyards in France and Germany.
     Located north of Hakodate, Mt. Komagatake (1,131m) and Onuma Koen (Park) south of it are among my most favorite places in the whole country. I find it hard to contain my desire to move to this area from Sapporo every time I visit it. That is part of the reason I adopted Kayabé, the historical name of the region including the northern part of this mountain, for my pen name.
     I want to see a medical college newly established close to this area. The number of medical doctors per 1,000 people in Japan remains 2.4 in simple arithmetic average as compared with 3.5 among the OECD countries. Hokkaido has only three medical schools. We would need at least two more; perhaps one in or near Hakodate, another somewhere beyond the Hidaka Mountains like Abashiri on the Sea of Okhotsk.
     Onuma, which means Big Marshlands, is composed of two small lakes dotted with 126 small islands, each of which looks like a floating bonsai. They do not actually drift in any direction, but if they did they would swiftly slide on the surface of the water to the tune of The Skaters’ Waltz.
     Its southern shore is a view point where you can take a photograph of the sharp-cone-topped Komagatake, which literally means Mt. Stallion. I once rode around the eastern lake by a rented bicycle videotaping the scenery. The ride was 13km (8mi.) long, and satisfactory for me. East of Onuma, past a spa, close to the Northern Pacific Coast lies a non-public Shikabe Airport owned by an automobile company. In the event of a new medical school opened, its immediate proximity to this airport, if only the owner enterprise consents to allow using it in an emergency, which it seems likely to, would prove to save a lot of patients’ lives, especially for an urgent transplantation of vital organs.
     Muroran is home to high-tech heavy industries, and some of their crucial products are produced only in the city in the whole world. It is also one of the limited number of places throughout the country Japanese swords have been forged from iron sand following the traditional method of making in its solemn atmosphere pervading the workshop. This industrial city, constructed on a natural port screened from the ocean by an arm protruding westward, can be reached in an hour and ten minutes from New Chitose Airport, 88km (55mi.) away, by express way. The Swan Bridge, the longest in east Japan, spans across the port from south to north. The city’s future will depend upon how strategically it avails itself of its geographical advantages of being located at the mouth of Uchiura Bay (a.k.a. Volcano Bay), a round shallow sea area around 50km (31mi.) in diameter with the deepest point of a mere 96m (105yd). It could thrive as the major base for yachting and other marine sports activities within a radius of, say, 500 nautical miles. Is it an exaggeration? No, not in the least. To prove this look at the atlas for Muroran; then look for some other more suitable sea areas for those activities within this range. There is none at all. Its population could more than triple instead of keeping shrinking gradually as it has been like in many other communities in the country. With a milder climate in winter than in other parts of the island the snowfall in Muroran is only 40% of that of Sapporo in volume.
     Both Lake Toya and Lake Shikotsu lie within a single day’s excursion ranges from Sapporo by automobiles or motorcycles. Toya is a round-shaped caldera lake about the same length of a full marathon race in circumference. Also, with a major island and three other small ones gathered in the center of the lake it looks like a gigantic water doughnut. Hence it can be nicknamed as Water Doughnut Marathon Lake in full and Lake Doughnut for short. Several teachers at my senior high school in Sapporo used to go there for intensive running training, sometimes even achieving the prescribed 42.195km ordeal. Its onsen is famous for fireworks given every night all through the summer days. Owls, chipmunks, and flying squirrels in the surrounding primeval forests marvel at their thunderous splendor reflected on lake water. Lake Shikotsu, closer to Sapporo than Toya and twice as deep, looks like a broad bean, hence Lake Broad Bean. When I took a tourist group from the U.S. to this lake one of them said it looked like Lake Tahoe. At Marukoma Onsen, my absolute favorite, on the secluded northwestern shore of it, you may be tempted to immerse yourself in a hermit-like meditation in tranquility under the starry sky oblivious of the time passing by elsewhere. The Ramen Town will be waiting for you north of Lake Doughnut and Lake Broad Bean.
     The Niseko Circuit is mainly on land, but it should be extended onto the Pacific Ocean, too, linking the two ports Hakodate and Muroran to form an integral whole as a circuit.
     This section should be connected by ferry, but such a service is yet to be inaugurated as of August 20, 2024. In other words, it is a deplorable “missing piece.” It is a shame this linkage remains an object of a deep sigh among the great potential number of people in and out of the country feeling like to be eligible per se to simply get on a ferry at Hakodate (or Muroran) on any desired day without the burden and anxiety of making a reservation well in advance to move onto Muroran (or Hakodate) by sea route.
     How nice it would be to be able to navigate through Tsugaru Straight eastward from Hakodate (or the reverse), advance northward across the Northern Pacific, pass by the southeastern entrance/exit of Uchiura Bay and approach Muroran Port from the west. An estimated some four-hour voyage between the two ports would be a great experience, especially for those equipped with a bicycle to continue the travel with after entry into port. Once you are on board, your vessel could be flanked by a spontaneous fleet of high-spirited dolphins swimming and jumping along on either side of it as if to greet you while your hair gets mercilessly disheveled in the sea breezes. Bicycle manufacturers or designers may open up stalls to exhibit and sell their latest limited-version models on board. Your shipping company may offer optional classes for the passengers to learn a bit of bicycle maintenance, basic daily Japanese or calligraphy, or even making sushi, ramen, or wagashi. Take a leisurely hot bath viewing the ocean and the sky through the windows. You may suggest to other bathers in the instant community they joined you in swimming and jumping in the tub, or from tub to tub, synchronizing with the dolphins. Splashes!
     Therefore, if I am not too forward, could I perhaps ask you to join in the ardent lovers of cycling in the world to urge the shipping companies to try launching a Hakodate-Muroran ferry line even for a limited period of time, please? Its availability would spark the otherwise dormant traveling appetite of novice cyclists who have not even thought of moving between the two cities across the Northern Pacific, too.
     We would manage to develop The Niseko Circuit scheme in the following three phases:

