Gotochi Travel Blog: Hokkaido, Part II

After all that time in the city, I was really excited to visit Akan National Park in eastern Hokkaido, which is known for being a great place for hiking, canoeing, and hot springs. Bus service is irregular, so we rented a car in Sapporo and drove across the island. It was about a four hour drive, but it was nice to see all the countryside. I even saw my first kitakitsune (Ezo red fox)!


Photo by tetu

Ezo red fox is a subspecies found almost exclusively in Hokkaido.

Partway through the drive, we stopped for some Genghis Khan, or mutton cooked on a convex metal skillet, supposedly the way the Mongols cooked on their helmets back in the day. The dish is popular in Hokkaido.

This is what ours looked like:


Photo by Nemo's Great Uncle

We stayed at Lake Akan, where there is a hot spring resort and "Ainu Kotan," a village ("kotan" means "village" in the Ainu language) with a lot of tourist shops selling Ainu folk art and an Ainu museum. The Ainu are the native people of Hokkaido.

That brings me to the (possibly) controversial part of this post, because one of the things they sell in the village is bear carvings. Traditionally, bear carvings were reserved for religious items such as prayer sticks and headdresses. When ethnic Japanese took over Hokkaido in the late 1800s, they declared that the Ainu were Japanese subjects, and outlawed Ainu language and customs, including hunting and fishing, so the Ainu had no way to make a living. The Ainu people who worked for Japanese logging companies were viewed as dogs - less than human. Some Ainu turned to wood carving as a way to survive. They took what had been religious items and sold them as tourist souvenirs. Umetaro Matsui, an Ainu bear hunter, became a well-known carver of wooden bears.

Source: Old Photos of Japan

Posta Collect, in their description of the bear carving, completely erase the Ainu. According to Posta Collect, the image originated in souvenirs brought to Japan from Europe. They mention Umetaro Matsui, but not that he was Ainu. Shame on you, Posta Collect. This is a stunningly obvious example of the racism faced by the Ainu today.

No wonder this bear looks like he is crying.


Photo by Sebastian Tauchmann

Love Horses, Ukraine

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Sender Ksenia writes that this is scenery from eastern Crimea. Crimea is an autonomous parliamentary republic within Ukraine.

 These are from the 2010 Europa issue on children's books. The blue one with the horse is "mare's head" and the golden one with the people is "gold shoe."

Happy Lunar New Year - Year of the Snake

A Japanese new year card featuring this year's zodiac animal, the snake.

I know I am a bit late, but I figure it's still okay to wish everyone a happy Lunar New Year 2013 - Heisei 25.
Thanks Lara. ♥

Two definitive stamps.

Stingray City, Grand Cayman

Another vacation RR card, this time TeamBearCat sent me a card from their trip to the Cayman Islands.

Stingray City is a series of shallow sandbars in the North Sound of Grand Cayman. Tourists can get up close and personal with stingrays. The name "stingray" comes from the venomous mucus-covered tail barb sported by this species. According to Wikipedia, their mouths have about as much suction as a powerful vacuum cleaner. So, snorkelers beware!

 The stamp is from the Cayman Islands Cultural Series Part 3: Catboats. Also known as cat-rigged sailboats, catboats are single-masted vessels, often painted blue to minimize glare. They were originally made for the activity depicted on this stamp: turtle fishing.

This is a post for Our Wonderful World Tuesday. Click the image to join in.

 

Chinese Pandas

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CN-209297



Vacation RR from Yue

Giant pandas are native to western China. Although they eat meat occasionally, 99% of their diet is bamboo. They are an endangered species, with around 2000 pandas living in the wild, mostly in Sichuan province, where there is a panda protection zone, according to the sender of the middle card above. The Sichuan reserve is a UNESCO world heritage site since 2006. The Sichuan pandas comprise one subspecies; the other subspecies lives exclusively in the Quinling Mountains in Shaanxi province. The Chinese government used loans and gifts of pandas to other nations throughout the 1970s in what became known as "panda diplomacy." Pandas are still loaned to other nations, but with strict terms - US$1 million per year, and any cubs born during the loan belonging to China.

