On our first day venturing beyond Sapporo we took the train to Shiraoi, which looked much like a lot of American towns - a large road edged with plastic houses and rusty corrugated sheds. After about half an hour we got to the Ainu village. Unfortunately nothing was in English so we pretty much had to guess what was what. The Ainu people are the natives of Hokkaido and the island above, which Japan traded to Russia. The Japanese have only been in Hokkaido for the past 150 years. Before then the Ainu people, who like most indigenous peoples have been treated very badly, lived a very simple life in thatched huts with campfires. They smoked fish, made canoes from trees and hunted and grew vegetables. Now they don't seem to exist.
They had a pantheon of gods, all responsible for a diffeent aspect of nature. To worship they would catch a bear cub, raise it in a wooden cage, and slaughter it slowly, believing its cries of pain to be joy at returning to heaven.
The fake village had real bears. In cages.
Despite this we braved the bear park in the mountains the net day. Andrew had read that it was much better than the zoos here and the entry price was reassuringly high. We took a cable car up the mountain and spent a while cooing at the cubs. So far, so good. The squirrel village only had one squirrel and I am yet to figure out what this little chap is...
But after these and the inevitable gift shops we went to see the adult bears. In concrete enclosures with stinking, filthy pools, no toys and no fresh water around 8 bears competed for food thrown by tourists. They fought over tiny morsels. Around half of them had eye infections. In the distance we could see the mountain lake surrounded by berry trees where they should be living.
We didn't stay much longer but caught the duck race before we left - the American influence on Japan can be seen in the breed; yellow picture book ducks.
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