Phase 1: Start with land-only cycling route(s) for the time being, from which you can divert to any sub-routes inland on your own. You may even do so today. No additional red tapes required.
Phase 2: A trial inauguration of a ferry route between Hakodate and Muroran starting from its maiden voyage, realizing a circular circuit to demonstrate its great marketability to the public.
Phase 3: Realization of more than one scheduled ferry services available every day through non-frost days of the year.

     From milk to butter, cheeses, hams, sausages, pork, beef, lamb, venison, potatoes, onions, (Mr.) beans, corns, asparaguses, various other kinds of vegetables, rice, wheat, melons, apples, strawberries, plums, grapes, to name only a few, Dekkaido often ranks No. 1 or high in the respective amounts of crops and produce over other prefectures. Our food self-sufficiency rate is 216% on calorie basis. We produce even mangoes in hothouses in Hokkaido. Do you go in for a melon ice cream?
     Surrounded by the Pacific Ocean, the Sea of Japan and the Okhotsk Sea, it provides not only the domestic consumers but those in other countries as well with a plenty of catches. Salted salmon made welcome gifts for the successive shoguns desperately yearning for them in Yedo, present Tokyo. For centuries dried sea foods from Hokkaido, especially kombu for seasoning, have been consumed in other regions of the archipelago plentifully. There are nineteen kinds of kombu in the world, of which as many as eleven come from Hokkaido. Even though Okinawa is lying farthest from the northern kombu-producing sea areas its per capita consumption of kombu is the largest among all the prefectures. Also, the Chinese cuisine has relied upon imported dried sea food materials from us. Go to the time-honored Dihua Street, Taipei, and you will be convinced of the wealth of The Gifts from the Sea supplied daily from this northern island. Travelers will notice the name of Hokkaido indicated at many of the dried food shops not only in the red-brick arcade sector there but throughout the island as well.
     Scallops, which in the case of Santiago de Compostela represent the pilgrimage, are farmed massively in Uchiura Bay The Niseko Circuit borders on and off the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk till they grow thick and voluminous enough. They are arguably of the world’s top quality and exported in a large quantity.
     Let me introduce to you a possible “model” route from Lake Shikotsu (Lake Broad Bean) to central Sapporo. Magnify the atlas for a better view of the section.
     The distance to downtown is roughly 44km (27mi.) if you start from Marukoma Onsen. Ride due north along Prefectural Highway 730 Marukoma Line and National Highway 453 through the forests till you pass by Makomanai Country Club. Note this is not the route that goes through Nakayama Togé Pass, which is along National Highway 230 in the southwestern part of Sapporo. Go west of Makomanai Park, a major site in the Olympic Games, then at South 30 West 11 (南30西11) make a leftward (westward) turn to enter the Fukuzumi-Soen Street along the foot of Mt. Moiwa, head for Asahigaoka, run along the gradually elevating route seeing Mt. Maruyama (225m=246yd), a “Round Mountain,” ahead of you. That terraced area commands a city view on your right (east). Asahiyama Park is nearby.
     Ride on ahead and Mt. Maruyama will come much closer. Go down the rightward-curving slope eastward to enter the South 9th Street (南9), go ahead, till you turn leftward (northward) at South 9 West 11 (南9西11). You will go across Odori Park. On your left is the Courthouse. Go around it leftward and enter the Odori North Street. Extending from Odori West 13 (大通西13) through West 1 (西1) the park serves as the major site of the Snow Festival in February, as well as a dancing festival in June. You could call this park your final destination in Sapporo. Turn around and you will find the Mt. Okura Jump Stadium on the mountain side in the west.

