Rice or crab?

Rice for breakfast. Can't be doing it before ten am when I know there is a choice. Next week I will be living off bento boxes morning, noon and night so it's standard fare while I can get it. With that in mind, I skipped breakfast, rice cakes, miso soup etc and headed straight to the markets.

There is a very different feel to Hokkaido. For starters the people are very friendly. It's like they are genuinely pleased that a geijin made it all the way up here to see their crabs. Every stall holder wished me some form of good morning. Some offered me crab, politely declined.

It's also very rural here. On the JR Hokkaido in train magazine, I counted the story subjects - corn, cows, vets, sheep, potatoes. This is farming territory. Of course when it's not fishing. I am beginning to wonder if there are any crabs left around this island, as I have never seen so many in my life. We're talking about a hundred shops with at least a hundred crabs. And they're big. What about the ones that get rejected. Do they make it back alive.

Several times I would walk past a tank and a claw would reach out at me. I think if I was a seafood eater, this would put me off a bit. I like there to be some distance between the live animal and my food. Twitching on my plate - the ultimate show of sashimi freshness is not my thing.

The Royce shop was open when I walked back. It took a lot of restraint not to buy more. I figured I could do so in Obihiro and not have to carry it today's distance. And that I might be able to get some free, rumour being they are an event sponsor. I also resisted the urge to buy more Hokkaido rascal merchandise. I love the rascal. I asked if this year I could just dress as one and walk around the service park. I love his name, and I love his soulful eyes...

Further proof that Hokkaido is rural is that they have bear, and fox and uh eat them. And seal apparently too... There are more signs in Russian, Sapporo being a good connection for getting across the water. You see it's really not that dissimilar to Finland. And for breakfast, Karelian pastries and rice cakes are not that far apart.

No crabs in Finnish lakes though. Thank goodness.