Winter Wonderland

You're probably thinking to yourself "Why is Rita writing a Christmas-themed blog entry in February?" But this post isn't about Christmas. It's about a much more exciting winter-y event--Sapporo Yukimatsuri (Snow Festival). Last weekend I (and seemingly every other JET in Japan) went up Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan's 4 main islands, for this event.

The weekend craziness started with an overnight ferry ride from Sendai. This boat was so big it was easy to forget that I was actually on a boat. And there was a bath on the boat (the Japanese don't consider showers sufficient for getting clean). In the bath, the water rocked in the exact same way as the ocean, which was cool but not relaxing.

Sapporo's main streets were decorated with countless ice and snow sculptures. Many of the ice sculptures shared similar themes--birds, fish, etc. The snow sculptures were much more varied and interesting. Several of them were promoting new movies, such as the second installment of Narnia. Among the ice sculptures were ice bars. That is, there were beer tents surrounded by walls made of ice blocks. One evening we hung out at the Bailey's ice bar, sipping hot drinks outside.

On Sunday, several of us traveled to the winter wonderland outside of town known as Satoland. Everything was white as far as the eye could see. We wandered through a snow/ice labrynth. There was a huge field of little snowmen that people build. A fellow JET and I built one...but as it was the end of the day there wasn't much snow left and we had to cannibalize the eye pieces that had fallen off other snowmen. Still, we were very proud parents to our diminutive Cubist snowman baby.

In the spirit of trying new things and because this was Hokkaido, I went snowboarding on Monday! For some reason, the bunny hill was at the top of the mountain. The view was incredible. Despite the fact that I didn't feel like I'd gotten the hang of it well enough to go down harder slopes, there was no other way off the mountain. After spending the whole day on my butt in the snow, we went to an onsen. That was my favorite part of snowboarding.

I ate very well during this weekend. Hokkaido has its own famous style of ramen. One night we had an all you can eat lamb buffet/all you can drink dinner at the Sapporo Beer Garden (Sapporo isn't just a city--it's also a brand of beer). And after the snowboarding/onsen we went out for delicious crab.

To top off the weekend, four of us went out for a marathon all-night karaoke, returning to the hostel just in time to pack our bags, hop on the bus to the ferry port and sleep most of the long day of travel back home.