My self-introduction.
     Now for a little bit of my self-introduction in connection with my motives that have driven me to suggest The Niseko Circuit to my dear cyclists in the world.
     I am Atarashi Toshiharu, LL.M., a graduate of the Graduate School of Law, the University of Hokkaido. I am an author, editor, tourism producer and English and French instructor living in my hometown Sapporo. Mine is a rare name. It is written 新　壽春 in kanji, where 新=new, 壽=good fortune or longevity, and 春=spring. If you read beginner’s Japanese, it is あたらし　としはる. 壽 is a character you would often find at a Chinese restaurant. For writing I prefer to use Kayatán, the shortened form of my pseudonym Kayabé Tanchin (茅部鍛沈　かやべ　たんちん). Kayabé is the former name of the region facing Uchiura Bay north of Mt. Komagatake and Onuma Koen as I have already partly mentioned. 鍛 (tan) as in 鍛錬する (tanren-suru) means to train yourself and 沈 (chin) as in 沈着冷静 (chinchaku reisei) to be calm and composed; it is not 沈 as in 沈没する (chimbotsu-suru: to sink or go down). I admonish myself to live up to these ideals of mine, which I often end up deviating from.
     In January 1984, which is exactly forty years ago, I founded Sapporo News Report (SNR) as its editor-in-chief. It was a quarterly aimed at improving communication between the world and Hokkaido in English. The news of its publication was covered nationwide by three major national daily newspapers and a paper headquartered in Sapporo with the staff’s portraits on them, with the aggregate circulation exceeding fifteen million copies. Later I met an English tourist guide from Tokyo who told me she had read about me in one of those newspapers. The largest number of copies sold was recorded at the Shinjuku Main Store of Kinokuniya Book Store, Tokyo. We had also garnered subscribers, however small in number. Those days even the name of Niseko had still remained obscure abroad. We have therefore made a significant contribution to attract the attention of the world to this island through our pages in English. The publication of SNR was regrettably suspended under an expatriate who succeeded to me as editor. Together we made history.
     Among the handful of professors I admire and feel academically indebted to is Prof. Higashide Isao (東出　功教授), a historian at the Department of Letters of my university. Under his excellent guidance I learned to be able to read German frequently consulting dictionaries. He was born in Minami Kayabé, now integrated into Hakodate, so I decided to borrow its name for my pseudonym, not including Minami, which means south. If you would like to know more about my relationship with him, go to Appendix II at the end of this document.
     My novel in Japanese, 『石狩湾硯海岸へ接近中』 (いしかりわん　すずりかいがんへ　せっきんちゅう。Ishikariwan Suzuri Kaigan-e Sekkinchuu, or Approaching The Inkstone Coast, The Bay of Ishikari), a love story involving yachting, offered temporarily free of charge chapter by chapter on the Internet, is here: https://note.com/kayatan555/n/n8b4e40557a9c. I would be honored if you had a glimpse of it. I intend to have it published as an ordinary paper-bound book with a major publishing company.
     While I was still a law student I successfully passed the interpreter-guide national examination in English. This is the examination OHMAE Kenichi passed while student at Waseda University. It was a three-stage qualification examination. The first stage was a written examination, the second an oral interview, both of which intended to examine your competence of English itself. The final third stage was all given in Japanese to measure your understanding of the Japanese geography, history, culture and general common sense about the Japanese society. When I was fifteen years old, learning it the superlative qualification examination to prove your competence in English in the country, I determined to sit this national examination after entering college. That is why I had deliberately chosen Japanese history, and not world history or geography, for taking the entrance examination for the University of Hokkaido to be better prepared for this interpreter-guide examination way in advance. In the fiscal year I passed it in English as many as about 4,100 examinees sat the preliminary examination in the whole country. I was among the final 95 examinees who succeeded in passing the third stage, eliminating the other four thousand. When I passed it in French, my third foreign language after English and German, eleven years later, I was among the 44 victorious challengers. My name was thus on the Government Official Gazette twice.
     As coordinator and interpreter of English and French, I had the honor to accompany Mr. Pierre Trudeau and his three sons he had taken with him to go for a one-night excursion to a spa after the ex-prime minister had fulfilled his role at an international conference being held in Sapporo. One of his sons, Mr. Justin Trudeau, is now Prime Minister of Canada.
     When Robert A. Heinlein came to Japan on board MS Lindblad Explorer, an icebreaker painted orange, I had a miraculous luck to serve him and his wife as English guide in eastern Hokkaido. Since boyhood I had been a big fan of his after reading one of his masterpieces The Door into Summer.
     I gave up sitting the bar examination after one unsuccessful trial when I was an undergraduate because the annual quota to be admitted was only around 500 (this is not a typographical error; it reads five hundred) against over 29,000 examinees in the country. The approximate population of Japan then was 123,456,789. The number of lawyers for one million people in Japan had remained the smallest among major countries. I am still positive I could well have succeeded in passing the bar examination, thus making myself an attorney at law, had the competition rate been set at around the same level as in France, Germany or other major industrialized nations.
     Neither of my attempts to learn Russian nor Korean has born any visible fruit. After studying the former by a few grammar books I signed up for an intermediate correspondence course. On a tight weekly schedule I was assigned to translate reading materials in Russian into Japanese, and short sentences in Japanese into Russian. I somehow managed to submit all the assignments required by snail postal mail, but the conjugations and declensions were too complicated and too voluminous to learn by heart for me. I feel as if I had been vainly stumping upon a crust of softening permafrost in an attempt to resolidify it. As a result, I estimate I now remember only a few hundred Russian words at best that refuse to be inflected in my brain remaining like a bunch of photographs from the long-forgotten holiday trips.
     I started to learn Korean from a native Korean instructor in my freshman year in college when few people were learning it. At the largest bookstore in Sapporo I could find only three titles to learn it. Then I organized a group of learners to learn it once a week more than a dozen years later still being treated like a heretic, but I never got accustomed to this language, either.
     Consequently, I can now barely order beer in these languages. I forget tourist’s Cantonese phrases shortly after returning home from a trip abroad. I can also understand a little German and Italian.
     When I needed to read a few dozen pages written in Spanish and not available in any other languages for my research, I hurriedly read three grammar books, consulted dictionaries and grasped their minimum content. But I do not remember anything about this Iberian and Latin American language, except, for example, the difference between ser and estar, and a few other grammatical points like that.
     I remain a perpetual beginner of Latin. My involvement in criminal trials as court interpreter spans a long time (with shuddering cold and hot sweat).
     Then, how did I conceive the idea of The Niseko Circuit at all? Let me recount my major motives for it concisely since my childhood.

