Sapporo Snow Festival

Leaving Shonai

Harry liked Ed a lot.

Our ferry was to leave on the Friday morning at 10.30am.  Due to the convenient train scheduling of JR, the only train on Friday that we could catch left Sakata at about 5.20am.  (They don't like to make it easy to leave Shonai.)  Therefore three intrepid trailblazers (Tom, Ed and Alysha) set off for Niigata on the Thursday night after work.  Upon arrival we waited in the station for a bit, and laughed at a couple who must have killed half of Siberia to get all the fur they were wearing until we made contact with Harry.

Harry first took us to a cool izakaya that showed cartoons of Atom Boy on really old TVs and gave us all the free cabbage we could eat.  Later we went to the Black Pig English Pub to enjoy some real beer and play darts.  There we met Harry's two workmates, Eri and Miku, and a Yorkshireman wearing a lovely Burberry baseball cap.  He'd lived in 'Nipland' (as he liked to call it) and spent the evening trying to bore us to death with his unconcealed stupidity.  Anyway, we managed to shake him off eventually and enjoy a few games of darts.

Finally, at the end of the night, Miku said we could all stay at hers since she lives so close to the port while Harry lives a good 40 minutes away.  So away we went.  But the night was not over yet.  Her parents had got up to meet us, even though it was 2 o'clock, so we sat and drank a whisky together.  Then just as I was getting changed for bed, I drunkenly fell over backwards and grazed my arm on the sandpaper style wallpaper, leaving a big bloodstain on the wall.