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Published: March 6th 2009
Went to Sapporo, Hokkaido from Saturday until today. It was really fun, and not as cold as people say, but I am from Minnesota and I KNOW what cold is. The coldest was -3 degrees Celsius? I forgot, it wasn't that bad cause it wasn't so windy!
Anyhow....run down of events.
Saturday: arrive, find our hotel after Rach leads us to the wrong place because she read the map wrong and thought the hotel was in another place, meet with my friend Ranee (who is now teaching in Sapporo) and her husband Jay (we didn't get a picture together...zannen!), we walked a bit down Odori Park where all the snow sculptures are, but at 10pm the lights were shut off so we couldn't see much so we went back to the hotel.
Sunday: free breakfast at the hotel was great: rice, miso, omelette, meatballs, veggies, tea, bread, waaay better than Holiday Inn Express. we decided to go to the sports museum where the ski jump is...hiked up a hill to get there cause we didn't know about the shuttle bus from the station, oh well, it was good exercise. we tried a bunch of simulations of sports at
the museum and then jackie and i braved the outside and saw the festivities at the ski jump. sapporo hosted the olympics back in 1972 and they used this ski jump then. so it's pretty big! i was sad though that i didn't have snow pants because there was snow tubing at the bottom of the ski jump!!! aack! really wanted to go snow tubing. ok, after the sports and the cold, we went to the sapporo beer museum and then had dinner at the sapporo beer garden: all you can eat gengis khan lamb and all you can drink sapporo beer...so good!!!
Monday: switched to the hostel which was great because they had a japanese style bath! decided to get into the snow festival mode and saw the ice sculptures at susukino then walked to odori park and did the 12 block walk of snow sculptures. ended it with a kebab at the turkish food stand and then back to susukino (this time by subway) to see the sculptures at night and then hit up the bar, rad brothers, which was recommended by our waiter, sato san, from the beer garden the night before. it was nice, but
not too busy on a monday night and too many foreigners.
Tuesday: last full day so we hit up the other snow festival site: the tsu-dome! lots of activities: make your own little snow man, a big snow slide, and the snow raft! did souvenir shopping after and then went to otaru to see the lights and the canal. ran into some other ALTs from Shimane while we were in otaru station...it's a small world! had a curfew at the hostel so we were back by around 11pm, but i didn't mind because i was tired and wanted to sleep.
So that's the Sapporo trip in a nutshell! I need to sleep soon because it's back to work tomorrow and I gotta work on a lot of Valentine's day cards for my students and co-workers....
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Katherine
non-member comment
Hokkaido - Snow Slide
Your photo of Snow Slide and Snow Tubing look fun, can I know which ski resort did you go to? I want to bring my family to Hokkaido this December but do not know which ski resort had this activities. Thank you