The stamp on the left is in this post.
The one on the right, issued in a 2002 set of two, shows the Ala Shan Redstart (Phoenicurus alaschanicus), a near-threatened bird endemic to China.




The stamps to the left and in the middle, below, are from a 2004 set of four depicting "new look of hometowns of overseas Chinese." The left one shows Xinlong overseas Chinese farm, and the middle one shows Kaiping, a hometown of overseas Chinese.

Finally, below on the right is a 1998 stamp from a set of four on Shennongjia, a forestry district in Hubei province. This one is titled "Primitive Forest."

Soft Greetings from Lithuania

This card is from Moominksy from the favorites tag. I love corgies. The text says "Soft Greetings!"

The stamp, from 2008, commemorates the 2008 Zaragoza world exhibition.

North Sea, Germany

DE-601801 from Barbara.

I've decided to post a few of my favorite cards, since I'm not feeling too good today and I thought it might cheer me up. This card shows scenes from Germany's northern coast. The Wadden Sea National Parks along the coastline is a UNESCO world heritage site. (I'm not sure if the card actually shows that; there isn't any printed info.) Anyhow, this card is a perfect example of a beautiful multiview... artistic, with each view chosen and arranged with care.

Stamp here.

Chinese Fish

Paintings of Various Subjects
Album Leaves by Xu Gu
the Qing Dynasty

This is one of the oldest postcards in my collection, and definitely the first card I ever received from China. It predates my joining Postcrossing by a fair margin. This is a post for Postcard Friendship Friday, hosted by Beth. Her theme this week is fish/April Fool's Day. I thought about posting a generic spring card (I have a lot of Japanese cherry blossoms, for example), but I thought a fish would be more appropriate. I chose this one because it was sent by a friend rather than a Postcrossing stranger. (Same friend who sent this one.)

After I chose it I noticed that it was postmarked March 31, which is tomorrow (except in 2009). The top two characters on the postmark are the name of the city, Xi'an 西安. The same characters occur in Japanese, where they would be pronounced sei-an, and mean "west peace." The bottom four characters are nearly illegible, but the first two are "Wild Goose Tower" which is a building in Xi'an. I am guessing that together this is the name/location of the post office from which the card was sent. You know, since that is generally what is printed on postmarks.


I love it when people draw artwork on the backs of cards.

Not sure about the stamp. I think it's a definitive. I've gotten it several times. If the characters mean something similar to what they do in Japanese, the theme of the stamp is protecting diverse species.


A post for Postcard Friendship Friday. Click on the icon to go to the page and participate!

Portuguese Fisherman

I received this card as an official last October... I love it when I get official cards that are this beautiful. :)
The sender writes that you can find traditional boats like this in northern Portugal, and, as in this picture, sometimes they still use animals to transport boats to and from the sea. I am not sure, but I think the boat is called a moliceiro, and can be recognized by its bright colors, flat bottom, and curved prow.

The stamp features Amália Rodrigues, a Portuguese singer and actress famous for popularizing the fado genre of music. Fado is actually listed as an intangible cultural heritage "site" by UNESCO.



This is my first meme post... for Our Wonderful World Tuesday, hosted by Jocelyn.

Tatra Mountains, Poland

PL-97799
"High Tatras: Icy Peak in the Rays of the Sun"

I LOVE this card. Exactly the type of mountain view that is my absolute favorite. There is definitely snow in the mountains around here, and we even got a tiny bit of snow last night here in Seattle. Nothing sticking to the ground, though.

The Tatras are on the border between Poland and Slovakia, and the highest part of the Carpathian Mountains. The highest peaks are actually all in Slovakia, but since this card is from Poland, that's how I filed it. Several animal species are endemic to the area, such as Tatra chamois (Rupicapra rupicapra tatrica), a type of goat-antelope which is critically endangered. The Carpathians as a whole also have the largest Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx) population west of Russia. Both Poland and Slovakia have established national parks covering these mountains, and both are part of a biosphere reserve designated by UNESCO.

