conversations with weird people

Are you okay?

Hiroki, a fourteen-year-old student of mine starts fake crying as soon as he sees me come near him.
"*sniff sniff* No. I want to die. *sniff sniff*"
"Oh really? Why?"
"Because... Because... *sniff sniff*... Because we love Narin!"

I really should have expected this from someone who claims his favourite movie is Narin vs. Narin's Family: We Love Narin.

hokkaidid 2 - otaru

For future reference, next time I decide that I want to spend as long as possible in one location, I should look up the place first to make sure there's actually stuff to do to fill my whole time. We decided to stay in Sapporo for as long as we could without taking too many days off, which turned out to be four days. What we found out soon enough though, was that when Sapporo is -8 on a daily basis and covered with snow, most people don't want spend too much time outside unless it's for a famous festival or for snowboarding and stuff. Since we decided against the snowboarding, we actually found ourselves without much else to do in Sapporo, working out to be a whole day free.

It probably turned out to be a good thing, this whole lack of plans in Sapporo. We ventured out to nearby Otaru, which we heard was known for its fresh seafood and awesome fish markets. But how fun can a market honestly be?

Well, pretty fun when it turns you get this:

Free crab. And ikura. And uni. Foods that normal cost a ridiculous amount were given away for free. Our timing of our trip turned out to be awesome, since it was just post-snow festival and the day after a public holiday. So while most people were going home or at work, we had the market to ourselves. And sure, it was a little dodgy of us to play the "I'm a foreigner but I can speak some Japanese" card every day, but when it gives you free samples of these foods you would normally pay $450/kg for, then I'm playing the foreigner card.

Our next stop: an onsen, or public bath. Yeah, it's definitely intimidating and weird at first to be bathing and naked in front of total strangers, but I'm getting used to it. I think I've got less of an issue with it since  being the only guy of our travel group, it means that I don't have to bathe with people I know seeing me as well. But before we came, I had envisaged soaking in a steaming hot bath outside overlooking fields of white all around as it snowed. Yeah, I had really high expectations, so I was actually expecting to be quite disappointed.

That is, until our taxi drove through the long, snow-covered driveway of our onsen and stopped right at the front door, where a doorman let us inside what looked to be a hotel. I did have a minor freak out as we stood in the entrance, afraid that the price of ¥1500 was a typo and that we should have added another zero to that number. After the onsen though, I did feel a little bad knowing it wasn't a typo and paid that little for something that awesome. Not quite the little bath overlooking the snowcapped countryside, but still amazing. It started to snow heavily just as I entered the bath, which was all the more awesome. I would have taken photos if I was alone, but didn't want to look like a pervert. But the words "incredibly" and "awesome" don't even do it justice.

We also heard while we were at the fish markets that there was a festival in Otaru that night as well, the lesser known Hokkaido Festival known as "The Gleaming Path" festival, so thought we should have a look.

We arrived at dusk, just in time to watch the few festival-people start lighting the some of the candle sculptures that lit  the whole road. Very cool. I don't want to be too quick to judge, seeing how I got to the other festival on the very last day, but I might say this festival may be just as good, if not better than the snow one.

One of the multiple female snowmen surrounding the "Tiger Woods" snowman.

Sure, the Snow festival in Sapporo has dozens of works that would have taken ages to make and sculpt, all made from people around the world, but this one had some celebrity mini-snowmen, an ice bar (Hot wine actually is much better than you would expect it to be) and, well, pretty shiny lights.

It was totally worth the whole losing feeling in your hands/feet thing to see all the lights around the street. Well, maybe. I think my other friends may be inclined to disagree with me.

hokkaidid - snow festival

So, needless to say after my previous post, that I'm a fan of Hokkaido. Who knew I could actually feel that way about a place that gets that cold? Being from Melbourne, my concept of cold involves anything temperature that is less than double digits, so being in weather that's actually in the negative numbers freaks me out. I still can't believe there are countries out there that require stating it's positive 15 rather than just 15 to avoid people being confused about whether it's cold or hot.

Despite the cold and the fatigue associated with catching a 9:00 flight from Nagoya (meaning we had to leave my place at like 5 in the morning), we managed to make our way through the streets of Sapporo to admire all the snow sculptures. Unfortunately, arriving on the very last day of the festival meant that some of the statues had already started to melt, so probably weren't as amazing as they were supposed to be. Though, I shouldn't complain - it's still way better than anything I could make. My attempts to make a real snowman failed miserably in Nagano, and essentially was two misshapen snowballs stacked on top of each other.

And what Japanese festival wouldn't be complete with food and live entertainment? I'm going to blame the the whole traveling fatigue-thing for the deep-fried potato on a stick, potatoes slathered in Hokkaido butter, giant scallop, prawn & octopus gyoza, taco and brazilian sausage I ate that day. That, or the fact I witnessed a B-grade J-pop boy band cover the theme song to the latest Power Rangers while also giving a riveting performance with swords and everything.

That night we did manage to get ourselves to Susukino, a nightlife district in Sapporo to see some more sculptures, though this time made of ice.

While the sculptures were as equally impressive as the snow ones in central Sapporo, we left quite soon afterwards to head back to the hotel room and rest. We managed to completely forget that we had actually come here to see the closing ceremony of the festival, but by the time we realised this, we were too tired an too close to the hotel to care.

my sapporo point card

So I've finally done it - After almost three years of talking about it and nothing actually happening, I've finally managed to get myself to Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan, and also the first place I ever saw in Japan. Sure, we were there for the snow festival, which is said to be one of the best festivals in Japan, but I was just as equally excited to go back and see the city where I did my exchange that made me want to come back again.

Obviously, many things weren't recognisable, seeing a number of years had passed and the last time I came in August 2000, everything wasn't covered in snow. But a wave of nostalgia hit me and I was flooded by all these memories that I had forgotten. It was a strange sense of deja vu.  As we walked passed a nondescript electronics store, I suddenly remembered how that was very store I searched for an electronic Japanese eraser (it was in the textbook I was studying at the time), only to not find it and settle for regular Japanese erasers (which, if you don't quite know already, are way better & cheaper than erasers anywhere else) and got a point card which promised me discounts for every other subsequent purchase. I never did buy anything else from that store, but held onto that point card until I came to back to Japan in 2007, at which point I found there isn't a branch of that store here in Gifu. 

After spending the afternoon seeing the awesome snow sculptures, we approached TV tower, which excited me, even though the others (as well as me) thought it was just a rip off of the Tokyo Tower. It was there me and the other exchange students met up and I bought my very first weird-flavoured fanta in Japan.

Outside Ishiya Chocolate Factory

Other memories weren't as vivid, but still made me reminisce. On the way to Ishiya Chocolate Factory, we went past a building which offered tennis and bowling lessons. The fact that you could get tennis lessons indoors and also with bowling lessons was such a seemingly random combination made me remember I thought the same thing walking past a similar building, if not the same one last time I was here. 

Not surprisingly, I didn't run into my old host family or anyone else I met during my three week exchange. I knew it was a long shot, but even still, the whole time I was there I was clinging to the hope that I may have recognised someone. But still, it was an awesome trip- enough to warrant another post on my blog anyways. Even though after working out there wasn't much to do in Sapporo in the middle of winter, and even having a free day, it still makes me want to go there again.

I should try and look for that point card.