Sapporo: Day 1

Sunday was my first full day in Sapporo and because the Snow Festival hadn't started yet, I decided to check out some of the city. I went to Maruyama Park because they have a shrine there and a zoo.

There were disgusting looking monkeys...

...And a lonely tiger...

...And a few wolves, along with a bunch of other animals.

They had a lot of creatures but the cages were really small and the place was kind of dirty. It was also completely overrun with children and I got stared at a lot for being white. It was my first time to a zoo and it was OK. I would never go to an Asian zoo again though..

I bought some snacks at a convenience store on my way back from the zoo and as I was walking down the sidewalk, back to the train station, a huge black crow landed in front of me. Things went much like this (click to make larger):

That is, the big bird gave me a death glare and then motioned to my food. In fear of an impending attack I threw my food down into a snowbank to let the crow have its way. I THOUGHT the stupid bird would take my rice ball and fly away since the whole bag was too heavy for it to carry alone. INSTEAD it took my almond chocolate, fat stupid bird. And so that's how I watched a box of sweet, probably very yummy almond chocolate disappear into the skies.. very poetically and all.

Depressed, I made my way back to the hostel to get ready to go out again. I didn't have any concrete plans for the evening and so I was surprised when I went to the shoe room to go outside and saw Mike from AKP on the other side of the door. He's staying in a different hostel with other people, so it was really confusing. What was up is that his friend Claire is staying at Ino's Place in a different room than me and he was helping her move in. It was really coincidental that I saw him, though, cuz he had no idea I was staying at the hostel too.

Anyway, I told them about our other friends from AKP meeting up at the Sapporo Beer Museum and so we took a taxi and met up with them there:

The museum was interesting and free of charge to get in and so after we browsed around a bit we went to get dinner at the Beer Garden:


Since it was a restaurant where you cook meet on a grill in front of you, they gave us cool bibs. We had the "genghis khan," some lamb striplets and veggies.

Following dinner, we decided against a taxi and walked a ways back to Odori, the center of town. We could see Sapporo Tower lit up for the night:


Also, they had the snow sculptures for the festival lit up. The two major snow carvings this year are of the Great Wall of China with some Japanese-y culture stuff mixed in, and one based on the Lion King musical. The sculptures are as big as a house and incredibly detailed (!!) :

Setsubun 節分 (Bean-Throwing Festival)

This past Thursday was a big Japanese holiday called Setsubun. We didn't get a day off but we did get to throw beans at things. Setsubun marks the first day of spring on the Japanese calendar and according to wikipedia the word means "seasonal division." From what I know of kanji, 節 (setsu) is season and 分 (bun) means to divide, so that makes sense.

A big part of the holiday is getting rid of evil spirits and cleansing everything in preparation for the new year. This is usually done by throwing mame beans at demon-masked children while yelling "I PURGE THEE DEMON. IN WITH THE LUCK! [creative translation]," followed by slamming the door in the mask-wearer's face.

We did something similar at school by chucking packs of beans at fellow mask-wearing classmates. We also ate traditional setsubun makizushi (sushi rolls) while closing our eyes, facing this years lucky direction (South-South-East ??) and wishing for a lot of good luck, all without saying a single word while we ate.

Makizushi is filled with supposedly lucky foods and I also got to eat a couple of them at home thanks to okaasan. Afterward, I went out to celebrate the holiday at Yoshida jinja, which was having a festival for Setsubun. It was the largest shrine festival I've ever seen and I had to wade through a half mile of crowded, vendor-lined streets before reaching the base of the shrine.

Once I got there, I didn't go up into the actual shrine area because it was too crowded. Instead, I went and met Hubbard-sensei, her husband and some other AKP people at a beer tent on Imadegawa Street and we partied for the next hour :)

A photo from the lounge on Friday while I was writing the essay I didn't write Thursday night:

We were also watching a spectacularly dubbed-over version of HP and the Sorcerer's Stone >:)

Host Family Day Trip

Last Saturday was the AKP day trip with our host families to Ise Jingu. Ise is the most famous shrine in Japan right now because it's where the imperial family goes to worship, or something, I think... Anyways, Ise is also a "Power Spot," or a place that supposedly gives good luck to whoever visits it. Japan is in the middle of a "Power Spot Boom," where tons of people believe in good fortune, health, good relations, etc. that comes from visiting a power spot. I think that Shimogamo-jinja, right next to my house, is considered a Power Spot.

