Japan Holiday Tour - Ainu Village
Our Hokkaido tour (of my wife and I) led us to the Ainu Village one fine afternoon. The Ainu people were the aboriginals of Japan though an internet finding by me indicated that they obtained their indigenous people status officially only in 1998. I also learnt that the Ainu people were quite conscious of their status as it was deemed not to be as noble as the other tribes of Japan. The Ainu person on Hokkaido would have escaped modernization if not for the Meiji restoration, which saw Hokkaido opened up for development. History aside, our visit to Ainu Village was to come up, close and personal with the Ainu people though I also came beyond comfort level with somebody there, read on to find out more! When our tour group descended on Ainu Village, we were awed and intrigued by the gigantic boulder statue of an Ainu man as well as of other strange but interesting structures. We saw 3 to 4 Japanese dressed in Ainu costumes beckoning to our group, and we followed them into a hut for
