Hokkaido!!!! 北海道！！！

If you can imagine a long couple of entries....then you can read a couple of long entries. I just got back from a week long trip to two of the more famous cities in Japan: Sapporo and Tokyo. This entry is about 北海道の札幌。Last Tuesday started off the festivities. After finishing class around 12:35 Regina and I waited for about an hour before heading out to Chubu International Airport. Chubu, like many Airports in Japan, was built on a man-made island out of Nagoya. Check in and all of that was a little bit confusing because you had to constantly scan a bar code to move onto the next level like some kind of video game (leave it to the Japanese). The flight to 北海道　takes about an hour and a half and so we arrived by about 6:30pm or so. The cool/strange feeling of it all was that we left when it was light out, then fell asleep on the plane, and awoke to a pitch-black sky with the lit-up city of Sapporo beneath us--eerie. Now, if you ever go to 札幌 be sure to beware and pack some extra cash for the g-dizamned subways which will eat you up (the ride to the center of 札幌 from the airport cost about $10!)
Honestly thought, 3 days is not enough at all to do 北海道 or 札幌 any justice. However, with limited time on my hands, I feel like we did as much as we could with the time on our hands! The first night we arrived in the city relaxation was on my mind. Regina's friend Phillip is studying in Sapporo so we met up with him that night to devour some of the worlds freshest すし！写真を見て下さい！After stuffing my face with easily 12 plates of the stuff (24pieces) we paid (about $12) and made our way out to check out this place called Don Quixote's....sound strange? Well, it was! The Don is a store to destroy all other stores. It was a Spencers/grocery/Kohls/arcade/Walgreens all wrapped up into one chaotic mess! WHAT A MESS! しかし。。。。you could find anything that you wanted to in that store. So after spending some time there we headed out to go back to the hotel (Green Hotel 2) where we all chatted the night away. Phillip didn't end up leaving until about 1am and he had class that day! The next day, after some forceful rousing of the sleeping beauty, we headed out to see Hokkaido Shrine 北海道神宮....and it could NOT have been a more BEAUTIFUL day!!! The sun was out! There were no clouds!! The temperature was cool and brisk but we were in 北海道 which lines up with southern Minnesota for the most part and so I wasn't phased. I wore the hat and the scarf that わかえさんmade for me along with my sweatshirt and I was actually quite warm in the fall sun. The leaves fell in the breeze and colored the paths that we walked on until it seemed that we were walking on an artist's palette of orange, red, and yellow (not to mention some brown from earlier leaves and green of the leaves yet to fall). The massive structure stood almost in the middle of the city in a dense forest of 昔の北海道 and I felt a sense of transportation to an ancient time (except for the fact that I was using my Cannon camcordoer to capture this amazing experience; note to self: buy a better camera for still shots--dad, I have officially become interested in those cameras that you spend so much time around! haha) We spent the morning there, taking in the smells of fall and the crazy likeness to Minnesota--Stillwater in particular. It made me very はつかしい to be quite honest. 札幌 is known for its corn, milk, and ramen....but why their ramen? Well because they put their corn and milk (butter form) in it of course!! When in Sapporo take some time to check out the famous Ramen Alley (refer to pic) and sit down and one of the nearly 50 shops that serve the famous dish: コーンバータラーメンCorn butter ramen！You might run into some of the locals there and surely you will be able to see the cooks whip up your bowl of soup right in front of your eyes. The best part of the ramen in Sapporo? (forgive the abundance of rhetoric) It warms you up from the inside out! So bye bye chills, hello shopping! All of Japan seems to pride itself on its covered/open air strip malls and 札幌 is no different. We all wandered around there for about an hour or 2 in search of some gifts for ourselves and to bring back home. That's when I saw that Ainu shop. The Ainu are a small race of native Japanese that have lived exclusively in the northernmost island of 北海道 for centuries. Their facial features are similar to those of the Native American, with darker skin and slimmer eyes. I couldn't resist the temptation to invest my time and money in a little bit of this dying culture. So I walked in and attempted to not look to strange (being that it was me vs. 4 Ainu women) by browsing around. They immediately approached me and inquired as to who I was and what I was interested in. They marveled at my Japanese (to which I replied "no no, you musn't") and admired my eyes and my Chile bag before asking...if I was a girl or a boy....yeah...pause here for effect...They just thought I was really pretty I guess! Everything was really 高い but in the end I bought a good luck head-band which they said I could wear around my neck (I prefer that instead). It's the same concept as all other good luck charms: bad stuff out; I just couldn't help buying it though. It's colors echo the season.
That night we all went to the famous Sapporo Beir Garten: the renovated brewery-turned-restaurant serving it's signature Yenghis Khan or 焼き肉。Basically you order a plate of raw meat and you cook that deliciousness right there at your table. You pay for the novelty of it all but it's worth it. They have an all you can eat and an all you can eat & drink option for $25 and $30 respectively but we went for a set menu for about &17 with a medium stein of Sapporo's freshest brew. What an amazing meal! What an amazing experience! There was this group of four businessmen sitting next to us that must have devoured a couple pounds of the meat within the hour and a half that we were there. They were a satisfied bunch of Sapporans! Oh yeah, i almost forgot, to grease the pan you can forget Pam because they hand you a couple cubes of pure beef-fat that you stick right on top of the cooker and just let the juices ooze. Yeah, after that meal you don't really have to eat too soon afterwards (except now just thinking about this meal is making me drool at the mouth!) Karaoke later in the night with Regina&Phillip. The best part of the experience there was that we all sang America the Beautiful as our last number as loudly as we could! Then adios to Phillip and we returned to the hotel to talk about the last couple months and the coming many months. It was a relaxing & enlightening night.
I woke up with the worst headache the next morning...and it didn't go away until later that night (but that's Tokyo's entry). It was raining the day we left 札幌 and I couldn't have been more thankful for the perfect weather that we were blessed with the day before. The airport became manageable. The flight attendants were more than accommodating (hell, they spoke in English just for us --being that we were the only 2 Caucasians on the plane) and we touched down in Nagoya an hour and a half later. That's when I purchased my 新幹線きっぷ and headed out on my first ride aboard the fastest way to travel in 日本。。。東京へ！

So that sums it all up. Oh and Corn Chocolate, pigeons in parks, dropped flowers to the dead, and hotel yukattas & slippers. BTW that really pink picture is of at Pericura arcade. That was my first time (sob!)

Check out more pictures aqui!