Sapporo Snow Festival

Arrival in Hokkaido - the first day

Otaru canal at 5.15am

After a small amount of sleep we all woke up ridiculously early and disembarked.  It was about 4.30am and -6C.  We though about hanging around til it got light and then seeing a bit of Otaru.  We quickly shelved these plans because there was nowhere to hang around that was even vaguely warm or indoors.  So we jumped on the next train to Sapporo.

We all had a bit of a nap on the train and when we arrived in Sapporo we went to the hostel and dumped our stuff.  Chris and Ian then ran off to go boarding in Niseko while the rest of went looking for warmth and caffeine.  Once that mission was achieved we went for a wander around Odori Koen where the big snow sculptures were.  We spent most of the day looking at them, being amused by weird Engrish and bemused by random Scandinavian creations, until about three o'clock when we needed a nap.  Happily this coincided with an evil blizzard, so we curled up for some sleep.

A random Scandinavian creation

In the evening the five of us went for some "Genghis Khan", which is basically lamb cooked on a hotplate.  It was very good, especially since you never see lamb anywhere else in Japan.  Me and Ed also started to enjoy some beer, since it's what Sapporo's famous for.  Afterwards, we went we to check out the illuminated ice sculptures in Susukino for all of 5 minutes, until we found a house made of ice that sold hot Baileys with coffee.  We felt the ice sculptures would still be there later, but the Baileys might not.  So we went in.  It was good.  We met Chris and Ian there and then went and caught up with some of the other Yamagata ALTs for drinks.  We eventually ended up in a hot place where Ed danced on the tables before me, Chris, Ian, Bryan and Akiko went somewhere a bit more chilled for one more drink.

It's the year of the monkey. I'm not sure what the toilet has to do with things.

It's Olympic year, so they built the Parthenon.

Yummy lamb!

This is just what you need when it's night time and f***ing freezing.

Ed got up on the tables to dance.