Hokkaido Holiday!

Chelsea and I headed out to meet up with a bunch of folks in Hachinohe before it was time to board the overnight ferry. We all met in a ramen shop and I had my first bowl of Japanese ramen. I know. I know. Why did I wait so damn long? Well, it was delicious and worth the wait. Then we were off to Hokkaido for the Sapporo Snow Festival (雪祭り).

Megumi, Ben, Dan and Erica

 For whatever reason, Google Maps has not added a Ferry function yet, so, this map ain't quite the route we took... but nonetheless, you get an idea of of the journey. Talley-ho!

The ferry was much fancier than I had anticipated, as I have only ever bee on one that traveled to Vancouver Island and back again. Now, on the way over, we were just chilling in a big room together, no beds or chairs or anything. We just piled in and grabbed a corner and everyone got a piece of floor for the night. After a game of Cards Against Humanity we ventured out to explore and were bombarded by drunk Japanese men who were very friendly, if not repetitive and slurring.  One fellow told me about 144 times that he was from Shichinohe... that's right. A full gross. Around 2 am we called it a night and caught a few hours before arriving at Tomakomai, loading into cabs to get to the station and catching a the train to take us to Sapporo. The air was crisp, the sky was clear and the sun was just rising over the mountains. We took over a train car and played rounds of "Contact" to pass the time... and scare Japanese people who dared enter the gaijin bubble. Okokok, we didn't *set out* to scare them, it's just that most folks who came into the car, didn't stick around very long... and that was even with us being friendly and moving bags out of their way so they could sit down. You can see the back of one fellow's head in the picture below... 

Goooooood morning!! :D

 I think we arrived in Sapporo Station around 8am, and therefore could not check in at our hotel, thankfully they accepted our baggage so we didn't have to wander around with all of our luggage until 3 pm check in. Folks who had gone to the festival the year before kept talking about waffles, waffles WAFFLES, so we went in search of them in one of the restaurant levels of the station. FYI: The escalators don't open until 10 am, they are even guarded by security so that you can't go up and try to stand in line outside your restaurant of choice. Sadly, the restaurant wouldn't open for quite some time, so we ended up seeking foodstuffs elsewhere and made our way to the Snow Festival. Upon entering the first Festival site we were greeted by this snow sculpture:

Wowee!

 Kinda puts the Festival du Voyageur ones to shame... Although the FdV ones seem to follow a theme a little more closely. I believe all of these were (naturally) judged and ranked, though I'm afraid I did not keep track of who was worthy of the winner's circle. Here are a few random entries... (emphasis on random...)

"White Alpaca" (lit: howaitoarupaka)

Hey! It's Totoro!

"その症状、「胸やけ」?" Which means: It's symptoms 「heartburn」?
O.o

Lots of cool stuff to be seen. I saw that some of my friends had posted pictures of themselves with Domo-kun... however he was nowhere to be seen when I searched for him.. instead I found this girl who was dressed up like a fox:

A vast assortment of shells... I'm afraid I was saving room for my dinner and did not partake in that particular foodstuff.

 The sculptures stretched for many blocks, so this is but a mere sampling of what was out. It also started to snow for a bit, which made it hard to see all the detail on them once they were covered in a light blanket of powder. It really was a lovely day, though, and I managed to keep nice and warm with the help of the 「ホットワイン」(lit: Hott Wain) warm mulled wine being served at several stands. Deeeelicious. I know I had at least 3 cups from 3 different stands, but figured I should hold of from getting blotto considering where we were going for dinner...

The Sapporo Beer Garden for a 食べ飲み放題 ("tabenomihoudai" lit: eat drink unlimited). I was advised by my office co-workers that I had to try Genghis Khan while I was in Hokkaido. Guess what was for dinner?!?!

Cooking iron shaped like Hokkaido! Neato!

Beef, bean sprouts, squash, Chinese cabbage, onions and some fat on the iron for good measure.

What a cast of crazy people

We all sat down, 4 to a butane hot plate and Hokkaido shaped iron skillity-type thing.

This is the last photo I have with this toque... I miss you JSS toque... I'm sorry I lost you in a drunken haze.

... except for me on the end, the folks I was to share with were coming later so I had the whole thing to myself... MWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I remember last call... we ordered 30 beers... Then... um... it gets a little hazy... :/

*coughs*

These are strange looking waffles...

Fast-forward a few hours and we are once again in one of the towers of Sapporo station, in search of the waffles we were denied the previous day... which turned out to be very fancy pancakes...? They were delicious, but to be honest, I really wanted a nice greasy spoon-style hangover breakfast. Ah well. This had bananas in it, and I lurv bananas (especially after drinking, gooooo vitamins!) Bellies full and sugar fueled it was time to head off to another Snow Festival site, this time to look at the ice sculptures. These were even more fancy than the snow sculptures  and I bet they would have been even more baller at night all lit up.

Chillin' with my... Whomie?
... *facepalm* Yeah... that was bad... even for me...

This area wasn't quite as big as the snow sculptures were, but the sun wasn't coming out at all so we were starting to feel the cold. We sought refuge and ramen in... ラ-ン横丁 
(lit: Raamen Alley/Lane/Side street). 
The snow was falling gently as we scurried up and
down the alley looking for a restaurant that wasn't
already full of like-minded folk.

Eeney, meeny... miney...

Behold! My bowl of delicious spicy Sapporo ramen. We were pretty famished by the time we were served... The proprietors kept serving the smaller groups that came in after our large one first... but it was an interesting dive ramen joint that made a decent bowl of noodles, so we gobbled them down quite happily. After lunch, we all wanted to do different things, so we went out shopping and seeing the sights in smaller groups. I set off on my onesies and checked out what there was to be seen... There were many things to check out in the underground on the way back to the station... Including some sorta doll-inspired-fashion show, a wall that responds to motion and would show different animations according to how a body interacts with it (reminded me of that one wall in the Children's Museum that would show your silhouette as you moved along it, except fancier... I tried to get video of some kids playing with it, but they ran away by the time I got set up...). There was also a very large mural on the wall inspired by the Northern Lights.

I managed to get a few souvenirs, not get horribly lost and make the rendez-vous for sushi dinner. We headed back to the snow sculpure area briefly to check out some of the night lights, but had to scurry back to the station to get our luggage from the locker we'd stuffed it in and make our train (on which there was much discussion of the Human Centipede movies for some reason... mostly by me pulling up videos on the Youtube, but I couldn't believe that folks had never heard of it before... See the trailer here), one taxi ride later we were on a ferry back to Aomori).

*This* time we had private-ish rooms with 4 bunks in them. This time I hit up the on board public bath and cleaned myself up a bit (the reason I hadn't on the way over was cuz I didn't realize it was there!). Another game of Cards Against Humanity and it was time to grab 40 winks before landing in Hachinohe once again.

Special thanks to Dan for organizing this trip, I had a blast!