Anyways, it's been awhile again! Since the last post, I have finished my semester and gone off to visit the frozen North of Japan! Since I just came back from my trip last night, I am busy with unpacking and repacking for my next trip on Tuesday! So let me tell to about my *nearly* back-to-back trips!
Last week on Sunday, two of my friends and I started our trip to Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan. Mind you, Hokkaido is the northern island of Japan's four main island, while Sapporo is the hometown of Sapporo Beer and the 1940 (cancelled) Winter Olympics and the 1972 Winter Olympics.
In order to catch our early-Monday-morning flight to New Chitose Airport in Hokkaido, we ended up spending the night at Narita Airport. If you read Narita's website, there is a "no-sleepover" policy...however, people (like us) do it anyways. The guards just shuffle everyone to the seats in the Airport lobby and take down everyone's flight and ID info. Then they shut off the lights for a few hours. Pretty interesting experience, I must say.
Anyhoo...
My friends flew out Monday morn to New Chitose Airport, where we took a train (how unusual...not) to Sapporo, then took a local line, followed by a trolley (which really is unusual) to get to our hotel. If you are planning to visit Hokkaido and have either a Pasmo or Suica Japan Railways train card, you will want to read this next part.
Pasmo is useless in Hokkaido. The JR (Japan Railways) does not even take it in Hokkaido.
Suica, on the other hand, is useful, but only for the JR lines. If you are planning or needing to take Hokkaido subway lines, you will need to buy tickets for the trains.
Now, back to our trip. My friends and I went to Hokkaido to see the Sapporo Snow Festival, where people, companies, and citizens make snow and ice sculptures to be put on display in Sapporo's Odori Park and Susukino district. The sculptures were absolutely amazing!
However, the Snow Festival was not the only thing we saw while in Hokkaido. We visited a few historical places and malls. Hokkaido, despite having only been part of Japan since the late 1800's, is rich in history. Having taken Japanese history already, I was so excited to experience some of Hokkaido's history.
While we were vacationing in Sapporo, it snowed! Man, did I feel like I was in an anime or one of Hiroshige's Ukiyo-e (woodblock prints). Granted, Hiroshige never did travel up to Hokkaido, but his prints were always in my mind as my friends and I traveled about Sapporo.
Sadly, our trip came to an end yesterday. We met up with another CSU friend and her mom at the train station on our way back and together the five of us flew home. It was the most exciting trip to date...however, this week the CSU crew have an equally as exciting trip to Okinawa.
Now, this next trip will be extremely busy. It is a CSU-sanction trip, which means that the focus of the trip is on learning. We will be flying out on Tuesday, then almost immediately hitting the road to visit some historical sites. Over the course of the next few days, we will stay in three hotels and be traveling from one historical location to the next. I hope to have a ton of photos from this trip.
While typing out this blog, I have downloaded my Sapporo pictures and movies onto my pc, but I will not have a lot of time to go through them.:( So I will up load them here with the photos of all of my other trips after the Okinawa trip, when I have time to go through them all and separate the good photos from the poor-quality ones. It's just easier to do so since I can then upload entire files at a time, rather them sifting through them one at a time. That and I will have already correctly oriented all the photos that were taken in potrait-orientation (up-down).
While you wait, here are a few photos:
Skyview (leaving) of Hokkaido
My Snow Graffiti (of one of my characters)
My friend Riski's successful photo-bombing.
A Mammoth Skeleton at one of the places we went.
One of the sculptures in Odori Park
Until Then, Later Peeps!
