Nightlife

Friday one of the people in the program (also from my same college) was celebrating her birthday by putting together a group to go out for ‘yakiniku’, which I’ve described before (where you get the meat raw and grill it yourself?). It was a lot of fun, especially as it was my first experience with something called ‘tabehodai’, which means essentially ‘all you can eat.’ The rules are this: everyone at the table has to order it if anyone does, and you can order as much as you like from the tabehodai menu in 1.5 hours for a flat rate. I believe that if you leave a lot behind you get charged extra, but this did not come up. I don’t know how much beef, kimchi, and various other things I ate, but I think that I most certainly got my money’s worth. I think that the waiters where a little scared, there were 22 of us Americans and we were all pretty rambunctious. And hungry. After dinner, most people broke off to continue their evenings, but since I was for once in the Shijo area on a Friday night with no other plans, I decided to see if I could see any maiko heading to engagements in the nearby Pontocho geisha district. It was a very festive atmosphere, but I didn’t see any maiko or geisha, just groups of rather tipsy salary men. When I decided that I wasn’t going to have any luck there, I opted to head over across the river to the Gion geisha district to see if I could see any there. I did have more luck, and was able to see at least three different maiko, though I felt too embarrassed to take pictures of them, and I didn’t really want to bother them while they were working. So I have no photos, sadly. This done, I decided that it was probably time to head home, only to realize that I’d already missed the last bus back home. This was a nuisance, but there was still the subway, though it is a little more expensive and doesn’t drop me off as close to my house. Well, I usually get to the subway station by taking an underground tunnel from underneath the very conspicuous Hankyu department store in a straight line straight to where I need to go. Unfortunately, sections of the Hankyu tunnel close after a certain point in the evening, forcing one to attempt to follow its route from street-level, which is more difficult than it sounds when one is tired and the streets are crowded with Friday night revellers. So, after several wrong turns I finally got on the subway home a little more tired than I had anticipated.
-The buses don’t run nearly as late as I seem to think.
-This all-you-can-eat beef place was only 2100yen for women and 2200yen for men, which is quite a steal, especially considering how expensive beef is in Japan.
-Pontocho maiko must be sneakier, because the streets are narrow with few side-streets, and yet I saw no one. Gion’s streets are wider, so I guess that it’s harder for them to hide?
-An alarming number of taxis go through the main street of Gion at night.
-Most all shops appear to be closed by 9, only the bars, clubs, and restaurants stay open late.

General Douglas MacArthur and the Takarazuka Revue

On Sunday five friends and I went to see another Takarazuka show, this one called ‘Reimei no Kaze’, which they translated as ‘Morning Breeze’ but I would translate as ‘Dawn Wind’. The morning did not start off well. For starters, I had bought my tickets separately from my friends, and so while I had a ticket to the 11am show, they were all attending the 3pm one, which left me on my own for most of the day. Unfortunately, I also got on a slow train while on my way to Takarazuka city and started to run pretty far behind schedule, to the point that I was still two stops away from the station I needed at 10:45. In preparation for a mad dash from the station to the theatre, I removed my ticket from the purse that I was using (which was deep and had no pockets, making it hard to locate things in) to the pocket of my trench coat. Well, while I was running to the theatre it must have fallen out of my pocket, because when I arrived at the doors to the Grande Theatre my ticket was no longer there. Luckily, I miraculously remembered my seat number and row, and no one had accidentally sat in it, meaning that once everyone was seated and the show had begun the ushers called down for me, having verified that the seat that I claimed to own was in fact empty. So, I missed the first 8minutes or so of the play, but at least I made it in. Like the other two shows that I have gone to in this theatre, the first half was a play in the proper sense, in that it had a plot and the like. Not that I understood the plot. In fact, I understood very little about what was going on that wasn’t directly related to history, did I mention that this was a play about Japan before, during, but mostly after WWII? The story itself followed a man that I’d never heard of named Jiro Shirasu, who I am led by the program to believe was an actual person, and his devotion to a peaceful but independent Japan. To be honest, I was much more interested in the other main character: General Douglas MacArthur. Who was played by the lovely Yamato Yuga, an about 5’7” Japanese woman, with a corncob pipe and aviators. In this show MacArthur was a dashing young man who truly loved the country of Japan for all of its beauty. There was not much singing in this first part, and since I understood very little of what was going on (I talked to a Japanese woman afterward who said that even she had had a difficult time following the show) I didn’t enjoy it as much as I have others that I’ve seen. What I *really* did enjoy, however, was the revue that made up the second half of the show: Passion. It was a lot of fun, the dancing was amazing, the music very catchy (does anyone remember the song ‘Mambo #5’? They sang that in Japanese.) and the top stars as bright as ever. After the show I met up with my friends and visited a store in the area, then visited the costume museum and gift shop, had some lunch and talked with some people. I had originally thought of heading home, but I realized that even if I headed home immediately at that point that I would be late for dinner, so I sent a message to my host mother and waited for my friends’ show to be over so that we could all eat together. We were about to get on the train to head home when one of my friends realized that her wallet was missing, which led us back to a couple stores and the theatre, which was unfortunately closed.
-The Takarazuka Grand Teatre closes before 8pm.
-The police box at Takarazuka station has a ‘Takarazuka Top Stars’ calendar on the wall. Every store in the area has some sort of poster or whatever, but the police station?
- The troupe, Cosmos troupe, is the youngest in Takarazuka, and I had heard beforehand that it tended to be more modern and experimental than the others. What I was not warned about, however, was that the costume designers for Cosmos are not afraid of colour. The palates were amazing, one scene in pink, three shades of bright purple, brilliant blue, gold and the main singer in silver and red, another was all in lime green, orange, black, red, purple, red, and more gold. Thankfully there were a couple scenes in there that were monochromatic, my eyes needed the rest.

