Blogs from Hokkaido, Japan, Asia - page 33

Sal's 30th... Celebrated in style at A-Bu-Cha and followed by a week of SUCH fun, laughter, chickens, giggles, powder, onsens, chortles, snowballs, great food, sake, gumboots, beers, wine and ..... now....exhaustion! That's a lot to handle for an old chook!!! ... read more

Growing up in Australia I never saw real snow, even when I lived in England for 3 years, it only snowed once and it had all melted by the end of the day anyway. Maybe that’s why I’ve always thought of snow as idyllic and beautiful; and why I chose to live in an area of Japan that is covered in it for a good 5 months of the year. So you can imagine that an annual snow festival caught my attention rather easily. The “Yuki Matsuri” is held in Sapporo at the beginning of February every year and it has become one of the most popular festivals in Japan, a country where you can find a festival almost every weekend somewhere on one of the many islands. Sapporo isn’t as well known as Tokyo or ... read more

Before I left for Japan, my Uncle bought me a book entitled "1000 Places to See Before You Die." Although a bit overwhelming (as I want to see them all!) the book mentioned a few places in Japan that I was hoping some of which might be possible to visit this year. One of the places mentioned was Sapporo, which is in the northern prefecture of Hokkaido, particularly for the Yuki Matsuri, the Snow Festival (yuki means snow and matsuri means festival). Every February, for 2 weeks, Sapporo is transformed into a winter wonderland, in which 3 special areas of the city contain numerous, elaborate, intricate snow and ice sculptures beyond belief. As this event is so popular, with thousands of visitors during the 2 weeks, 5 of us booked our air tickets and hotel in ... read more

http://www.travelblog.org/gmaps/map_Ih.html DAY 1: Saturday, February 4th The adventure started bright and early (6am!) when I rolled off my futon at Ryokan Casey (a.k.a Casey Hotel... a.k.a Casey's apartment where I spend every weekend). Out of excitement I jumped up and shouted "We're going to Hokkaidooooo!!!" only to be shot down by Casey who quickly reminded me that it was still only 6am, and far too early to be genki. Man.. I was soooo excited! After a quick breakfast we headed out to meet the guys before busing it to Hiroshima Airport. Well, upon check-in we were given a strange warning that "if you can't land in Sapporo than the plane will have to fly back." I think everyone was just kinda thinking 'strange, never had a warning like that before.' So, we checked-in and began our ... read more

光陰矢のごとし(Kouin ya no gotoshi) - a Japanese proverb that I recently learnt and can, without a doubt, apply to my last month in Hakodate. It literally translates to 'time is like an arrow', which as you can guess means time flies, and my time here has definitely been very arrow-like recently. In honour of this realisation I chose this proverb to write on a scroll for my calligraphy class. Naturally, I had a few attempts at it before it looked somewhat decent but I don't think it's too bad. I'm not sure my calligraphy teacher agrees though, as he has offered to write this phrase on a nice new scroll for me to take home. So, either he's being extremely nice (his work is quite famous and can therefore be expensive) or extremely polite and doesn't ... read more