Monday, February 20, 2012

The Yukimatsuri in Sapporo! - part 1 of 2

I took Friday the 10th and Monday the 13th off from work so that I could go on the Yukimatsuri trip and I even took a couple of hours off that Thursday since that was the day we were taking the ferry and we didn't want to be stuck in traffic on the way to Sendai.  We ended up being stuck in traffic anyway... but we arrived with plenty of time to spare!  The ferry left Sendai Port at 7:40 PM and arrived in Tomokomai, Hokkaido at 11 AM the following morning so I was on the boat for about 15 hours (a new record for me).  The ferry was pretty high-tech actually, it had a mini movie theater, a couple of restaurants, a small arcade, a gift shop, around 20 vending machines, and Japanese-style baths.  Our room was divided into three narrow hallways with bunk beds built into the walls on either side; the bunks had curtains too in case you wanted some privacy.  It was surprisingly comfortable.  After eating dinner Anne, Julia (a JET from Ireland we go to the movies with sometimes), and I went to see what was playing in the theater.  It was Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader which I'd heard wasn't as good as the first two in the movie-series but had always been one of my favorite in the book-series so I was interested in seeing it.  Unfortunately it was being played in Japanese and didn't have English subtitles so even though I was trying to pay attention I ended up almost falling asleep right away so we left after a few minutes.

I slept really well considering that I was on a ferry (I can imagine my dad and brother wouldn't have been able to sleep at all since they get extremely sea sick).  In the morning Anne and I woke up early to go to the Japanese-style baths.  I say "Japanese-style" since it's not at all like taking a bath in the US or other western countries.  The last time I took a bath before the ferry was when I sprained my ankle a few years ago and wasn't able to take a shower.  But in Japan people have baths all the time.  To take a bath you first take a shower outside of the bathtub (bathrooms have drains on the floor and waterproof walls so this is not a problem) and once you're all squeaky-clean then you can enter the bath water and relax for a while.  On the ferry there were public baths since there's not enough room for individual bathtubs.  The ladies' bathroom was separated into a changing area (not changing rooms, a changing area), a shower section, and two baths (one was jacuzzi-like with bubbles, the other was plain hot water).  I was kind of embarrassed to go, I mean, I never even changed in front of the other girls in high school gym class!  But I figured that it's part of the Japan-experience so I should at least try it once.  Anyway, I'm glad I tried it, it wasn't as embarrassing as I had imagined, there weren't even a lot of people around since I was there in the morning and people in Japan tend to bathe at night.  Anne said it's better to go with other foreigners though since if you're clearly not Japanese people might stare at you just because you look different.  Anyway, the ferry docked around 11 that morning and then we all took a 2 hour bus ride into the city of Sapporo.

We stayed at a hostel so there were bunk beds again but it was a decent place.  It was around 2 PM on Friday at that point and we were scheduled to meet up with everyone again that evening so that we could go to the Sapporo Bier Garten and have all-you-can-eat grilled lamb and vegetables.  We walked to Odori Park (one of the main areas of the festival) since we heard there was an ice skating rink there.  It turned out to be a small, beaten up rink so we decided to check out some of the festival stalls instead.  The stalls had everything from hamburgers and chocolate-covered bananas to takoyaki (fried octopus) and taiyaki (a fish-shaped cake).  There were many souvenir booths as well so we scouted around for gifts to bring back to our teachers.  That evening we went to the lamb dinner and I ate more meat than I ever have in my entire life!  Part of the problem was that I was the one grilling a lot of the meat since I was seated right in front of one of the mini-grills on the table but wow that meat was good!  As we sat down at the restaurant the servers gave everyone bibs (like the kind people get when eating lobster), and plastic bags to put our jackets in (along with any other items that we didn't want to smell of smoke and lamb by the end of the evening).

The room was big, smoky, and filled with delicious meat.

The table-grill is on the left, some meat is on the right, and someone wearing a lamb-bib is in the background.
I got some omiyage (souvenirs) for my teachers at the Bier Garten gift shop (including chocolate-covered "beer jellies" which sound interesting) and I was really happy to get the shopping out of the way.  I've got to say I'm also really glad that I got some new boots before going to the snow festival since the outdoor temperature was pretty low (often -5 Celsius [23 Fahrenheit] and under) and also there was a fair amount of ice and snow covering the sidewalks.  I think that each individual building must be in charge of shoveling their own sidewalks because sometimes the height of the ice and snow would vary considerably between buildings.  I swear that some of the buildings even had heated sidewalks since they were perfectly snow-free and decidedly damp.  It was nice indoors though since with indoor heating the air temperature was much more consistent (I actually slept with no socks on)!

On Saturday we found a real ice rink that wasn't hard to get to; we took the subway to the last stop and then took a bus but overall it took about half an hour to get there.  It had been about a year since I last skated and I wished immediately that I had rented hockey skates instead of figure skates - I couldn't remember how to stop with the figure skates on!  It was nice to get some exercise and while we were skating Anne, Julia, and I met up with Drew from Kesennuma.  After that we decided to go to Otaru, a town near Sapporo, where they were having their own snow festival.  Otaru is sometimes called the "Venice of Japan" since it has canals but many of these canals have a sheet of ice during the winter though!  Otaru is also known for its sushi, its glass, a certain music box store, and its crazy ice cream flavors.  I got to go to one of the glass factories and got a cool pair of earrings.  The ice cream store was closed by the time we got there and I think the music box store was as well (apparently though they can make music boxes with any tune the customer wants - another JET who went there heard a box playing the Star Wars theme song!).  Instead of sushi, we went to a small ramen restaurant and I tried some miso ramen - it was delicious and I ate the whole thing even though the bowl was ridiculously HUGE!  During the Otaru snow festival the locals make snow sculptures and place candles inside so that in the evening everything glows softly.

 The canals were lit up at night with hundreds of floating candles.

People walked in between the glowing snow sculptures and the canals.

This sculpture had lanterns made of thick ice.
This snow wall had real glass lanterns built into it.

Anne got some "Soft cream Santa claus's Beard" melon ice cream after we saw this sign just because it sounded ridiculous and good.

Anyway, just to break up the pictures a bit I'm separating this post into two parts.  Look forward to the next one coming soon!

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