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Published: July 13th 2006
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cool castle
and a rocking band Well, to begin; Sophie, Viviane, Ninon, Petar (Bulgarian boy who, because he has such a hard name to pronounce we ended up calling him Charlie. He's Charlie, we're the angels) and me all met up in Shin Osaka on February 10. We took a train to go to Fukui Ken, this is the harbor where ferries leave for Hokkaido and we took a bus to get to the harbor. After waiting for a while, we got on to the Ferry, which to describe accurately is a CRUISE SHIP! Its really pretty, kung baga, "Pasensya na Super Ferry, tablado ka, Di na kita trip" It has a big shower room thats Japanese style with a big hot tub like an ofuro. It's actually the same as the shower room in the university, but of course this one is prettier and theres a little fountain to boot. We spent some time in the Ofuro and then we went up to the promenade to watch a movie (Ninon brought her laptop along) We met some people, a bulgarian and a venezuelan. The bulgarian is apparently an upper classman of Charlie so small world. But I was
train ride
To fukui ken too tired at this point so I just left them and went down to the common bedrooms to sleep. Because we got the cheapest ticket, the bedroom is just one big room for about 24 people. It doesnt have anything except a carpet and they give a blanket and a box-like pillow for the passengers. and each one gets a cabinet area to put their luggage in. Theres a genkan in front of the room where you leave your shoes and then you make a small area for you to sleep in in front of your cabinet and you sleep there. I slept like this, but there's this Japanese man who snores like a cave and i dont know what he drank but he was sleeping when we got there and he was sleeping the whole of the next day. Anyways, the water was so rough and when i woke up the next day i felt so sick i couldnt move. then we came up with the brilliant idea to drink the anti-motion sickness pills viviane bought and after a while we were ok, we moved back to the promenade where there's big windows where you can see the sea.
bored boat
windows: your best defense against sea sickness It was better there than in the room which is a deck lower as the motions were not so bad and you can see the sea so its less sickening. We stayed in there until we got to Hokkaido, just reading and sleeping and watching videos.
When we arrived in Hokkaido, we took 2 taxis to get to the Hostel which cost an arm and a leg as we didnt know where it was and it was around 1030 pm and we didnt feel like risking getting lost and walking in a -10 degree evening. So we took a rest in the hostel, the hostel is like 10 minutes off the highway, you have to walk along a snow-covered soil road with lots of trees along the side so kinda reminiscent of the twilight zone. But its in front of a lake and from our room window we could see the lake, but its frozen and as everything was snow covered and white, we couldnt tell where the ground ends and the lake begins. It was kinda surreal though. we left the hostel at 7:30 the next day and we didnt know it but the temperature outside was -22
coolness!
the snow structures they made were amazing!!! degrees. I've never felt cold like that before. I went out of the hostel without my gloves on and about 5 minutes later they were hurting so much, i can now imagine what frostbite feels like. My ears were hurting so much too and i couldnt feel them, good thing I bought ear muffs and that saved my ears. My nose was the funniest part. It really felt like my nose was freezing and i had a running nose so i had to sniff all the time. But after a while I didnt have to sniff anymore because the mucus inside literally froze. As in when i sniff, I feel like there's small stones in my nostrils. Viviane had the same thing too and we were laughing so much about it. Later we saw that a part of Sophie's hair which was close to her face was frozen because her breaths condensed on her hair and the moisture froze. It was unbelievable.
Anyways, we reached the highway and we took a bus to the New Chitose Airport. Apparently, in that place, all major bus stations are in the airport so we had to go to the airport beforehand. The
Doraemon!
Sigh... Doraemon... Long story... Im still not over it bus fares were exorbitantly expensive and i wanted to rant about it endlessly but well, we were there already. When we reached the airport, we took another bus to Sapporo. Thats the capital city of Hokkaido and that was where the Snow Festival was being held. It was easy to spot it. It was a long park about 20 meters in width that stretches out to about 10 blocks of sapporo. It starts from the Sapporo TV Tower and ends in front of this City hall or whatever building. The Festival was divided into 12 stations. 1 station per block and in each station, there's 2 very big and I mean BIG snow sculptures and several smaller ones. It was amazing how huge the sculptures were and how refined and detailed they looked. We walked all around the 12 blocks and was tired out. We saw a disney sculpture, a taiwan promotional stage and several others. The biggest ones have a stage as well and some programs were being held there. Some have singers and performers and some have hosts and they were playing games etc. One even had a wedding ceremony! The highlights of the day was seeing a
Kabuki Charlie
We begged him over and over to do this face!!! WAHAHAHA pigeon poop on Viviane. It was Sooooo funny. We were walking and talking until we passed under this huge tree heavy with a flock of pigeons, when suddenly we heard someone scream in full terror. We turned and saw Viviane holding her arm out and screaming her head off. she was literally 1. stare with huge eyes at her arm 2. take a deep breath 3. scream like a horror movie actress. Our initial reaction was worry and then when we saw the poop on the arm of her parka, we just went hysterical. I've never laughed so hard. And then she started running around looking for tissue and holding her arm out. it was so funny. Finally she ran to a bank of snow, stuck her arm in it and froze the poop out. I couldnt come near her coz i was afraid she was gonna punch me for laughing at her instead of helping her find tissue paper. Bwaahahahaha. After that we just went around in frantic search for a snowman hello kitty, as it was Sophie's number one wish in life. After a while, we got tired and found refuge in a starbucks and we settled there
Giant KUma
the bears and us for a while. Charlie was often incommunicado since his pasttimes apparently include talking and flirting with random Japanese girls. After a while we just left him to his business. We lost our Charlie but we're still angels. so there! When the sun set we went back to see the festival again coz we wanted to check it out in the dark. Ninon and Sophie went back earlier than us because they were tired and wanted to take a shower. Me, Viviane and Charlie walked around because we wanted to see the festival at night. The lights gave the sculptures a different feel and it was really nice. One of the sculptures is an ice train and there were multicolored lights behind it and there was a woman inside a glass bubble (wonders of a Japanese mind) and she was playing some music while the lights danced to her tune. I got this one on video so Im sure you can see it when i send the CDs over. We got back to the hostel at around 11 and after fooling around and taking tons of silly videos, we decided to call it a night.
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ninon
non-member comment
whaaaaaaaaaaaat
how come i m not on these pictures???? diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii, what is this about huh