More stuff from Day 1

After we returned from the onsen, the seven of us went exploring downtown Sapporo. It was still two days before the festival, so many of the main snow sculptures were closed to the public, but we did get to see a few half-finished projects. Many people say that arriving a few days before the beginning of the matsuri is best because then you can watch the artists making the sculptures; we took that advice to heart and were able to watch some groups of men working on the smaller figures.


This is a picture of us in front of the Sapporo TV Tower, which looks a great deal like Tokyo Tower but with a clock on it. During our final day in Hokkaido, we went up to the observation deck, but because there was a veritable blizzard outside, we could barely see anything on the ground.

That evening, we wandered around looking at the local shops and exploring a roofed shopping arcade that ran parallel to the matsuri park. For dinner, the boys of our group insisted we find this famous ramen shop, reportedly the best miso ramen restaurant in Hokkaido. We waited for 45 minutes in the bitter cold- it was torture! But I gotta say, that miso ramen was one of the best meals I've had so far in Japan! I don't even like ramen usually, but this stuff was awesome! And exactly what you need after standing in the cold for nearly an hour.

















It wasn't until around 9pm that we finally checked into our hotel, the Sapporo Sheraton. For only paying $300, we got placed in a super nice hotel! The employees were all bilingual (though we tried to keep the conversations in Japanese for practice) and very polite, as expected at a Japanese establishment. They even put two extra beds in our double room so none of us had to share ^^. The next day when we were exploring the ground floor, we were extremely surprised to find a chapel inside the hotel; apparently it is a popular place for couples to tie the knot!


























Allow me to take this opportunity to point out that, while most of these photos are mine, many of them were taken by my fellow travellers: Maggie Chan, Melanie Bise, Jeff James, Nicole Bigler, JC Sun, and Diago Takayama. I can't remember which photos belong to which friends, but thanks, guys!