*Please excuse the horizontal orientation of the meant-to-be-vertical pictures. I can't figure out for the life of me how to rotate them here on Blogger, and according to the Help section many other people are having the same problem. I've already sent a missive off to the Blogger people, so hopefully they'll be able to kindly tell me how to fix this. Until then, enjoy anyway!
At Fukuoka Airport, bundled up and waiting excitedly for our flight to Sapporo.
In Sapporo! Bright city lights + lots of snow = a happy Jo!
I think this is supposed to be the Imperial Palace carved out of ice. It was gorgeous all lit up like that, and those two guys singing weren't half bad.
The horde of snowmen at Satoland, another site of the Yuki Matsuri a little bit outside the Sapporo city centre. What an amazing sight. Using wooden paddles and stainless steel mixing bowls, kids and adults could make their own snowmen, decorate them with colored wooden pegs, and then attach a wish or message around their necks. As you can see, snowmen here in Japan are made of 2 balls, not 3. This is fascinating to some Japanese people, particularly my junior high school students and the teachers, who flipped out when I showed them a picture of an "American snowman." I personally think the two ball approach is cuter, ne?
Ramen Yokocho Alley, a narrow street of 16 ramen shops. How to choose???
Miso Ramen, a Hokkaido specialty. The other specialty includes corn, but I don't really dig corn in any incarnation besides on the cob anymore since I've been here in Japan. I've had corn on my pizza (pizza topped with corn, mayonnaise, and squid is something I see on menus regularly...), in my Japanese salad along with the seaweed and daikon, and in other things I don't care to remember. Stay out of my food, corn!
The Chakri Maha Prasat Grand Palace in Thailand. Sponsored by the Thai and Japanese governments to celebrate their uninterrupted and harmonious relationship. Can you believe that thing is made out of ice and snow??
It's a toss up as to which is my favorite, the Grand Palace or this, Hikone Castle. I love the Samurai Cat on the right.
On the Sunday of our long weekend, we took a chartered bus to Kiroro, a well-known ski resort outside of Sapporo. It was beautiful. The snow was perfect powder and we had a great time skiing and snowboarding. It did start snowing pretty hard halfway into our day though, which made for frozen faces and blinded eyes, but it was still amazing.
This is how cold it was at Kiroro when it started snowing down.
To reward ourselves from a tiring day of snow sports, we splurged on a 4,000 yen (about $40) kani (crab) tabehoudai (all you can eat). We had 90 minutes to eat as much king crab, snow crab, shrimp tempura, shrimp and crab sushi, and egg custard as we possibly could. This is me, Matt, and Mel ready to chow down with the provided implements: crab shears and picks. Get your game face on!
Taz and Son marveling at our first plate of crab legs. We chowed down without speaking for the first 20 minutes and then inevitably slowed down. Well, okay we took funny pictures like this one while we were eating, but other than that, we wanted to get our money's worth. I think I called it quits for real after about 60 minutes. I can't remember how many crab legs I ate, but MAN it was delicious. We definitely deserved it after a productive and industrious weekend. Otsukare sama deshita to us! (roughly translated out to "you look tired from having worked so hard," which is a phrase people use at work or when you want to say "good job" to someone. Really difficult to translate into English).
Sapporo was an excellent trip made with excellent company, but I'm glad to be back in (relatively) warm, southernly located Kyushu. I don't think I could ever handle living somewhere where it snows that much!
2 comments:
UWAAAAAAAAAH~ KAKKOI :]
The kebab-takeaway shops here insist on putting corn on pizza... We've had a hell of a time trying to explain that nobody in America would ever eat pepperoni pizza with sweetcorn on it, but they just don't get it.
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