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

Snow Festival

In case you were wondering, I did in fact make it to Sapporo safely(and mostly uneventfully, even!). After 3 30-minute train rides, a 1.5-hour flight, 2 more 30-minute train rides and a short drive, I made it to the Shiratori family's house. I spent the night with them, and then went to the snow festival with them. After that, I met up with my friend Yoshi and went to Maruyama, a nearby zoo that had some cool winter activities (including a giant ice slide). We had dinner at his house, a bit of a welcoming party. And now I'm completely worn out from a long and busy day, so I'm just going to post pictures! Explanations can come later.

Tomorrow is going to be just as busy. I'm going to Shiroi Koibito (a white chocolate factory - otherwise known as heaven in my book), Hokkaido University, Otaru (a small town near Sapporo), and another party with my old friends. Should be fun! Have a wonderful weekend.　

Spring Break!

I am officially on break! Hooray! We had our last class today, and we have a 4-day weekend. I'm choosing to go to Sapporo to visit some old friends. My flight is tomorrow afternoon and I get back on Sunday around noon. I'm staying with an old homestay family part of the time and spending the rest of it with a Japanese friend and his family. I know we're going to see the Snow Festival as well as Otaru (a small town not far from Sapporo), but other than that I'm leaving it up to my hosts! Should be fun.

Speaking of fun, getting to an airport in Japan is a bit of a production if you don't have a car. For example, here's my route tomorrow. I first take a shuttle bus from the hotel near JCMU to Maibara Station(it has a much larger train hub than Hikone). From Maibara, I take a train heading to Ogaki (a largish town between here and Nagoya), change trains, get off at Kanayama (another town close to Nagoya), then switch to another train to get to the airport. Total travel time from Hikone to Chubu Centrair Airport: 2 and a half hours. My flight time is only 1 and a half. XD Thankfully, there is enough time between trains that I should be able to catch them with no worries. It will be weird traveling with a suitcase, as well as by myself - it's my first trip through the subway stations on my own. I'll let you know how it turns out!

Monday was the first day of my internship at Johoku Elementary. Normally, I'm supposed to help teach English for an hour and then join in with club activities for an hour (I'm in the science club, of course). However, the English teacher was absent on Monday so I ended up just attending a science class instead. They were using little scales to find the mass of various objects. After that I went to a sort of club meeting - the older students in the school join an organization that does school service, and volunteer for that. I didn't do much besides sit and listen, though I did talk some with the teachers in the teacher's lounge. Hopefully next week it will be more exciting. :) I also got to see the after-school dismissal speech. All the students get together and get a short speech from their principal at the end of every day. It's cute. :)

I also have a conversation partner! I met her briefly on Monday - her name is Naomi Tanaka. She's from Otsu (a large town about 2 stops outside of Kyoto) and works in a department store. She also loves cooking, apparently! We'll have to cook together sometime. She's very nice, and we've agreed to have our conversations half in English and half in Japanese so we can both practice. And, thanks to her I now have a nickname! "Kelsey" is very difficult to pronounce in a language where all consonants are separated by vowels, so she just calls me "Keru-chan". I call her "Nao-chan" in return. :) I look forward to getting to know her! We have our first full meeting next week. I also met her friend Azusa, who has conversation partners as well. We'll probably end up getting together in the larger group because it's more fun that way!

And I found out about my homestay family (all in one day!). Next weekend we get to go and stay with a random family for the weekend. Mine is in a town called Kusatsu, which is a stop on the way to Kyoto. They're an old couple, the Ishisakas. I don't really know much else about them but I'll be staying with them for 2 nights. I will definitely be putting my Japanese to the test!

Yesterday was far less full of running around. I got my caramel apple bread fix from Vidal (best bread I have ever eaten, by far) and also visited the recycle shop in Maibara. It's basically a pawn shop the size of a Walmart. It's FULL of stuff! They have models, manga, music, menswear, and more (I couldn't resist the alliteration, sorry! :P). My favorite, though, was the stuffed animals section. I need to bring my camera next time to show you how full it is. But I found Chiffon!This is a picture of Chiffon. She's a friend of Cinnamoroll, a character created by Sanrio (the Hello Kitty people). And she's a cocker spaniel. So, when I found this plushie, I couldn't resist.
She's SO CUTE! And has an innertube! :3 I am a sucker for such things. My stuffed animal collection is growing more and more the longer I am here.

Anyway, the trek to Maibara was fun! Really long, though - 4 km each way. But there are a lot of things I saw along the way I'd like to go back to - a really pretty set of wedding chapels I'd like pictures of as well as a little shrine that would be fun to visit.Last night we made chicken pot pies as well! Mmmm, so delicious. Japanese food is good but sometimes American food just sounds best.

Today was pretty much an ordinary day of class, except for last period. Our normal teacher is in America for the week, so the level 1 Japanese teacher subbed in for him. She's hilarious! She came in and first asked us (in Japanese) if we preferred strict or easy-going teachers. The first student said "strict" and she said, "Oh! You are my student!" Then, the second said "easy-going", to which she responded "Wait for your normal teacher, then." XD She was hilarious, and made class a lot of fun.

Tonight we're celebrating my friend Jade's birthday! It will be a nice way to kick off the holiday and relax. So, enjoy the rest of your week, stay warm and I'll see you in Sapporo. :D