My major motives to suggest The Niseko Circuit.
     Keywords: bicycle; Grandmother Nasa “Rotstein”; Shikoku Pilgrimage; malpractice; Niseko; Mt. Yotei; France; the Taiwan Cycling Route No. 1.
• I learned to ride a bicycle at the age of seven. I succeeded in my first trial at it, without falling down on either side of the bicycle. I felt an unlimited freedom like the blue sky over my head.
• Since my childhood I had felt a deep sense of chagrin for my grandmother. A little more in depth about this shortly in Supplement (1).
• At my university a lot of dormitory songs have been written as an established tradition. The most famous one is definitely the Miyakozo Yayoi, which was even partly instrumental in my determining to get into this university. Among other masterpieces, I especially like the one created in 1920 named Youraku Migaku which could be translated as Polishing Ornaments. In the verse that praises the multifaceted excitements of exploring the nature in Hokkaido still scarcely populated there is a stanza like this in my translation into English (which does not rhyme with the melody):
        A youth keeping a determination to himself
        Smiling with his lips fastened
        Looks up at Mt. Yotei
        Towering high
        With snow on it
        Clean and pellucid
• Ever since I learned of this dormitory song during my undergraduate days I had always wanted to visit Niseko and see Mt. Yotei as sung in it.
• Shortly before graduation from college I made a trip to Hakodate. On my return journey my train passed between Mt. Niseko Annupuri and Mt. Yotei; my dream of seeing the Niseko area finally came true. I was charmed by the serene beauty of those snow-capped mountains.
• In the same year I moved to a place in an older quarter of Sapporo, from where I began to frequently shuttle between Maruyama Park and Asahiyama Park by bicycle for exercise. This life style led me to come up with the idea of a bicycle race in Hokkaido, but still in an ambiguous way.
• The following year while I was still living in the same place as above, I often remembered and reflected on the sceneries of Hakodate, Uchiura Bay and Niseko I had a chance to see during my graduation trip above, when one day I hit upon the concrete name of Niseko Circuit as a bicycle competition in analogy to the famous bicycle race in France. For many years after this moment I had not started its name with the definite article The.
• After beginning to guide tourists from abroad in two, sometimes three foreign languages if I may include a smattering of German, I got to know the beauty of each and every place in Hokkaido, accumulating experiences of and research results on tourism.
• Several years after my graduation from college a bicycle race started in the prefecture only for professional cyclists in its scope, making my idea under the name referring to Niseko difficult to realize. The race has been shifting its course every year.
• While I was occasionally wondering for many years after first conceiving the idea of Niseko Circuit in what concrete way to overcome the defect of being coerced to close the roads for a race 100% during the race period, I had a welcome luck of watching a TV program featuring the great popular success of the Round-the-Island cycling in Taiwan.
• Unfortunately, in 2023 a student cyclist was killed in a head-on collision with an automobile during the professionals’ cycling race mentioned above because the race track was not closed for public traffic.
• It was a pivotal moment in the history of cycling events in Hokkaido. So, after deliberation I decided to transform The Niseko Circuit from a bicycle race to a bicycle traveling scheme by individuals to avoid accidents. This modified form would assure the passage of ambulances without any hindrance, too.
• The ever-heating passion and dedication of the Taiwanese people for the Round-the-Island cycling has kept encouraging me to start The Niseko Circuit in their favorite island Hokkaido as its native inhabitant guide. See Supplement (2) for more about Taiwan.
• The appreciation of bicycle use has prevailed in the whole world in and between communities often as strategic national projects to relieve traffic congestion, conserve energy, promote people’s fitness and wellness, decrease carbon dioxide emission and fight climate crisis.

