It’s been awhile since I’ve written! I’ve been really busy. On Monday I returned from a trip to Sapporo, a city in Hokkaido, the most northern Island of Japan. I went there by boat starting Thursday early morning (1am) with about forty other ALTs from Fukui to celebrate the 札幌雪祭り(Sapporo Yuki Matsuri… or snow festival). The ride up was 19 hours and I was having fun until about three hours after eating a nice plate of curry, I lost the curry due to seasickness.
All forty of us stayed at a 旅館 (ryokan-Japanese style hotel). I shared a room with Paul and our friends Rich and Tim. A ryokan is a step up from a hostel. It’s a bit more expensive but it’s nicer. We slept on futons on the floor and had our own room, but the toilets and shower/bath rooms were communal. It was definitely more comfortable than hostels in Europe I’ve stayed in. The hostel in Rome had rooms with their own showers but their was no hot water. Also, I often heard about thefts in Europe, and didn’t hear about any in the ryokan (maybe this was because most of the guests were all friends with each other). There was, however, a safe in the room for anything valuable which was nice. Anyway, I’m not sure how Japanese hostels are, but ryokans sure are a nice way to go. Another thing I liked is that you must take off your shoes and wear slippers inside. This custom keeps everything nice and clean.
Since we arrive late Thursday night my only trip out was to the conbini (convenience store) and bed. Friday morning we went to the chocolate factory, which was fun but I think the Ben and Jerry’s factory in Vermont beat this factory. We spent much of the afternoon exploring as well as eating. For dinner we ate ラーメン (ramen), which Sapporo is known for. Then we were headed to an arcade but Jody (another Fukui ALT who joined us for dinner) and I broke off from the group and just wandered around the city. We ended up at a club that had live music (instrumental style, I really liked the band) and some cool art. We danced a bit to the music and I pleasantly noticed that no guys were trying to dance with the girls, unlike American clubs where guys must think that we are just dying for a guy to come up from behind and start dancing with us! It was very refreshing, until, of course, the minute before I was about to leave and a guy said, in perfect English, “I never see a girl as beautiful and nice as you.” But, still, I’ll take one verbal compliment over someone trying to dance with me any day!
The next day Tim went off to snowboard, but our friend, Matthew, joined us and we sent to Satoland, a park slightly outside the city with a lot of snow festival things. We did the snow maze, which leads you to a castle of snow and you can stand on top to view the park! Then we road on a snow ride and ate some more ramen and did a snow slide. My toes were freezing! The day earlier my feet had been hot so I wore light socks.
We returned to the ryokan to warm up and relax a bit. I attached magical toe warmers to my socks and my feet were toasty the rest of the night. Many people were going out that night for an hour and a half of all you can eat and all you can drink for about 35 dollars, but we didn’t go. We decided that we couldn’t eat or drink enough in so short a time to justify the price, especially me! We instead went to Odori park, the main park of snow sculptures. They were huge! Some were bigger than houses. We went to the top of the tower to get a nice view. When we had seen about half, we went to Mos Burger, (think Japanese McDonalds but MUCH nicer) for dinner. Rich only got one hamburger but Matthew and I got two. Paul got three! But still, much cheaper than the all you can eat/drink event. Rich and Matthew made up a song called “Burger Benson” to make fun of Paul since he always eats so much.
Afterward we went to Susukino, just down the street from Odori park, to check out the ice sculptures and then went home.
On Sunday we went back to Odori park and Susukino to see what we hadn’t had time for the night before and then just walked around and shopped a bit. It was a nice relaxing day but unfortunately my head started pounding by the end of it. We took the ferry back that night and arrived late Monday back in Fukui-ken. The ferry ride was a lot calmer on the way back.
What a great trip!
-Lisa
