Our last day in Sapporo.  We were on the bus by 0815 and on our way to Tsudome Site for another Snow Festival. 

This small festival was geared toward very little children.  There were lots of little slopes carved out of snow piles for children to safely slide down.

There was also some kind of snow carving event going on but I couldn’t figure out what that was about.  One person said it was local high school students.  Someone else said it was local businesses. 

Then there was this display of little snowmen created by local school children.

All in all an odd place to stop for an hour and a half on the hour plus bus ride to the airport where we had a two hour “free time” wait for our flight to Hiroshima.  Plenty of time for some local Sapporo beer with our lunch.

So, did you notice what a beautiful day it was?  Almost no wind.  Bright and sunny.  By the time our plane arrived in Hiroshima it was very windy and snow showers.  So windy, in fact, that it took the pilot three tries to get the plane on the ground due to wind sheer issues at the end of the runway.  Lucky for us, the third time was a charm and we landed without incident, grabbed our baggage and boarded the bus for the hour and a half ride down to Iwakuni.

Home at last for a delightful bottle of sake to go with Chris’ now famous cabbage salad with toasted sesame dressing and stir fried rice, onion and eggs.  Ahhh, what a life.

Today is the big Sapporo Snow Festival for us.  The festival officially starts tomorrow but if you go the day before you beat the crowds and you get cheaper hotel rooms.

The Sapporo Snow Festival, one of Japan’s largest winter events, attracts about two million people to see the many amazing snow and ice sculptures lining Odori Park, the grounds at Tsudome, and along the main street in Susukino.  Here are some of the sculptures we saw both large and small.

For seven days in February, Sapporo is turned into a winter dreamland of crystal-like ice and white snow. The Snow Festival began in 1950, with six snow statues made by local high school students in Odori Park. In 1955, the Self-Defense Force joined in and made a massive snow sculpture, the kind for which the Snow Festival is now famous.

One end of the Odori Park looked like this.  A long line of sculptures lined both sides of the park.

As we explored the sites we kept coming upon groups of little Japanese school children.  They would come up to us, say “excuse me” and then ever so properly and carefully ask us questions like “where are you from?” and “how do you like the snow festival?” and what kind of Japanese food do you like?”  They were so cute.  They all had notebooks and were taking notes.  Of course there was always a teacher or two with these children.  Here’s me answering their questions.

Here’s a snow sculpture promoting the new Star Wars movie coming up in December 2015.

Temple sculpture where they are practicing for the opening ceremony

and a couple more large sculptures.

At the far end of this long park is the TV Tower

where we took an elevator to the top for a birds eye view of Odori Park and the Snow Festival.

Time for lunch and some sake tasting so we hoofed it across town to the Sapporo Sake Museum for some tasting and purchasing.  The art work on the bottle is so simple and so striking.  This sake is made from local rice and local water and the business has been in operation for over 150 years.

In addition to all of the snow sculptures that are ready for viewing, there is the International Snow Sculpture Contest.  Twelve 3-person teams from around the world will participate.  They have 3 days to create their sculptures starting today.  The teams are from Australia, Korea, Finland, Hawaii, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, Thailand, and bum-ba-da-dum Portland, Oregon!

All the teams start out with their own block of snow.

Here’s a member of the Portland team in front of their block.  They are creating Orcas.

In another part of town, the Susukino district, are the ice sculptures.  These were very beautiful.

Here’s one more cool sighting from today in front of an office building across the street from the snow sculptures and one of my favorites.

OK, enough ice and snow sculptures for one day.

 

Another fun day in the cold north.  This morning we took a 45 minute train ride even farther north to the port town of Otaru.

I saw this Ferris Wheel as we were nearing Otaru.  Below is a view of the rough, windy sea.

This former fishing village is now a booming tourist destination.  It’s known for it’s canals

and for it’s Music Boxes.

We wandered up and down the streets of Otaru

and came upon a fish market with this guy cooking seafood on a grill out front.

We picked out some scallops from the tank in the foreground and a sea urchin and some crab legs, handed them to the guy and watched him crack them open and cook them right before our eyes.

Check out this amazing fish in the market here.

Back on the street we wandered into several places where they had free sake tastings.

 

And then around beer-thirty we found this “brewery” where we had a Japanese version of Dunkel, a German beer.

We were back on the train by 1535 and back to our hotel by 1620.  At 1700 we met a friend and headed off on foot to the famous Sapporo Beer Garden for dinner and a beer or two or …  The Beer Garden is in a very cool old building.

The specialty of the house is mutton which we grill ourselves at the table along with cabbage and sprouts.