Although it was a "host family" trip, that apparently meant that our host families just happened to be on the same outing. Nobody's fam expected them to hang out. They kept telling us to chill with our friends whenever we tried to chat with them, which felt a little weird. I hardly saw my host fam at all (we weren't even on the same bus), so I don't have any pictures with them..

The first place the bus stopped was a craft center where they do special silk weaving. We all got to make our own bracelets/ key chains. I had a feeling it was gonna be super-lame but it really wasn't. In fact, it was neat and my bracelet looks ultra-stellar.

we sat on the floor and weaved them with those circle-y things

Next we went to Ise and there were a hell-of-a-ton of people since it was still so close to New Years. Okaasan and Otousan waited forever in that huge line to go pray at the shrine but I opted to hang back and not stand around. Instead I had an OK time with friends:

To end the day, a few of us drifted down the packed street outside the shrine where they sell all kinds of food and souvenirs. I ate a ton, but in all the trip wasn't as great as I thought it would be.. For one, it wasn't actually a host family trip, and also it's kind of boring to be at a super-crowded shrine, even if it is famous..

成人式 (Coming of Age Ceremony)

Monday, 01/10/2011: Seijin no hi, or Coming of Age Day, is sort of like a huge "sweet 16" party for Japanese kids that turn 20 during the year. In Japan you're not officially an adult until you're 20 years old, but when you turn 20 you're allowed to vote, smoke and drink (officially). Because of this, a ton of people get drunk at the ceremony. But they're beautiful drunks:

This girl may be a maiko (geisha-in-training) that turned 20

Some Korean-Japanese girls wear traditional Korean Hanbok

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Yeaaaa!

Skiing in Japan

Nowadays there doesn't seem to be much "skiing" in Japan from what I've seen and heard. At least, among the youngest generation everybody has gotten into the snowboard trend. Which is dandy but also sort of funny. In the US there are tons and tons of people who suck at skiing and snowboarding, but those people at least look like they suck. In Japan, on the other hand, everybody looks like they're super awesome, like they could pull fifteen 720s in a row and not break a sweat awesome. Why is this?

Its because of their ghetto-fab fashion sense (see below):

Both boys and girls are tricked out in baggy, bright attire with suspenders straps hanging down and loads of pockets that aren't actually pockets. A lot of people opt to wear their goggles on their foreheads and not their eyes because that looks cooler. As for the people who use their goggles, they keep them on at all times and put a bandana over their mouths like a cowboy.

I finally realized that clothes say nothing about how good you are when I saw 20 people fall getting off the lifts. I haven't been skiing in the US in a while and so I don't remember if that happens there too, but there seemed to be a huge number of people falling down on Hachi Kita slopes.

I wonder why. Is snowboarding a fairly new trend in Japan, or do people start out on skis and then move to boards when they're teens? Or maybe its harder for teens in this area of Japan to get to the slopes.

There were other differences between ski mountains in Japan and the US that I noticed. For one, gear rental shops in the US seem to be affiliated with the mountain, but here there were tons of rental shops set up at the mountains base, all competing with each other for business. I don't know if that was special to the mountain we went to or not, though.

The major difference I noticed was that there didn't seem to be any large, main lodge. After renting our gear we stashed our bags in the rental shop. For food, people don't bring their lunch but instead buy it on the mountain. There were about a dozen independent, small cafeterias on the slopes.

Next month I'm going to Sapporo for Yuki Matsuri. woo. I'll try skiing again there :)

Winter Break pt. 2

Winter Break was short but boringly relaxing. Finals ended on Wednesday with our speaking exam. Everyone came to school to take a 15 minute test and then leave. Then, the following day I went to Osaka to do a half marathon with my track circle. It was kinda scary because I had only done one or two short runs over the last month and I didn't actually know if I could run a full two hours..