Valentine's Day

I figured that, since Valentine’s day is a holiday imported into Japan and yet is in many ways distinct from American Valentine’s day, that it was worth mentioning here. For starters, the tradition here is not for men to buy their girlfriends things, but for women to buy men chocolate. The chocolate falls into two categories: That which is for someone for whom a woman has special feelings (such as a boyfriend or crush) and that which is obligatory, (such as is given to bosses, teachers and the like). Frequently, if a woman really likes someone, she will make something chocolate for them, such as cake or other candies. What this means is that Valentine’s day here is very much a chocolate holiday, though I believe that there have been attempts to branch out in other directions. Every department store, bakery, and convenience store has a substantial section devoted to chocolate, the quality of which of course depends on the venue. I personally decided to pick up some chocolate for my host family at my favourite bakery, where they had some ‘raw chocolate’, which is basically very soft chocolate that melts at just above room temperature, that had black pepper in it for a little bit of interesting flavour. When I got home my host family had also bought me some chocolate, a box from a Kobe company called Morozoff, which is believed to have started the chocolate-giving tradition here in Japan. It was *very* nice chocolate. There is none left.

Zen, Tea, and warm socks

For my architecture class on Wednesday we had a field trip to Daitokuji Zen Buddhist temple. The purpose of this outing was to see some of the famous tea rooms in the complex, as we were studying the very specific elements of tea ceremony related architecture. This was all well and fine, but there was the slight problem of the weather, by which I mean that it was freezing cold with more than a negligible amount of snow falling. That morning I had had a bit of a misunderstanding with my alarm clock, and thus did not have much time to consider my wardrobe for the day (wake-up time: 10:20. Class time: 10:45. Average amount of time taken to get from my front door to school at a brisk walk: 15minutes). I would have been fine if we hadn’t had to actually enter the temple, where shoes are prohibited. Our first stop, the Zuihou-in sub-temple, was quite lovely, especially as we were served matcha green tea and semi-sweet snacks and then treated to a talk by one of the priests, who was very interesting. After this we walked around the temple for a bit, saw the two different rock gardens, and then were invited into the ‘main attraction’ as it were: the tea rooms. Both of the ones that we visited were extremely small, less than 6ft square, with very simple interiors made of natural materials. I hadn’t much thought about it before, but tea ceremony and Zen Buddhism really do suit each other. I was still pretty much fine when we left this temple, and I really enjoyed the priest’s explanations of the rooms and his thoughts on spirituality, as well as the unexpectedly adorable knitted cap that he put on about halfway through. I suppose that if I were bald I’d wear one too. The next place in Daitokuji that our professor had wanted us to see was unfortunately closed for repairs, so we decided to visit another subtemple called Koto-in which is famous for its bamboo. I was getting pretty cold by this point. The rooms in the place were very nice, with screens and the like but I was hardly in any state to enjoy it. I thought that I was going to die when everyone reached the veranda (which looked out on the accumulating snow and a forest of bamboo that swayed in the breeze) and then sat down. Outside. Watching the snow. I don’t know how long the group literally chilled out there, but it felt like an eternity and my feet were starting to hurt. Finally we got up to leave. It actually hurt to put my shoes back on. I wasn’t warm again until my bath that evening. I love the bath.
-Daitokuji never taught Christianity, but it was associated with it in the past. In Zuiho-in there is a rock garden that is in the shape of an asymmetrical cross and a special kind of stone lantern under which is apparently buried a statue of the Virgin Mary. These lanterns were used secretive ways to continue Christian worship after it was outlawed. A former patron of the temple converted to Christianity, so the garden and lantern are in honour of him.
-The Taian tea room was built originally by Sen no Rikyu, the founder of tea ceremony as we know it, and was used to host his most famous pupil, the warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi. The version that exists now was rebuilt a long time ago, but as it uses the same main pillar it is considered to be the same tea room.
