Only a few weeks after my escapades in China, I was off on yet another adventure. This time, I would be exploring the island of Hokkaido for a ski trip and to tour Sapporo's famous Yuki Matsuri (Snow Festival). Hokkaido is the large island north of Japan's main island, Honshu, and is renowned for its natural landscape and cooler weather. Especially famous in Hokkaido are the awesome mountains which can be hiked on during the summer and skied on during the winter.
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| Hokkaido |
Thankfully, this time my flight went off without a hitch and I arrived in Sapporo on February 2nd no problem. After my plane arrived in Sapporo, I met up with several other JETs who were going on the trip at the train station. The JETs had come from all over Japan although there were a substantial amount of JETs stationed in Okinawa (they got sick of nice weather perhaps?) As the JETs were coming in several waves throughout the day, a group of about 9 of us explored a bit of Sapporo on our own. Sapporo itself was a nice city but but pretty unremarkable city sightseeing-wise as most of it is new and there weren't a whole ton of historical sites to see. On a side note, the reason that Sapporo and indeed much of the rest of Hokkaido's cities are so new is that major urban development in Hokkaido only began in the late 1800's (considering the rest of Japan has seen urban development for about 1000 years this is relatively new). I did, however get to see several sculptors carving out blocks for the upcoming Yuki Matsuri, which was pretty cool. For lunch, we stopped at a ramen place and I got some pretty good spicy oyster ramen. After a bit more roaming around Sapporo, we decided to head over to the Sapporo Beer Garden and Museum where would be meeting up with the rest of the JETs for dinner. Although we arrived at the Sapporo Beer Museum too late to visit any exhibitions, we did get to sample a few beers. We had dinner at the Sapporo Beer Garden, which is a giant German-like Beer Hall where one may eat meat and drink beer to ones hearts delight (or failure). I eventually consumed my weight in grilled lamb, veggies, and beer and had the meat-sweats by the end of the night.
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| The Beer Test |
After the hearty meal at the Beer Garden concluded, the other JETs and I made our way to the bus and went off to Niseko Ski Resort. Niseko was about a two hour bus drive away from Sapporo so minus the whole bus smelling like meat, it wasn't too bad a ride. Evidentially, while we were driving, a 7.0 earthquake hit Hokkaido but we didn't even feel a thing! As we got to the resort at about 12 at night, I pretty much went straight to sleep after arriving.
The next day, those of us who wanted to go skiing/snowboarding picked up our equipment and went off to the mountain. The first day of skiing was fun, but a bit disappointing as most of the mountain was closed off due to bad weather. The resort and the town of Niseko itself was rather interesting as it was almost completely inhabited by Australians. I'm not really sure how this place in the middle of Hokkaido became a snowy Australia, but it was kinda of nice to use so much English for the first time in several months.
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| Chillin at Niseko |
The next day of skiing was absolutely sublime! The weather was a bit foggy but otherwise clear and the powder on the mountain was like nothing I have ever skied on before. I went skiing with another JET from from the neighboring prefecture named Alex who later coerced me to go down my first black diamond, which after falling on my ass a few times I was able to conquer. The true test of my skiing ability came at the end of our ski day when we decided to head back to the main part of the resort via a long ski trail that began at the top of the mountain. Unfortunately for my already sore butt, we would have to go down a few more black diamonds on the way. This dilemma was further compounded by a blizzard that came out of nowhere and shrouded the whole mountain in an onslaught of winter fury making it so I could barely see 10 feet in front of me. After more or less rolling half way down the black diamond portion of the mountain, however, Alex and I were able to successfully navigate the treacherous trail and made our way back to the hotel. My trails at the mountain were later rewarded with an onsen that night.
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| Victory pose after the black diamond |
Another one of the highlights of this day was finding this little gem in the bathroom of the resort.
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| I guess it was a problem at least once if they have a sign for it. |
On the last day of my trip, all of the JETs headed back to Sapporo where most of us would catch our respective means of transportation home. As my plane didn't depart until later that afternoon, I was free to a bit more exploring in Sapporo and most fortunately, the Yuki Matsuri was in full swing when I returned. Although the weather was feeling like the oh-so lovely Minnesota winter weather that I loathed, I nevertheless managed to enjoy the festival immensely I saw some really spectacular ice sculptures and devoured lots of delicious festival food. After the festival, I bade the rest of the JETs adieu and departed home to Ishikawa.
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| Thai-themed Ice sculpture (kinda of reminds of the buildings I saw in China) |
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| Crepe at the festival |
So that's the story of adventure in Hokkaido. Other notable highlights from this past week include going out to an oyster grill with my neighbor Jillian and one of our coworkers named Fumie. The oysters were delectable as usual although a curious addition to our set meal was serving of the notorious (and potential toxic) fugu. Thankfully I survived yet another encounter with this strange delicacy and lived to eat another day.
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| Oyster, squid, and Fugu meal |
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| Jillian and Fumie |
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| Eating Fugu |
The final highlight from this week was witnessing my first school lockdown drill at one of my elementary schools. Although the school had let me know in advance that it was a drill, it was still a rather bizarre and amusing spectacle. The whole affair involved a random actor, dressed up as a "suspicious person", who wandered down the halls. Then, all hell broke loose when the police (I found out later these guys actually were police officers) ran towards the pretend stranger and proceeded to mock beat the ever-loving crap out of him with their batons. The whole concluded with the police dragging the guy away while he screamed at the top his lungs. I daresay I don't recall anything like that happening during my days as a K-12 student.