I have a couple cards of Eurasian lynx. I also have Slovakian cards of the Tatras. I'll post those at some point. :)

The stamps are the same as here.

Victoria, Canada

This big guy lives at the Royal BC Museum in Victoria. I sent this card to myself while spending a weekend in Victoria last January. Victoria in January is rather grim. It poured rain and was freezing cold the whole time I was there. The main reason I went was that my favorite band was playing there, and the show was by far the best part of the weekend, so that was okay. Other than that, I think I did every indoor tourist attraction there was near downtown Victoria, and the museum was the best. And I bought a lot of postcards. There were hardly any people staying in the hostel, although it was quite a nice hostel, and I spent a lot of the weekend napping. That was okay too, since I like sleep. :)

It was a bit surreal reading what I had written to myself on the back of the card, though... part of a saga I wonder if I'd be better off not remembering at all. If I eventually post every card related to that saga, will I forget it more easily? Other parts here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. (Some of those it's the cards themselves, some of them it's just what I was thinking about as I posted them.) There are at least 2 other cards to go.

Anyway.
2011 definitive on "baby wildlife," this one being the red fox, in the denomination for sending to the U.S.

New Mexico Roadrunner

I got this card from my friend Avi who lives in New Mexico. According to the back of the card, "The comical roadrunner, New Mexico's state bird, prefers running to flying and have been clocked at speeds of 15 miles per hour. They are approximately 22 inches in length, and their diet consists of insects, lizards, centipedes, mice and snakes." Yum!

Someone who is collecting state bird, state tree, and state flower postcards messaged me asking for a swap a couple of weeks ago. I found a couple of rhododendron cards but no western hemlock or willow goldfinch cards... All I found was a map card that had those listed but not pictured. Lame. Actually I think it even had a picture of a tree, but it was a Doug fir, not a hemlock! Super lame.

My favorite part of this postcard may have been the mountains hand-drawn on the bottom. :)



This stamp is from 1998, depicting the yellow poplar (Luriodendron tulipifera), also known as the tulip tree. Avi said he steamed it off an old envelope and re-used it. Very cool.

Texel, Netherlands

A card from the Suprise Me RR. The heart is actually a hole cut in the middle of the card, which I had never seen anything like before. I have to wonder why the designer chose the ugly picture to take up 2/3 of the card... but perhaps it's a blessing in disguise since the scuff marks left by the mail sorting machine are only defacing the ugly picture. :P (I think the card would be a lot nicer if the other five pictures, which are nice, made up the entire card.) Anyway, I still like it.

Texel is one of the Frisian Islands located in the Wadden Sea, although it is actually in the province of North Holland, not Friesland. Tourism is Texel's main economy, and it does look like a nice place for a vacation if you want to take it easy or go bicycle touring. About one third of the island is a nature preserve, complete with a visitor's center and wildlife museum, where you can watch the seals being fed twice a day. (I am not sure why they are feeding the wild animals at a nature preserve, though.)

More nice stamps. The one on the left reads "zomerpostzegels 1992, floriade nederland" Floriade is a flower festival held every 10 years in the Netherlands. In the middle is a stamp from 1995 showing the equation discovered by J. D. van der Waals, a Dutch Nobel Prize physicist. The stamp on the right is undated so I am guessing it is a definitive.

Polish Cats

Another one from the favorites tag. I've gotten so many nice cards from these tags. However, lately I've stopped doing tags and have been sending a lot more official cards. It's still soooo addictive to draw an address and pick a card for the person you get. I actually got the same person twice in a row this morning - once on each of his accounts! It's crazy that that happens despite there being nearly 250,000 accounts.

Anyway. These cats are an illustration by K. Majewska and A. Tylkowski, if I am not mistaken.