-To enter a formal tea room, the guest is required to literally crawl through a small doorway about 75cm x 75cm. This served a double purpose, the first being that everyone is equally humbled in the tea room, samurai and commoner alike, the second being that it would be next to impossible to get through the door while still wearing one’s sword.
-I actually did receive a text message from my professor at about noon before our 1:15 class that everyone should dress warmly and wear thick socks, but I really don’t know how I was supposed to find thick socks after I was already at school. Apparently this is considered ample warning in my professor’s world, which is something worth noting for future reference.

Tombs

When making our plans for February break, my friends and I decided that we should try to get back a full day before school began again so that we would have time to relax and finish any homework that needed doing before school started up again, and thus planned to come back on Sunday evening, as Monday was a national holiday. Our plan was, however, foiled when we learned that we had an all-day field trip planned for our Japanese Antiquity class on Monday. I was a little annoyed by this, but I got on the train to Tenri at 9am anyway. Tenri is a rather small town that is most famous for the ancient ‘keyhole tombs’ that are rather plentiful in the areas surrounding it. Many of these tombs are designated as those of members of the royal family of Japan by the Imperial Household agency, and thus may not be excavated or even stood upon. Other, smaller, tombs however have fewer restrictions on them. They are called ‘keyhole’ tombs because from above they look like an old-fashioned keyhole, with a rounded mound connected to a trapezoidal flat section. The first one that we went to see was rather small and had no plants on it, though we were told by our professor that during the summer it is covered in bamboo. Because at one time the entire rounded portion was covered in pottery (haniwa, actually) you can still find little pieces of red clay ceramic in the area. The piece that I found was only about 1x.5 inches, but it’s still cool to have. After this one we went to another tomb that I didn’t really get a feel for the overall appearance of, due to the cover of bamboo and trees. We walked up a bit before reaching a sort of stone altar with a small opening into the side of the hill behind it. When our professor told us to head in I was a bit sceptical, but after a rather undignified backwards crawl into the tomb I saw that it was actually pretty big inside. It was about a 10ft long by 6ft –ish wide room with a large sarcophagus made of a single slab of stone taking up about half of it on the far end. Various members of our group tried climbing in, and each one fit including one of the over-6ft-tall guys with room to spare. I am claustrophobic, however, and thus did not volunteer. After this we had lunch, then headed to another part of Tenri to see a tomb that had been excavated several years ago, and in which they found a ton of brass mirrors. There was a playground at the foot of it, where several of us took advantage of. The weather was so amazing that it was hard to stay away from it. For the first time in months I was outside and wishing that I didn’t have my coat with me. Our final stop was one of the restricted tombs, said to hold the remains of the 10th emperor. We couldn’t go in, but we did walk around it. It was pretty big, with a shrine sort of set-up in front and a wall all the way around it. We got home later than expected, and I had a hard time finishing my homework by a decent hour, but it was an unexpectedly fun day.
-There is an ongoing debate about the location of a country called ‘Yamatai’ by ancient Chinese chronicles. In the record, the Chinese mention establishing contact ‘Himiko’ the queen of this region that was supposedly the most powerful in Japan at the time. The problem is that there is no such name in the Imperial family genealogy, and no region called ‘Yamatai’. The problem of finding out who Himiko was had a lot of publicity during the bubble economy, which the city of Tenri capitalized on by hinting, due to the number and richness of the tombs discovered within the region, that Yamatai was near Tenri. There are several areas in Japan that make similar claims.
-My professor is a lot more personable than I had originally thought.
-One is never too old for play structures, though one might be too big.
-There is no Tenri Hello Kitty, which is unfortunate: I really wanted a Himiko Hello Kitty.