Supplement (1): More about my grandmother.
     Her name was AKAISHI Nasa (赤石ナサ) and its Germanized form is Nasa Rotstein, where aka=red and ishi=stone, hence Rot-Stein in German. I was unable to see her in her lifetime. Then, in what way does she have anything to do with The Niseko Circuit? A malpractice on her and her unrealized wish for a pilgrimage trip are the clues to it.
     She was obliged to leave school at the age of eight, not eighteen, because of the extreme poverty of her parents. They could not even afford to buy an umbrella to let her hold to go to elementary school on a rainy day. But she persevered by hard manual labor to send all but one of her children to college, including a medical school which was later renamed Sapporo Medical University, Sapporo Normal School, and the University of Hokkaido. The average life expectancy of Japanese women was much shorter those days than it is today. While she was still far from being “old” by today’s standards she was diagnosed to have a serious illness. The excruciatingly unpardonable fact involving it is that her physician ventured to apply an unconventional treatment that had just been newly introduced on her body as if on an experimental basis. It was probably for a vicious intention of writing a paper making use of her treatment results to serve his egoistic desire for fame and merits. This reckless attempt further exacerbated her condition, depriving her of her life much earlier than had he relied upon a standard treatment then. He is responsible for her precipitated passing to the grief of everybody in her family. This constitutes my primary cause to request the cyclists planning to travel in Western Hokkaido to make a contribution to medical research because every single cent counts, as well as part of my original intention to be a lawyer, which career I gave up.
     She was a devout believer and towards the end of her life she had aspired to make a pilgrimage in Shikoku. However, she could not visit Kobo Daishi’s island: she ended up not realizing this earnest yet humble wish of hers. It was a time air travels were not common yet and it took a whole day to travel from Sapporo to Tokyo by train, still longer to arrive at Shikoku. Exactly two months after her tragic passing her third daughter in mourning first gave birth to a baby. It was none other than myself. A life hindered by unjustly forced lifetime ignorance by poverty and smeared in open humiliation, dire disgrace, subdued tears and hot and cold sweat was succeeded to by a new generation after a gap of two months’ dark clouds hanging low over the bereaved family. I confide I am Grandmother Nasa’s sixth grandchild. I give a strictly personal name for myself only to the bicycle circuit I am appealing in this document:
        The Niseko Circuit in Commemoration of Akaishi Nasa, or
        The Niseko Circuit in Commemoration of Nasa Rotstein.
     She had hoped to walk at least one section between two fudasho, where amulets are distributed for pilgrims. As her unseen grandson I want to realize the wish of hers in a different place, in a different way, in a different form: in the form of bicycle travels in Western Hokkaido where she had immigrated in from Honshu, toiled, worked, and passed away in the desperate hope that every one of her children would be able to lead a happier life than hers. In order to secure the name of The Niseko Circuit steadfastly in her honor I dared to apply for its registration as a legally protected trademark with Japan Patent Office and succeeded in a single trial without consulting a patent lawyer, my first experience in life. I am grateful for the intellectual property officer in charge of my application for accepting it.

