So yesterday was my first full day here in Sapporo, and I gotta say this is a great city. Sapporo is the 5th largest city in Japan, and one of the newest. Which means one very big thing - streets here actually make SENSE. Instead of wonderful naming like bank street because 50 years ago there may have been a bank, its grid based and divided into N/S/E/W and how many blocks away from city center. Anyways, I arrived here by train and met up with a guy named Neil, from Chicago. Nice chap. Asked him if he was staying at the hostel too and sure enough he was. So we head that way, I find out he:s up here a couple of days while his friend he was visiting is off working. Before this he ... read more

Arrived in　Sapporo... two entries for now that I wrote on the train ride over here.　　I　am going insane with this keyboard at the inet cafe (no inet at the hostel) so hopefully this doesn:t look like gibberish. Keyboards I used last time I was here weren:t nearly this crazed. Thought I'd write a bit about these Ryokan places since I finally got a few pictures up. Essentially they're Japanese bed and breakfasts. When stepping inside you have to remove your shoes and put on supplied slippers that you use for walking around. In the case of Kangetsu which has an outside lobby you also have outdoor slippers you can use after taking a bath. Each of the rooms have a small entrance way for you to take your slippers off before stepping on the tatamai floor that ... read more

Quick first post.... touched down after an uneventful flight over. Good flight, JAL was great as always. Had two options of hot food for supper, I went with chicken and rice and washed it down with some not too bad red wine all complimentary of course. Met a guy from Korea who's heading back there for a bit, and watched the movie Iron Man about 2 and a half times. Made one rather large oops.. I ended up booking the wrong hotel here in Narita for my first night, so now I'm stuck in a very typical business class hotel (aka, TINY) in downtown Narita instead of the rather nice place I stayed the last time around. Had a bit of trouble figuring out the train system since I had to apparently use the local line, ... read more