Homeward Bound

Our last day was not of any particular note. Check-out time was 10am, and since there didn’t seem to be anything to do in Chitose we decided to just go to the airport really early, do our gift shopping, find a place to sit, and hang out until it was time to leave. The lines at the airport were really confusing, and we stood briefly in two different incorrect lines before an airline spokeswoman rounded us up and put us in the right one. After that we went to get our all-important souvenir shopping done at one of the many shops that they have for just that purpose. I decided on these corn and white chocolate snacks that sort of taste like rice crispies treats and something called ‘shiroi koibito’, which is a famous Hokkaido souvenir that is basically thing vanilla wafers with white chocolate in between. Awhile ago (I’m not certain when exactly) there was a scandal where it was discovered that the shiroi koibito distributors had been taking expired boxes, changing the dates on them, and then selling them. This seems to have been cleared up, as it is once again a popular item. After this we headed to the restaurant area which had a lounge near a coffee stand and hung out there. There was a lot of noise, however, from some sort of event that involved women dressed up as characters from a popular girl’s television show posing for pictures with their young fans. It was a little odd. Lunch was over-priced pizza preceded by the best soft-serve ice cream that I’ve ever had, the plane ride was longer than I had remembered but uneventful. It’s good to be back in Kyoto.
-I don’t know if I mentioned this before, but if you are travelling domestically in Japan you do not need to present your ID at security, and you can keep your shoes on. They also do not seem to have the same liquid rule that they do in the states, as my friends was advised to take the beer that he had bought as a gift for his host family on the plane with him.
-There seem to be two schools of thought on how to costume real people as animated characters. The first (the one with which I was familiar) is that since the characters are supposed to be humans, they should just be people dressed in the character’s costume. The second (the one I saw at the airport) seems to be that since animated characters have a very distinctive look that does not work well on real people, they should be costumed head-to-toe, with masks and gloves and no actual skin showing. I understand this, but it’s a little creepy.
-I love seeing new places, but it’s nice to have the privacy of my own room.

Chitose

While we had rooms for Wednesday through Friday nights, our hotel was all booked up on Saturday night, which meant that we were going to have to find some other accommodations for our last night in Hokkaido. When we went down to breakfast that morning we asked the owner of the Inn if he knew of anywhere in the area that might be open, but he came back after making a couple calls to tell us that things were full up in Sapporo for the Snow Festival weekend. At this point we considered our options, of which there were a limited number. One option was finding an internet café, where we could rent a booth for the night and sleep on the couches, which I was not in favour of mainly due to the lack of privacy and showers that that entailed. Another option was finding a room in a by-the-night hotel, but we had not seen a single one since being in Sapporo and didn’t really want to ask for directions to one. Finally, we realized that we were going to have to go to the Chitose airport the following afternoon regardless, and could just head that way early and put up in an airport hotel. With this in mind we went to the Sapporo station tourist information place and got the numbers of some hotels in Chitose, chose the least expensive looking ones and called them in succession. Finally we happened on one that had a triple open for the night in question, which was a little more expensive than our previous hotels but possessed a shower and real beds. We spent the rest of our afternoon seeing the last of the ice sculptures in Susukino and getting some lunch, which we had at an Indian/Thai food restaurant, where I was able to get Thai curry with cheese naan. We hopped a train to Chitose after retrieving our luggage from our hotel, and were at our new accommodations by 5:30pm. There is nothing to do/see/eat in Chitose, or at least the part that we were in. We left our hotel after relaxing in the room for a bit and headed in a direction that seemed to have a few more lights, and managed to find only a couple ramen restaurants. I hadn’t really wanted ramen, but we didn’t have a choice, and in the end it was some of the best ramen that I’d had all trip. They had an English menu, but it was bizarre. I would have taken a picture, but I didn’t want to be rude.
-When staying in Sapporo for the Snow Festival, it is probably better to book rooms further in advance.
-They do actually have showers in many internet cafes in Japan, but I have been told that it is better not to use them.
-After this week I’m not going to want to eat ramen again for awhile.
-The best (and cheapest!) food that I had the entire trip was all from the main shopping arcade in Sapporo.

