It's Snow Time! [Part 2]

Snow snow snow, that's what it did all night, but I got up bright an early for some free breakfast. Being in Japan means the continental breakfast had some items you usually would not expect to see: soup, onigiri, and potato salad. The soup and onigiri were probably the more normal ones, but I'd never seen potato salad served up a six in the morning. It was also how I discovered that Hokkaido uses a more elastic nori to wrap their onigiri in, which was something I did not enjoy at all, but if you're a fan of konbu or Korean seaweed you would probably like it.

Somewhere outside Chitose

With the sun shining, but knowing that it was still snowing heavily in Sapporo from the weather reports, I bundled up lightly and hopped on the rapid train for Sapporo. Because my train is at the end of the line, it meant I was able to grab a seat by the window to enjoy the scenery for a lovely...three hours. I was actually on the train as it switched lines in New Chitose, so that was pretty neat, as was seeing the mountains and snow throughout the ride.

When I arrived in Sapporo, I knew the first thing I wanted to do was visit the corporate headquarters of one of my favorite companies: Crypton Future Media. They're responsible for starting the VOCALOID trend in Japan, and created the most popular one world wide, Hatsune Miku. It was an adventure finding the right elevator in the building, but when I did I left them a card from all the overseas fans. It was pretty big, and I hope they liked it because my art was terrible. I wish I had been able to take a picture of the creator's and producer's art on their whiteboard wall or had a chance to talk to a staff member, but I was just as excited to even be there.

After picking up their special guide for the festival and some information on the hotsprings at the station, I headed underground to catch the subway. Unfortunately, that's something that never happened as after I bought my ticket and followed the arrows for the area I was heading I discovered that it's entirely possible to  walk anywhere in Sapporo underground. With the blizzard and icy conditions, that's exactly what many people were doing, and some places were advertising things to do throughout Japan. Ise Grand Shrine had priests there advertising the rebuilding and giving out information about the shrine. Because they had their own snow sculpture that year, it was nice to see them all the way up north.

It's the 62nd rebuilding to be precise

The Ise sculptor also included an image of the river goddess.

Once I made it topside at 1-chome, I worked my way down to the concert stage and this year's Snow Miku. Of course, I took my time and still managed to fall down once or twice but I wasn't alone in that fact. I   mostly felt bad for the grandpas and little grandmas who were slipping and falling. It was probably during all this commotion that I lost my train pass, which of course I didn't notice until I needed it later that night. Some of the biggest highlights during the snow festival were of course the Ise sculpture, a 1:1 model of a Thai Buddhist Temple, and for me that year's Snow Miku.

The right hand side of Ise, where a trivia show was going on.

1:1 Buddhist temple

They even sculpted a boddhisatva onto it

Snow Miku 2013 also had her bunny friend

After spending most of the day at the snow festival, I was ready to hit up the famous Jozankei hot springs. With the special deal they were having I was able get access to one of the springs plus a round trip bus ticket, and seeing as Jozankei is about an hour away from Sapporro it was a pretty good deal. To top everything off, the town is known for kappa, which would not usually be a good thing as the water creatures feed off of a part of your anus, but can also be rather beneficial, giving people medicinal knowledge as well, and in this case, knowledge of where the best hot springs are.

Way up in the Jozankei mountains

After soaking the troublesome problem of losing my weekend train pass away (which meant I couldn't travel to some of the places I wanted to), I headed back towards New Chitose to wait for the next train which would get me back at midnight. I decided to try and find something to eat while I was there and ended up taking my worst fall just outside a 7-11 (yes, I really like 7-11, because Hokkaido is strangely lacking in Family Marts). After I got up I noticed someone smoking a cigrarette looking at me like I should have been up sooner, so I'm guessing it's something that happens frequently in the area.

With my plans out the window from the loss of my pass, I decided to surrender myself to the nerd madness that is the Snow Miku stamp rally, and started my adventures early the next morning.

~Zenko~