A Party to the World

Five days.

Two boat rides, two hotels.

Dozens of bus, train and subway rides, a couple of cabs, bike rides, and countless kilometers walked.

The 58th Sapporo Snow Festival.

I went with eight other JYPE students on the ferry between Sendai and Sapporo, and the ride was a lot of fun! We went out on the deck for a while, and as you might have suspected, it’s pretty cold in the northern Pacific.

14 hours on the boat there, leaving at 8 PM. The room we got wasn’t so much a room so much as a bed. They have these large rooms on the ship where 20 people sleep on futons, with a kind of foam-brick-like pillow (apparently relatively common in Japan). Very relaxing sleeping at sea.

Before sleep, and while amusing ourselves with poker and some Chinese card games we learned, a couple of Japanese guys who were heading off to bed handed us their half-finished bottle of Gilbey’s vodka. (In some cultures, “Gilbey’s” translates to “rubbing alcohol”.) We didn’t touch it, but when we were done playing cards, we kept the dream alive by passing it to another group of Americans.

Woke up for about an hour to see the sunrise. Unfortunately, the cloudcover didn’t let us see much. Glad to have tried, anyway.

We got into port around 10 the next morning, and we caught a taxi to the train station for the 12 o’clock train ride. The train was pretty full, so we were spread all over a couple of cars. I sat next to a Japanese woman, and she started talking almost without cease. He name was アスカ (Aska), and she just graduated high school and was on break before heading to college in Osaka. Not sure of her major – when I asked her about it, she made a gesture like giving herself and injection. My guess is nurse or doctor, but hey, maybe you can major in intravenous drugs these days.

I asked her where a good place to eat in Sapporo would be, and she said she was meeting a friend if we’d like to join. We wanted to check into our hotel first, but we agreed to meet up later at the snow festival. It was fun to hang out with a couple of friendly Japanese kids, and we got to practice a lot of Japanese.

The snow festival is in three different parks, and we hit the first two on the first day. Dozens if not hundreds of smaller sculptures from 2-3 meters in height, with maybe a half dozen or so larger international ones, most of which were about 20 meters wide by 15 meters tall and 12 meters deep. Can you imagine!?

At night, we went to the second, which consisted exclusively of ice sculptures. There were even entire functioning bars carved from ice, where they were serving promotional alcohol from Smirnoff to Bailey’s.

Dinner was たべほだい (all-you-can-eat) lamb. Delicious. Every 2-3 people are given a grill, and platter after platter of raw lamb.

In the morning, we went to the last park, which was more geared towards children, it turns out. Slides, build-your-own snowman, a life-size maze, ice golf, curling, and even one attraction where you ride in a raft that is strapped to a snowmobile.

In the afternoon, Sapporo beer museum. Sapporo has Japan’s first beer brewery – the founder studied for two years aus Deutchland for this undertaking. Not bad. Not my favorite, but relatively tasty. Still not a fan of dark, and I was pleasantly surprised by the chocolate and the カルピス (Calpis) beer cocktails.

Back to the train station to catch our train ride to Otaru, where we will be seeing another relatively famous snow attraction.

In the evening, we walked the streets of Otaru, where many of the blocks are lined with hundreds of votive candles in ice candle holders. I don’t know if love or hearts was the theme, but we must have seen at least 12 given snow hearts throughout the whole walk.

Sleep was at a really really cheap hotel that would turn out to be our most comfortable stay. A more traditional Japanese hotel – straw mats on the floor, robes, and very comfortable futons. Rice paper everywhere. Really quite beautiful.

The next morning we wandered around Otaru (famous for glass-blowing and music boxes), and were invited into several shops. Everything seemed to be closed, but we’d walk by a shop, and an old woman would come running out and welcome us in with great enthusiasm. A seaweed shop was the first, and the owner was giving us sample after sample, and brought us each out two cups of tea. I don’t know if it’s the ploy, but we felt almost obligated to buy at least some seaweed. Some was pretty tasty, but on the whole, meh.

A glass-blower was next. They welcomed us in, and asked us if we wanted to try blowing our own glasses. It was about $20 per glass, but it was about as much to buy such a glass anyway. I don’t want to give the impression that they showed us the glass and the tools and lets us go at it – it was very controlled, and they really do virtually everything. You blow a little here, a little there (very gently and slowly), and when we occasionally use a tool, they guided our hand. More interactive than watching, far less involved than the job. I brought home a small beer mug.

We wandered around Otaru a little more, back to Sapporo and onto the port. The boat ride home was similar to the first, though the room for sleeping was a lot larger (housing 80 people, 30 of which were from the Japanese national guard). Also, once we got out to sea, a lot colder. We all took a lap around the deck in tees and pants, snow and ice flying everywhere, and the boat rocking pretty steadily. It was a lot of fun running around the deck like that – when it would rock, the ground would suddenly give way underneath you, and you’d be running almost in mid-air.

All in all, good trip, and for reading this all, here are some pictures:

札幌