Yuki Matsuri

The next day we explored the festival displays more fully during the day, returned to our room for a rest in the late afternoon, and then decided to head out and see the festival at night. Many of the bigger sculptures are lit-up with coloured lights after dark, so we decided that we would eat our dinner at the food stands in the area while taking a look. The food stands sold many Hokkaido specialty foods, including grilled sweet corn (which we tried) and crab (which we did not). It got a little cold, though, as tends to happen in the north after dark, so we headed home. Or rather, we tried to. We got a little turned around. The following day we decided to see the Sapporo beer museum and old factory, and also decided that we should go there on foot, mainly because the bus that was mentioned in our tour book did not appear to actually exist. It was a little further than it looked on the map. Truth is, there are two different beer museums, both of which we visited, and both of which are former Sapporo factories that no longer make beer, actual production having been moved out of the city decades ago. The first location was more mall than museum, which was fine because we had already worked up an appetite slogging through the snow. We opted for okonomiyaki, which was filling and warm. After another trek through the snow we found ourselves at the second factory, which was more of the museum that we had been expecting. After the brief walkthrough of the history of Sapporo beer, we ended in the beer garden, which looked rather like a European bar with wooden floors and chairs and a big hearth. I didn’t get any beer myself, but I did find that they had various unusual flavours of ice cream, including curry, squid ink, cream cheese and shiso. I decided on black beer and lavender, both of which were delicious (and cheap). We decided to take the bus back to the city centre, and had lunch there at a very cheap dumpling restaurant (400yen for rice, a small plate of gyoza dumplings, miso soup, and some sort of cabbage salad. We were very tired afterward and simply fell into bed upon our return.
-Take some sort of transportation to the Sapporo beer museum.
-If I wear my gollashes, I will have no problem avoiding puddles and the like, but if I opt for warmer sneakers, I will inevitably find myself standing ankle-deep in a puddle.
-Yebisu, Sapporo and Asahi beers were, at least initially, all made by the same Nippon Brewing Company.
-The Hokkaido baseball team, the Nippon Ham Fighters, train by next to the Sapporo beer garden. Coincidence? I think not.
-Foods for which Hokkaido is famous: crab, dairy, melon, ramen, ‘jengisu kan’ or thinly sliced sheep meat, ikura fish ro, squid.
-sapporo- style okonomiyaki involves a thin pancake, on which you place cabbage and bean sprouts, noodles, sheep, and a fried egg. It’s really good.

To Sapporo

On Wednesday morning we got up early and took our hotel’s concierge up on her offer to drive us to the bus station. It really was very nice of her, and we sadly didn’t have any good gifts on hand to give her, and so were forced to just buy the nicest chocolate that was available at the convenience store. The bus was amazing. It didn’t cost any more than the subway would have, but was comfortable, warm, and got us to Sapporo in one vehicle. The driver even stopped at a rest stop to allow everyone to get out and buy snacks or use the bathroom. At this stop I decided to sample something called ‘Potato fry’, which was basically like a thin layer of doughnut around a potato. It was very tasty. The bus dropped us off at Sapporo station, from which we rode the subway to Susukino, where our hotel was. Perhaps ‘hotel’ is not the right term, as it was more like a homey guest house run by an older Japanese couple, where we had a simple but nice room in a traditional style, with the bathing facilities shared between guests. We actually circled it several times before finally finding it. After we’d dropped off our luggage, we took a look at the Snow Festival that we had come to see. It was pretty interesting, with tons of people from all over the world visiting massive and extremely detailed snow and ice sculptures. After looking around a bit we returned to our room, rested, and then headed out for some dinner. We luckily happened upon a cheap but delicious ‘yakiniku’ or ‘grilled meat’ restaurant that had excellently tender meat and the best kimchi (Korean pickled spicy cabbage) that I’ve ever had.
-The streets in Sapporo are laid out on a grid, with all of the blocks numbered based on their distance north, south, east or west of the television tower that is roughly at the centre of the city. This should mean that it is easy to find places in Sapporo, but because it is the blocks and not the intersections or streets that are numbered it can get very confusing.
-Yakiniku restaurants essentially provide patrons with a sort of small grill in the middle of their table, on which they grill their own meat and vegetables to their taste. It’s a lot of fun.
-There are many young women in Sapporo who, despite below freezing temperatures, wear short skirts without stockings or leggings underneath and fashionable but not very warm-looking coats. While I have noticed this in Kyoto, it is far colder in Sapporo, leading me to believe that these girls have no nerves in their legs.

