Sapporo

Happy Valentine's Day! :) In Japan it's celebrated a little differently than in the US. Here, girls give the guys they like chocolates(not the other way around!). Of course, you also can give chocolates to your friends, but the focus is on the guys. But don't worry, girls get presents in return on March 14th, known as White Day!

I got back from Sapporo yesterday around 3, after a 10 AM flight and lots of train rides. It was a long day. And the weather is about the same here, surprisingly! It's snowing again (lots) - I rode home from my internship in this weather and got completely soaked. Hopefully it won't ice over tonight, as I need to go grocery-shopping sometime soon.

But back to my adventures in Sapporo! It was a pretty whirl-wind trip, but I had such a good time! Forgive the copious amounts of writing...a lot happened this weekend. ;)I started with lots of train travel. This is an eki-ben, short for "eki bento" (station boxed lunch). Each region of Japan has its own specialties, and it's a nice and portable lunch. Mmm!

The first night, I stayed with the Shiratori family, my homestay family from when I performed in the yosakoi festival 3 and a half years ago. My 3 homestay sisters have grown up so much! Mai(left) is going to be a senior in high school (and intending to go to college abroad), Yui(right) is about to attend a music conservatory for high school, and Kana is in 4th grade and incredibly tall. I love them. :)

We went to the snow festival together first - I was amazed by the amount of skill and attention to detail these builders had. My homestay mom actually works as an English guide for the festival, so I got my very own private tour of the place! It's huge! Odori Park, the site of all festivals (including the Yosakoi festival) is 12 blocks long, and every block was covered in ice sculptures. Some were small, like this cute little Toy Story alien. :3

And others were huge - this is sort of a tourism gimmick, as it has Hokkaido's wildlife as well as the Great Wall of China. o.0There was also a sculpting competition - all of them were completed in less than a week! How crazy is that? :)After chilling in Sapporo station to get warm, have lunch and do puri kura, I met up with my other friend Yoshi. We went to Maruyama, Sapporo's zoo. It's too cold for the animals to be outside, so they're all in one room. It was kind of weird.The highlight of Maruyama was definitely the huge ice slide, though.After that we had a small party with some of Yoshi's neighborhood friends. It was fun - they bought me a cake and everything! We had nabe, which is a type of large pot. You typically use it with a tabletop heater so you can cook everything as you go. Nabe can refer to a lot of different dishes, but we had shabu shabu, in which you just boil everything in water. "Shabu shabu" is the sound effect of swishing meat and veggies around in water. I love Japanese onomatopoeias!
I also had a pet dog for the rest of my stay - Chelsea! She's a little bitty papillon, and so so so sweet. :3

End full day one. I told you we did a lot!

We started out Saturday by going to Shiroi Koibito (literally "White Lovers") - a white chocolate factory. It is quite possibly the single most whimsical building I've ever seen.
We got there right as the clock struck eleven - there was a little puppet dance complete with music and bubbles. :D The factory also has a rose garden, though they were all buried under snow this weekend.I loved the museum - it was so cool. The guy who owns the factory just collects random things so we got to see all sorts of random things like chocolate drinking cups, old chocolate packaging, and more.
You can even look down onto the factory floor - and even the factory is pretty. AND the factory has an all-you-can-eat buffet of CAKE. Be still, my heart. I didn't eat there, but I didn't need to - it was just the fact that it was there that mattered!

After Shiroi Koibito, we headed to Hokkaido University to see some old friends. First we stopped at a popular restaurant for Sapporo's specialty, soup curry. So tasty!
We then toured some labs of some of my friends - one girl is doing research on cancer cells, so her lab setup is a lot like the one I remembered from when I worked in a lab. We whined about PCR together for a while. XD
Hokkaido University (Hokudai for short, here) is a lot like A&M, in that it's one of the largest schools in the country and has a big focus on science, engineering, and agriculture. I liked the campus. :)After Hokudai we went to Otaru, a town right off the coast of Japan, for another snow festival. This festival was more rough-hewn, but I really thought it was cool. We stayed until after sunset, which made all the candles really stand out. What a romantic setting!

We even got to contribute to the festival as part of a tour around the city. It was really cold, but I enjoyed it.
Our last big activity was a party at my friend Shio's house. 12 of the Yosakoi festival staff came, and we had a lot of fun together. We had nabe (a different sort this time) and caught up on each other's lives. Everyone's really busy because graduation is next month for them(as are national exams for med school and the like), so I was really touched that so many people came just to see me. Most of them are moving on to other places for careers and grad schools so I'm so glad I came when I did. It was a great ending to a fantastic weekend.

Which brings me to Sunday. I basically just traveled home, baked a cake, played 42 and crashed. Awesome, awesome day. :)

We're not doing a whole lot tonight...celebrating a friend's birthday (with another cake I made - pictures to come next time) and then watching a movie. I'm glad to be relaxing - definitely needed a vacation from my vacation. Enjoy your Valentine's Day - celebrate all the love in your life! <3