But I was panicked. I remember being down at Powell's City of Books one day, trying to talk him out of the plan. We were in the travel section, where I was researching our destination in Japan: Asahikawa, located on the northern island of Hokkaido. Asahikawa holds the record for Japan's coldest recorded temperature -41 degrees C (-40.6 degrees F). How were we going to survive there?
The climate wasn't the only challenge. There was also the matter that neither of us spoke, read, or could understand any Japanese. I envisioned spending the winter locked up in an apartment with huge snowdrifts blocking the door, completely cut off from the world. At that time, in 1989, the Internet was just taking off in Japan, and it cost a small fortune for dial-up access. (Plus if you think you have problems communicating with your ISP provider now, try doing it in Japanese! We did in fact eventually buy a computer, a Mac Classic, but only used it for creating English lessons.)
As it turned out, my husband went to Japan about a month before I did. He would pave the way for us there, and I would have at least a little time to spend with my family before leaving. It was a month of terror. As I tried to study easy teach-yourself-Japanese-in-a-week language books and find a new home for my cat Smith, my mind was either raging or numb. Fortunately for both me and Smith, my sister finally took her in. It was wrenching to leave them.
I don't remember much of the flight overseas, but I recall the first coffee shop I went to upon arriving in northern Japan. The main office of our school was in the city of Sapporo (that's right, just like the beer!), which is about an hour and a half from Asahikawa by train. We were required to do about a week of training at the main office before beginning to teach on our own. My flight arrived in the evening, and I was due at the office the next morning. So many teachers were being processed through the English school, that there was actually an apartment for new arrivals. I must have fallen asleep immediately, and awoke a couple of hours before my guide would pick me up.
Waking up for the first time in a foreign country clearly calls for one thing - caffeine. I therefore set out on foot to find some. I didn't have to walk far. Zoning laws in Japan allow small businesses to operate in residential districts, and there was a coffee shop just down the street. Fortunately for me, most menus in Japan have colored photographs illustrating each item. Otherwise I would never have been able to pronounce my order: kohee (coffee) and hotto keki (hotcake). The hotcake was small, round, and rubbery - the coffee was the absolute best I'd ever had.
A Japanese coffee shop always serves coffee and tea, and will also serve a variety of entrees and meal "sets" - morning set, lunch set, and dinner set. My favorite was the morning set (also known as the toast set), which is typically served with your choice of either tea or coffee, and some combination of Texas toast, boiled egg, salad, and miso soup.
I also lived for about two years in Furano, a little ski town located in the middle of the island of Hokkaido. Furano has a population of approximately 26,000, and is a tourist destination for skiers in winter and bikers in summer. The Takeda kissaten (circled in red) is located near the main train station, and was my favorite coffee shop in Furano. Besides serving the standard coffee (kohee), black tea (kocha), and green tea (ocha), it also featured lavender tea (shown with Texas toast set). This coffee shop was just one of many that provided a refuge during my time in Japan.
Japanese coffee shops, or kissaten, as they are called in Japan, are the most amazing places. In a sense, each individual coffee shop is like a tiny theme park. There are as many motifs as there are coffee shops: classical music, Americana, traditional Japanese art, and so on. The combination of ambience, service, and world class coffee and tea provide a refuge to each visitor, or okyakusama.
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