There was a lot of waiting around before the actual half marathon and I pretty much did nothing. I don't really know the people in track circle and a majority of them are really short guys (boo). There was only one other girl set to run and she had a boyfriend on the team, so obz she was with him a lot. The actual race was all university students from schools around Osaka including Doshisha and Kobe Universities. There weren't that many girls running but those who did were slow. Most of them walked. Only two girls really went for it and they beat me. My only goal was to run the whole race and finish it. I came in third and won a tea strainer. Wooooooooo >:D

Following the race, everybody changed into regular clothes and then went to dinner and nomihodai at a nabe place. I was the only foreigner out of 60-ish people so it was a bit terrible at first, but then it wasn't.

My body was so stiff after that and it took me, like, two days to feel non-corpse-like. The next big event was Christmas Eve, and because I didn't have a sexy date I went to Osaka with friends to see a "light up" and then to an Izakaya for dinner.

Over the next few days Kate and Katie and I went to temples like nanzen-ji, which has a weird aqueduct that is totally not japanese-esque:

We also went to Ryoan-ji, the temple I concentrated on during first year of college when I came to Kyoto for a field trip. I didn't think that the temple could possibly be any more boring than the paper I wrote about it, but I was wrong. This is what I paid five dollars to see:

Supposedly the interesting thing about the rock garden is that no matter what angle you stand at, you can't see all the rocks at the same time. This seems slightly cool but it's actually not at all.

Christmas isn't really a big deal in Japan. It's a holiday mainly for couples and marketing and there are a lot of fried chicken everywhere. A big misconception that Japanese have about Americans is that we eat KFC for Christmas dinner. Because of this, Japanese have decided that they "also" want to eat fried chicken for Christmas and there are loads of ads during this time for buckets full of deep-fried meats.

The Tuesday after Christmas I went out with my friends for all-you-can-eat pizza and then to all-night karaoke. I finally biked back home around 7am. wooo.

New Years is the big winter holiday and all the schools went on breaks, including my host brother's. Japanese school breaks honestly seem to suck, though. High schoolers and even college students still have homework during break. My host brother went to school yesterday so he could work on all the homework he had to do over the holiday. Furthermore, he and lots of other students even have juku, or supplementary school, during break. I am so happy I never had to grow up in Japan because I would fail at their education system.

My host sister also came home around this time from college and it was neat to see her. She works as a tutor for an elementary school student (10 years old) who wants to be a doctor (I think). This little girl goes to two juku schools besides attending regular elementary school and has private tutoring sessions from my host sister. I guess this isn't a rare thing and even elementary schoolers in Japan don't get a chance to just chill out and play.

On New Years Eve I woke up to SNOW. We got about five inches during the night and it was still snowing. That amount of snow is really rare for Kyoto and so the roads were slushy and there weren't many cars out. My friends and I went to Gosho--the imperial palace--across the street from Doshisha:

That night Okaasan made special food for the holiday. Obaasan (grandma) also came over to eat with us. Later in the night I celebrated with my friend by going out on the town. For the actual New Years day, Obaasan came over, Okaasan prepared nabe and we all ate it, and then the family went and did Hatsumode (first shrine visit of the year). Even though we live right next to Shimogamo-jinja, my host family drove us to Fushimi Inari. The place was packed with people and we had to wait in line to throw coins and ring the bell to bring us luck during the year (?). Then Okaasan bought us all paper fortunes that tell about how your year is gonna go. I couldn't really read my kanji-laden fortune but from what my friends told me my year is going to be maybe-pretty-okay-i-guess-probably.

Shimogamo Jinja

On January 3rd I got up early to go on a ski trip with two of my Doshisha friends. We left from Osaka and took a bus three hours to a ski resort at Hachi Kita mountain. We skied two half-days and the snow was so perfect:

Winter Break pt. 1

A video with some pictures and footage from winter break :