Supplement (2): More about Taiwan.
     I have kept an inseparable relationship with Taiwan. I used to often open a damaged atlas of the world at home since before entering elementary school. I remember a continent printed on the left side of a page and an island on its right side. China, Korea and Vietnam were on the larger mass of land and the big island detached from it was Taiwan. On the upper right corner of the page was Tokyo. My mother told me her siblings were living there and that they were all kind, warm-hearted and successful in life. The atlas had long ago been lost, but my interest in maps and atlases has lasted to this day.
     I have two benefactor uncles who voluntarily and actively came in an immediate and unconditional rescue of my family when we were facing a serious difficulty in life. One of them was an inventor who acquired a series of patents for his inventions, and established a company of his own at the age of twenty-three. His products were welcomed in the market and the company grew rapidly fast establishing factories in and near Tokyo, till it expanded the factories abroad, including Brazil and Taiwan. His wife, that is my aunt, has had an exceptionally good opinion of the Taiwanese people through years’ of experiences with them. So, since my earliest childhood I had a special sense of affinity for this subtropical island. Even though I was born in Sapporo I was living in another city as a school boy where the lowest temperature my family members were forced to endure had almost reached -30°C (-22°F). It was the Siberia of Japan. As apples imported from Japan make welcome presents in Taipei, so did pineapples sound like fruits of an unattainable luxury and a dream life in the south to me. Even today the frequent sights of them at supermarkets fill me with joy on the spot.
     Then many years later as a grown-up I learned of a movie from Taiwan Island Etude (2006) as I have already referred to. It is about a round-the-island trip of a youth by bicycle, which introduced me to a new tradition fast taking root widely among its people. It is not a race nor a competition, either. I wholeheartedly hope many bicycle lovers in any place of the world come to see Western Hokkaido, but especially the people from Taiwan in gratitude for opening my eyes for the idea of bicycle travels eloquently through their own successes, as well as the considerate hospitality they have always shown to me during my repeated visits down there. I mean to go to Taiwan at least twenty more times. I would like to stay there between locking and unlocking instead of hibernating in Hokkaido.

* * *

     All the elements in my hitherto life described above have mingled to crystallize an idea of having the world get to know my beloved Western Hokkaido better through cycling.
     For well over a millenium what is now Hokkaido used to remain a terra incognita for Europeans. In the history of cartography the Japanese Archipelago itself, of which Hokkaido is a part, had often been drawn as inaccurate and overly deformed landmasses. By the middle of 2024 the COVID-19 seems to be subsiding if not of course completely. Now is the time for you to get better acquainted with a real view of Western Hokkaido, on two wheels, under the sun, or along moon-lit paths, with starry eyes. Reach for the helmet, and set your cycling cleats onto the pedals. Did you hear them click? Look up high at the blue sky extending as high as forever. You are a part of the Universe as we all are. What a great fortune it is to be alive at this split second and be able to start this unstained day afresh.
     Look ahead. Breathe deeply through the nostrils as if to take in half the atmosphere in the Northern Hemisphere. See if the inhaled breath lasts till you reach Niseko. Sushi restaurants are surely waiting for you. Children’s mischievous smiles, too. Greet them with the eyeballs drawn on your eyelids if you have not wiped them off yet. Imagine your first glass of chilled craft beer at tonight’s destination of yours, and a dip in a hot spring, gokuraku gokuraku. Explore the time-space continuum Western Hokkaido has to offer. Here go we! Let's meet in the breeze.