Volcano!

On our last day in Toya we opted to really see the area before we left it early the following morning. With this in mind we walked about in the snow, made some snow angels, and sampled the road-side footbaths. Our actual destination was the Volcano Science Museum, newly refurbished for the imminent summit. It was there that we learned that Toya is centered around the most active volcano in Japan, Mount Usu, which had eruptions in 1910, 1977, and again in 2000. It is, however, a very predictable volcano, with rumbling and ash plumes leading up to eruptions days in advance. Because of this it is a very important volcano to the scientific community, according to the literature. The museum itself was a lot more interesting than I had anticipated, with a theatre rigged with several movie screens and something that made everything vibrate as if there were pre-eruption earthquakes, a simulator of the 1977 eruption, and some relics of the 2000 eruption. In this last category they had a truck that had been totaled by ballistic projectile rocks (I learned the word for that in Japanese from the exhibit as well!), shattered paving stones and train tracks that had been bent by the ground moving underneath them. After the museum we took a look around the visitor’s centre, which had information about local wildlife. We finished off our day with some dinner out and a movie back in the room with a bottle of local wine from the convenience store. Oh, and of course one last dip in the hot springs.
-While my new wellingtons are waterproof, thus protecting my feet from the snow, they are not at all insulated, which means that my feet are still cold, just not wet.
-Mount Usu actually has several smaller peaks on it, which are named for the different eras that they ‘appeared’ in. The idea of mountains just popping up is more than a little alarming to me.
-There are several invasive species that are causing problems around here, among them raccoons and crayfish. I can’t say that I understand how either of them got here though..

Snow Country

After such an exhausting Sunday we opted to lay around and consider our options on Monday. With this in mind, we slept late, took a short walk around the area to see what there was to do, and came to the conclusion that the answer was ‘not much’ on both counts. It appears that Toya is a popular Summer destination for people trying to escape the heat of more southern locations. It is really a very beautiful place, with a caldera lake (Lake Toya) where I believe that people go boating or fishing, mountains for hiking and camping, and of course the hot springs. In the Winter the place is practically deserted, with more than half of the stores closed up and a lot of snow. This explains why our hotel was so cheap. After our brief exploration and a stop at the convenience store for food we stayed in most of the rest of the day watching more television. Dinner was a ‘yakitori’ restaurant recommended by our concierge, and on our way back from dinner we found this sort of illuminated arch in the middle of the town that was really pretty. It’d be amazing to hold a party or something in a place like that, if, you know, it weren’t below freezing outside. Over breakfast that day we came to a decision: we were going to have to move. Our main reason for going to Hokkaido in the dead of winter was to see the Sapporo snow festival. Unfortunately, if we were to continue staying in Toya we were going to have to pay a considerable amount for day trips into the city, with 3 hours worth of commute each direction. When we decided that this was not a viable option we set about calling hotels and youth hostels listed in the ‘Lonely Planet’ travel book, and managed to find a hotel in the city that had about the same price as the place we were currently in. We managed to get rooms for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, but not Saturday, our last night in town. We’ll figure something out for Saturday night. It’ll be an adventure!
-Places in Hokkaido have heating in every room, shop and restaurant, which means that I am consistently warmer here than in Kyoto.
-Hokkaido cold is the dryer cold that I am used to from home, not the bone-chilling cold of Kyoto. It’s amazing to me that I can feel more comfortable in sub-freezing temperatures here than in snowless Kyoto.
-There are little hotsprings on the sides of the road here that have been made into hand, foot, and dog baths. It’s really very novel.
-Lonely Planet has good hotel information.
-Toya is going to be the site of this summer’s G8 summit, for which they are already preparing.