These stamps are a nice contrast to the stamps I normally get from Poland. First, on the left, is a stamp featuring mountain bike riding in a 1999 set of four on youth sports. Graffiti stamps: how awesome is that? On the right is a 2008 stamp depicting "drifting sand" (zamieć piaskowa) from a set of four on weather phenomena. On the bottom is a stamp of two species of rosella: crimson rosella (Platycercus elegans - the red and blue one) and eastern rosella (Platycercus eximius - the multicolored one). This is from a 2004 set of four exotic birds.




How do they pick what themes to make stamps out of, I wonder?

Jasper, Alberta

I found this cool map card at a thrift store. Jasper is a Canadian national park, the largest in the Canadian Rockies, in the province of Alberta, west of Edmonton and north of Banff. It is home to glaciers, mountains, hot springs, and waterfalls, along with grizzly bears, moose, elk, mountain goats, pumas, wolves, and pika, some of which you can see on the card. The park was listed as a UNESCO world heritage site in 1984 as part of the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks. This is definitely a place I would like to visit!

Toscana, Italy

This card is from the favorites tag. Toscana, or Tuscany in English, is a region in Italy that was the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance. Many historical and literary greats made Tuscany their home, including Petrarch, Galileo, Dante, Leondardo da Vinci, and Puccini. Tuscany is also famous for its wine. I'm not sure about geese, though. ;)

The stamp, celebrating the 150th anniversary of Italian unification, was issued in January 2011.

Stamped Card: Koala

This prepaid postcard of a sleeping koala is an official, AU-65188. I figured it was appropriate since I spent a good portion of the day napping and I think my housemate is doing the same thing. I stayed out until 1:30am at a concert last night and I woke up at 5 to see my friend go in the water for a triathlon.

Although people often refer to them as "koala bears," koalas are in fact marsupials, not bears. Their closest living relative is the wombat. They are found in coastal regions of eastern and southern Australia. The word "koala" comes from the animal's name in Dharuk, an endangered Aboriginal language.

Koalas have opposable thumbs on their hands and feet and have fingerprints that are hard to distinguish from human ones (according to wikipedia). They spend most of their time in trees and most of their waking time eating eucalyptus leaves.

Year of the Rabbit, Singapore Philatelic Museum

I guess you could call this a private swap of sorts. Every year the Singapore Philatelic Museum has an exhibit based on the lunar new year symbol, and they invite people to send them postcards showing that year's symbol to display in the exhibit. For every postcard they receive during the month of February, they will send a postcard in return. Last year I didn't have any tiger postcards, but this year I had a rabbit card. I have a few other cards from Singapore but I had a terrible time getting a STAMPED card from there. I had two postage-paid ad cards as officials (and those kind of annoy me), and then I had a private swap with someone, and honestly, my only request was that the card be written and STAMPED, and then it came with a postage label instead of a stamp. Grr. I started to wonder if Singapore even issued stamps. Well, they do!

Nice ones:
Like this stork-billed kingfisher issued in 2007 as a 'flora and fauna definitive'.
And it even has a lovely Singapore Philatelic Museum postmark! ^_^

Iguaçu Falls, Brazil

The 2,700-meter Iguaçu Falls are located in Iguaçu National Park on the border between Brazil and Argentina, dividing the Iguaçu River into its upper and lower portions. It was listed as a UNESCO world heritage site in 1986.

BR-95850


BR-122892


BR-86180

The park is home to a multitude of animal and plant species, including giant otter, ocelot, American tapir, and capybara. Capybara are true R.O.U.S. However, there is no recorded Fire Swamp in the park.

Gratuitous capybara picture:




This stamp was issued in 2008 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the arrival of the Portuguese royal family to the shores of Brazil. Apparently there was a feast...?


This polar bear comes from a set of two on Protection of the Poles and Glaciers, issued in March 2009.


Two stamps from the series Professions, manicurist and seamstress, issed 2006 and 2005, respectively.