     Eximus peregrinatum. Incipiamus!

     Atarashi Toshiharu (Kayatán).

Appendix I: Distances between major communities on The Niseko Circuit:
Sapporo – Otaru                  39km (24mi.)
Otaru – Yoichi                        21km (13mi.)
Yoichi – Kyowa                      33km (21mi.)
Kyowa – Iwanai                       5km (3mi.)
Iwanai – Niseko (via the Panorama Line)
                                               43km (27mi.)
Niseko – Oshamanbe         64km (40mi.)
Oshamanbe – Yakumo         32km (20mi.)
Yakumo – Mori                      34km (21mi.)
Mori –Onuma Koen              20km (13mi.)
Onuma Koen – Hakodate   29km (19mi.)

• Straight distances:
Sapporo – Niseko                 61.4km (39mi.)
Niseko – Hakodate              115.1km (72mi.)
Hakodate- Sapporo            152.5km (95mi.)
Hakodate – Muroran               64km (40mi.)

Appendix II: More about Prof. Higashide.
     His birthplace Minami Kayabé is a major kombu-producing area where thick, wide and long gagomé kombu with excellent pharmaceutical properties are harvested off the coast in a large quantity.
     I am grateful for him not only because he was the professor in charge of my class at the Liberal Arts Department before proceeding to the Faculty of Law, but also because he encouraged us the students in the first grade to learn German in an efficient way by organizing a seminar to read, or rather decipher in a stark reality, academic papers published in German only three months and a half after most of us had begun to learn it. This experiment of his proved successful. We made a rapid progress in the reading ability of the language.
     In the second year, he invited us the five members in his German-reading seminar to his home. His wife and three daughters greeted us with a smile and dinner. I am thankful for their warm kindness. After dinner he asked us a question concerning a famous locution in Latin, for which I gave a wrong answer. I still feel ashamed of my ignorance at this moment.
     I decided to adopt part of his birthplace’s name for my pseudonym partly in his honor. (Even without his involvement I like the southerly located areas around there for their mild climate and beautiful sceneries. For a Sappororite like me with the experience of being forced to live in a different Siberia-like cold town for nearly a decade to dream of visiting and briefly staying in the southern parts of Oshima Peninsula, which includes Hakodate, is like for example for a Parisian or Berliner to plan a summer vacation somewhere in the Italian Peninsula like Tuscany).
     I was counting on asking him for permission to do so not so long after his mandatory retirement from the university. I had feared my calling him while he was still professor obsessed with research, education and daily chores would inevitably deprive him of his precious time. Would I deserve that? I wanted to thank him for his help and encouragements, too.
     I was especially curious about his life in Britain when he was continuing his research at the University of London. I had lots of questions in store. Yet I waited patiently. After graduation I met him once on the platform at Sumikawa Station by chance. He recognized me and we exchanged nodding greetings when my subway pulled in. I could not say a single word. It was the last time I saw him. One morning some months later I was stunned to find his name in the obituary column in the paper as I spread it. He was aged only sixty-six. He could well have lived much longer.
     Higashide-sensei, ich wollte Sie wiedersehen, um Ihnen für Ihre Hilfe und Ermutigung während meiner Studienzeit zu danken. Auch hatte ich viele Fragen an Sie, zum Beispiel:
        Did you go to any of those innumerable pubs?
        Did you visit the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew?
        Did you have a suit tailored at Savile Row?
        Did you witness Her Majesty the Queen?
        Did you by any chance travel through the canals by a narrow boat?
        Did you also visit Germany, Switzerland or Austria?
     Now that he has been gone for many years my questions are all blocked by the fog on the Thames and will have to remain unanswered forever.
     Mein sehr geehrter Professor, ich möchte Ihnen von ganzem Herzen danken. Jetzt verstehe ich Lateinisch ein bisschen besser. Wir sehen uns! Auf Wiedersehen!

The end of the document. Thank you.

Copyright © 2024 Atarashi Toshiharu (Kayatán) 新　壽春 (茅部鍛沈). All Rights Reserved.