Toya

Sunday was a travel day. My friends and I hopped the airport shuttle from Kyoto Station at about noon, opting to have lunch once we were at the airport. The Kansai airport is large and has many shops and restaurants, none of which I appreciated the last time I was there, following my 12-hour flight from San Francisco. Because we had time to spare, we grabbed some overpriced food court pizza and looked around. I finally managed to get myself an Osaka Hello Kitty (with her dressed as the Hanshin Tigers baseball team mascot and riding a piece of takoyaki) and also happened upon a new(?) line of Kabuki-themed Kitties. I decided that they were too cool to pass up and bought one (with her dressed as a Tayuu courtesan from the Edo period and carrying a sword). After this we figured that we might as well head to our gate, which we did after the most laid-back security run that I’ve ever been through. They didn’t even ask for my id. The plane was rather like any other plane that I’ve ridden except for that everything was in Japanese, there were practically no soda options on the drink cart and we were given no pretzels. Of course, it was only a hour-or-so-long flight to Chitose Airport in Hokkaido. Once at Chitose, we took a train to the main train depot outside of the airport grounds, where we attempted to buy a ticket to Toya, where we were going to be staying. This is when we discovered that our hotel was a lot further from Sapporo than we had expected. The nice man behind the counter said that we could only buy the tickets from him (instead of from the ticket machine), and quoted us at almost $40 per person, with a travel time of 2 hours. We were stunned. When we asked him if there was a cheaper option, he wrote us out a complicated, almost 4-hour-long itinerary, changing trains three times with our longest layover being a full hour. Those tickets cost just over $20, and since we, as always, had more time than money, we took them. It was a long evening. For our hour-long layover, we hung out in the heated waiting room at the train station, drinking vending machine tea and watching episodes of a show called ‘Pushing Daisies’ that one of my friends had on her computer. Once we finally reached the Toya train station it was too late to catch a bus, so we grabbed a taxi, which took us to our hotel. We were exhausted, but we got into our rooms and took advantage of the hot springs that the hotel had on-site and then watched a little more TV. We fell into our soft, warm beds and I, at least, fell almost immediately asleep.
-The resort town of Toya is a considerable distance from Sapporo, even though our information and that printed in the ‘Lonely Planet’ Japan travel guide give the impression that it is just outside city limits.
-Because our hotel had a hot spring that was open 24-hours a day, the hotel rooms themselves did not have showers.
-When we checked in, we were shown a list of bath guidelines. The one that most caught our attention was the one that stated that we should not go into the bath more than 3 times a day. I would have thought that this was just silly, if I hadn’t also heard from my host sister that some people get so excited about having a hotspring so close and free that they bathe too frequently in the sulphurous water and make themselves sick. I did not have this problem.

Shopping for warm

I managed to get through another week of school without incident, which is always a good thing, especially when that week ends with a week-long break! During February the Japanese students at my school here have exams, so the exchange students get a whole week off. Most everyone in the program is taking this opportunity to go on some sort of trip, some friends are going to Saipan, others to Okinawa, but I myself am going to Hokkaido for the Snow Festival that they hold there this time every year. Because Hokkaido is famously snowy and cold, my host sister took me shopping for suitable clothing today. This included a trip to Uniqlo, where I decided to try a different tactic than last time (When I found that I don’t really fit their women’s XL) and try for men’s clothes instead. This actually worked pretty well, since men’s clothes tend to have broader shoulders, and I wasn’t really looking for fashion pieces so much as things that would keep me warm. Pants were, unfortunately, a little more difficult. The only thing that I had difficulty finding were waterproof boots, which no shoe store of any size or description seemed to carry. In the end I had to settle for some rather fancy gardening boots, but at least I got something. There is nothing worse than having wet feet.
-Apparently a men’s M here and a women’s M in the US have similar dimensions.
-Men’s pants are just plain different from women’s. I never noticed this before because I had never tried to find a pair of men’s pants that fit me before.