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.