Happy Trails...to Sapporo's Yuki Matsuri

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Icey roads. Slippery steps. A perpetual cough. Constant sniffles. The ceaseless smell of kerosine. Lazy cooking. Devoted cloudy skies. Faithful 4pm sunsets. Wet socks. Cold toes.

With February, comes the crown of winter. And thanks to those Siberian winds gathering extra strength this year, the Japanese winter greeted me with the most audacity Japan has seen in 50 years. Headlines on international newspapers read: "The worst winter in five decades" and "Winter death toll in Japan up to NINETY."

Thus far, I have discovered that I'm not a big fan of living in the snow--or anything less than 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Sometimes it's not too bad, from about 23F to 32F, and sometimes it even gets to 35F and 37F on good days.

Even still, I (as well as thousands of others) decided that we wanted more--that we wanted to test the limits of our bodily insulation. And with a forcasted high of 19F and low of 1F, Hokkaido, the northern most island of Japan, was the port of call. The Yuki Matsuri, or Snow Festival, is one of Japan's largest events, and the reason we took an 13 hour bus/ferry/bus ride to get there.

Day 1: Thursday

The trip to Sapporo started off by sprinting to the Wakuya train station to catch the very last train that would get me to Furukawa on time. Our 5pm departure from Furukawa was exact, as was the opening of many cans of alcoholic beverages (once on the buses). We had a crew of about 60 other Miyagi ALTs all heading to the same destination for similar reasons: to get away from work and to drown out the cold and monotonous winter with the impending excitement brought by booze, a boat ride, and blabbing (that is, of course, in English with people who understand you) for 4 straight days.
The 8-hr boat ride was fairly uneventful, although this was definitely the largest boat I have ever been on--it had an escalator aboard! We were all stuffed into this extra-large "room" and that's pretty much where we stayed, besides the occasional beer-run to the vending machine across the way or for a short stroll around the restrooms, the public baths, or the fresh air of the upper decks (which never lasted beyond three and a half minutes because of the brutal -67 degree winds of longitude 41). Finally at 5:30am we arrived on the island of Hakkaido, exhausted and heavy-eyed, and still an hour's bus ride away from Sapporo.
When we finally arrived at our ryokan (small Japanese style inn that our group completely filled up), we weren't allowed in our rooms for another hour and a half; however we were welcome to take a shower in the public bath. Alice and I jumped at the chance to get naked together (and to get clean, too, I guess) and ran to the bath room--literally, the room in which to take a bath.

With only a few hours of lousy sleep, a full belly of Kombini food (Convenient store) and one Red Bull later (that's right, only 1 to go), Alice and I were out on the snowy town of Sapporo, heading to Odori, the main street showing off the snow sculptures. We were fairly impressed with the first ones we saw, but we quickly lost our way and discovered the stunning underground mall aptly named Aurora Town, and soon stubbled upon Zara and United Colors of Benetton. Lucky for us, but not our wallets, with the Yuki Matsuri brought not only a bazillion people, but also superb sales!

Later that evening, worn out from worshipping and offering tithing to our inner goddesses of material possession, we met up with everyone else and hopped on another bus, this time heading to the Sapporo Bier Garten for 100 minutes of tabe-nomihodai (all you can eat/drink). Good times.

Day 2: Friday

Alice and I went woke up fairly early to catch a train to a small port town called Otaru, about an hour away. This town had so much snow! It was the most snow I have ever seen. If you looked down a small street, you couldn't even see the houses or their shoveled-out entry ways.

Otaru is known for music boxes, its glass shops, and for its ridiculously expensive 5-pound crabs. We really wanted to blow glass, so between "Kay's Blowing" and "The Glass Studio" we chose the latter and took the short bus ride to the top of a mountain where the gallery was located. We paid only 2400 Yen (about 20$), which included making our own custom glass piece and also having them ship it back to Miyagi for us. We ended up doing about 30% of the work, but we definitely got to blow the glass and shape it a little and learn some of the techniques like coloring, adding bubbles, and creating a cracked-glass look. I was so glad Alice was there, too: she's a fabulous translator! By the time that we were done with our works of art and shopped around in the gallery, we found ourselves back in the main part of town in search of food and finally settled for a tabehodai of CRAB!! For only 5000 Yen (about $42), we ate all the fresh crab (complete with scissors for cutting open the fat legs), sashimi, sushi, salad, soups, cakes, and gellato our stomachs could handle. At first, I thought that was a big chunk of change for some sea creatures, but not only are these things huge they also go for 10,000-24,800 Yen PER CRAB in the shops in town. Yes, that's right, $85 to $210 PER CRAB. Craziness, I know. We rolled out of the restaurant completely satisfied and just in time to see the canal. Every February, and this night was the first night for it, Otaru's adorable canal transforms into a tourist attraction: maybe a hundred small glass balls, connected by string and individually lit with tea lights, zig-zag out over the water; and the canal-side walkway, a 10-foot-high wall of snow, is all carved out with snow candle-holders, ice love-seats, igloos, and other beautiful sculptures that use tea lights as the main focal point within the snow/ice art. It was so romantic, Alice and I almost held each other at one point.
The long day ended with some cheap Kombini wine, a nice hot shower, and an early bedtime.

Day 3: Saturday

Alice and I got up at a resonable hour and headed out in the cold to find the famous Ishiya Chocolate Factory. After a short subway ride we walked into the factory with great expectations...but the 600Yen "tour" was, well, it sucked, so we decided to chill up at the "Chocolate Lounge" and get some expensive coffee and hot cocoa. Lucky for us, Alice's hot cocoa came with a tiny bottle of Grand Marnier (which she was told she could drizzle over her beverage)--needless to say, we polished off that posh booze in an instant!

After the shot of Marnier we were ready to head back into town to see some more snow sculptures on Odori. We also ate some wonderful ramen on the 10th floor of the train station. We cut out early and went back to the ryokan for a rest and to get ready for the tiring trip back to Miyagi.

As much as I loved hanging out with everyone for 4 straight days, it was very nice coming back to my own place, in my small town, all by myself.

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