 

From here a brisk walk back to the hotel with a stop in the underground walkway for a Cold Stone ice cream cone.  And the end to another wonderful day in Sapporo.

We’re here!  It’s 23 degrees F with 20 – 30 mph winds.  That equals = really really cold.  Sapporo is in the northern most prefecture of Japan.  In order to get here we left Iwakuni at 0630 this morning.  Took a 1 1/2 hour bus ride to Hiroshima.  Caught an hour and a half flight on JAL to Shin Chitose Airport.  Then another one hour bus ride to our hotel (Hotel Keio Plaza) in downtown Sapporo.  We arrived at about 1440 and at 1530 we had the option of doing a walking tour of downtown Sapporo with our tour guide.

View from our hotel room.

Here are some of the sights we saw on our guided walk.

Another interesting sight was how they created bamboo structures around the plants and trees to hold them up under all the snow in the wintertime.

One amazing thing about Sapporo is there is a whole underground city full of shops and people walking to and fro.

Since we were getting pretty cold and hungry and since Sapporo is on the northern coast of Japan and is therefore known for their seafood, we decided to head for the fish market for dinner.  It turned out the fish market was really a fish market and not a dining establishment but as we poked around we found a little place to eat.  And it was all about fresh fish and sashimi.  I had the grilled crab.

Since it was bitter cold we decided to walk back underground.  It was amazing.  So many people in a hurry walking through there, probably going home from work.  Just as busy and crowded as on the street level above but without the cars and the cold.

When we got back to the hotel Chris was still hungry so we found a “pub” across the street to get a beer and a sake and a snack.  This turned out to be quite the experience.  There are all these places where it seems like Japanese business men go after work to eat and drink and smoke cigarettes.  This was one of them.  Chris ordered a beer – which by the way was a Sapporo beer.  But when I ordered my sake the waiter/owner?/whatever brought this little box.  He put my glass in the box and proceeded to pour the sake from a large bottle into my glass until it overflowed and filled the little box.  I’d never seen anything like it before.

After I drank my glass I had to ask what to do with the sake in the box.  He said to pour it into my glass, which I did – many times.  Then as we were leaving I tried to ask him what the history behind the box was and the next thing we knew he grabbed the box, wiped it out with his apron and tucked it under Chris’ cap which he was holding in his hands.  I think this will be the best memento of this trip ever.

By the way, did I mention that it’s snowing?

I just wanted to share my Christmas present from Chris which I just got.

This Imari porcelain is from the oldest original ceramic ware in Japan and has been produced continuously since the late 17th century.  Sake tastes really good when sipped from these tiny cups.

Tomorrow we leave bright and early for a 4 day trip to Sapporo and the great Sapporo Snow Festival.

Once again Chris and I are together in Japan.  At last.  Even though it’s just for a few weeks it’s still great to be here.  My flight over was amazingly long.  I left Coronado at 4pm on Wednesday, 1st flight left at 5:30pm to LAX.  2nd flight left LAX at 12:02am on Thursday.  We flew out over the ocean – off to Japan.  But then the plane turned right and flew north up the Central Valley of California, east of San Luis Obispo, up along the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay, over Napa and Ukiah and finally at Eureka we headed out to sea.

Just after we were airborne, we were served a snack.  Then 9 hours later we were served a Japanese breakfast.  I wish I could have reached my camera to take a picture of it because it was quite something.  This breakfast consisted of rice, teriyaki salmon, vegees including lotus root and edamame, buckwheat noodles, tofu, thinly sliced hot pink things, pineapple, cantelope and honeydew melon slices, and a 1″ square of sweet cake.  Oh, and a cup of miso soup.  And tea, of course.  It’s still the middle of the night outside – 2:30am in Japan.

I arrived in Tokyo/Haneda at 11:45am Thursday – California time.  (0445 on Friday – Japan time.)  That means we were in the air from LAX to Tokyo for 12 hours!  And it was pitch black outside the entire time.  At this hour of the morning going through customs and immigration and baggage claim was a breeze.  From here I took a shuttle from the International terminal to Terminal 2.  The airport is so big it took 15 minutes to get there.  (And this is the smaller of the two airports in Tokyo.)  After de-icing the plane we were on our way to Iwakuni at 0930.  And by noon Chris and I were together again.

As you recall, when I left Japan last Sept. our furniture had not yet arrived.  So when Chris got home from our Corsica trip he had the task of receiving our stuff and organizing our Japan house.  He did a great job and it’s been fun to see everything here.  It certainly feels like home now.  My job while I’m here is to pick up where Chris left off and finish getting things organized.  Should be fun.