So yesterday night, I told myself that I had to use up the celery I had bought before it went bad, so I ended up running to the store to buy some things for some minestrone soup and some dumplings. I really wanted to try this dumpling/biscuit recipe I had found online. I've been eyeing it for quite some time actually.
A couple of things went kinda wrong though.
First I cooked the soup so long that a lot of the veggies were super duper limp and - to make it worse - I hadn't stirred it enough so it kind of burned the entire bottom. -_- Burned minestrone is not so great. Burned kidney beans are almost worse.
The sad thing is that this isn't even my first attempt on the soup. It's my second or third and it still turned out kinda eh. I think I need to use more water or something.
The dumplings though... I was stupid and didn't read the comments of the recipe which said that pretty much everyone cut down on the salt and the herbs. Stupid stupid stupid. Sigh. So my dumplings turned out really really salty (but still edible).
I want to experiment with these though, like try mixing in cheese or something or pepper cause I think it'd be tasty. The recipe is a good base though. I'll post it below.
The only thing that kept this from being a real cooking disaster was the fact that everything was still pretty edible, albiet kinda salty and not the tastiest. Adding cheese also makes it taste better, but nothing can make the dumplings not super salty. Sigh.
Okay, random, but Avril Lavigne's "What the Hell" has amde the top 5 songs in Japan on tv. I don't understand.
Also, acoustic guitars are sweet. I found this artist called DERAPEPE and he's kind of awesome.
Alright, recipes:
Minestrone Soup
Ingredients:
1/2 onion
1 can diced tomatoes
1000 cc water + 1 can of water from the tomatoes
2 beef boullion cubes (you can use any flavor, but since I throw in ground beef, eh, might as well)
1.5(ish) diced/cubed carrots
5 cloves of garlic
Red kidney beans
1 stalk of celery
~ 500 cc/2.5 cups of choice pasta. I used penne. I also used a little more than this and it was too much. But yeah, most people use elbow or shell or something small.
200 g ground beef
1/2 of a half a head of cabbage. So like, 1/4 cabbage.
Parmesan cheese
Spices:
Oregano, Basil, Bay Leaf (x2), Parsley, Salt and Pepper
Dash of tabasco
Other possible ingredients:
frozen/fresh spinich
eggplant
potato
bell peppers (green, red, yellow~)
zucchini
squash
Cheese (to be added when the soup is nearly finished)
Note, you can pretty much substitute any ingredients you want/have in this soup :) and also adjust the amount. Usually, I try to have equal parts of veggies, maybe a smidge more onion than carrot. Except garlic. I have a ton of that stuff.
Steps:
1. Get a large pot. Toss some oil in the pot. For the sake of the pot, if you can use something that's not a pasta pot, it's better I think. Heat until oil is warm.
2. Toss in ground beef, onions, and garlic. Cook until onions are kinda translucent or until beef is brown.
3. Throw in your hard veggies. Carrots, potatoes... anything that'll take a little longer to cook. Season lightly with salt and pepper.
4. After a little bit, add in the tomatoes, beef stock/boullion cubes and water, beans, celery, cabbage, and the rest of your soft veggies. Also add in your spices. I used like... two shakes of basil (since my basil comes out fast) and a few shakes of parsley and oregano, a round of salt, and lots of pepper. :D I love pepper.
5. Cover and cook at a simmer for at least 30 minutes, though you can go for longer.
6. About 20 minutes before you want to eat, throw in the pasta, unless you don't care if your pasta is soggy or you're using pasta where it doesn't matter much. If you pasta is in for too long, then you have sad, waterlogged pasta. D:
7. Taste, and season as you see fit. Generally I end up adding more basil and more salt, but that's because I like my minestrone really savory. If you stick with Italian herbs (or you have the Italian herb blend) you can't really go wrong. :)
8. Put into bowls. Top with copious amounts of parmesan cheese.
9. OMNOMNOMNOM.
It even has like, all the different food groups so you can eat this as a delicious meal. :D
Herbed Dumplings
From Allrecipes.com, adjusted for less salty/herby dumplings
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4-1/2 teaspoon salt (depending on your taste)
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon dried parsley
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
3 tablespoons butter
3/4 cup milk
In a bowl, mix the flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, thyme, parsley, and oregano. Cut in butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Gradually add milk, using just enough to form a thick batter.
Drop by rounded tablespoons into your simmering soup or stew, cover, and allow to cook 15 minutes. Do NOT lift the lid while they cook, otherwise yours won't end up fluffy.
Jess' notes: Baking soda is kind of hard to get here in Japan, but baking powder is readily available so I just used that instead. I pretty much used double the amount of baking powder (10g) since most online advice on using baking powder as a substitute calls for 2-3x the amount of baking soda needed. And they turned out fine. Seriously, these are tasty tasty dumplings.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Saturday, March 26, 2011
BZZZZZZZZZ.
Something interesting that I've noticed about going to shows or going to performances here is the way in which they notify the audience that it's time to sit down and shut up.
In the states yeah, the lights will dim or they'll flicker as a warning that you should be heading back to your seats and that in a couple of minutes, the show will start. Then usually, when the show actually starts, the lights will fully fade and a hush will come over the audience as the official signal.
In Japan though, instead of using these visual cues, they use audio cues for this. A giant buzzing noise buzzes and goes BUZZZZZZZZZZZ. Then when the show's about to start again it goes BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ again. Personally, I find it a little disruptive to the atmosphere of it all, especially if it's a more elegant show, but I suppose, to each his own? It's certainly effective in getting people to be quiet.
In the states yeah, the lights will dim or they'll flicker as a warning that you should be heading back to your seats and that in a couple of minutes, the show will start. Then usually, when the show actually starts, the lights will fully fade and a hush will come over the audience as the official signal.
In Japan though, instead of using these visual cues, they use audio cues for this. A giant buzzing noise buzzes and goes BUZZZZZZZZZZZ. Then when the show's about to start again it goes BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ again. Personally, I find it a little disruptive to the atmosphere of it all, especially if it's a more elegant show, but I suppose, to each his own? It's certainly effective in getting people to be quiet.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Miyagi-ken's JISHIN
It's been four days since the earthquake hit in the north-eastern part of Japan.
It was in the afternoon when it hit here; everyone was still at school, and I was killing time and correcting my brother's 12 page paper for his college writing course. Then, randomly, our school's PA system came to life, saying something in that calm, "I'm kind of panicking but my voice is completely calm because I've trained my whole life in Japanese society for this" Japanese crisis voice, all in Japanese, of course. There were a few things I could pick out. Evacuation center. Tokyo Dome. Several different prefecture names (including Tokyo). JISHIN, or earthquake. And the word for "emergency" (I had to look that one up).
It turns out that something basically hacked our PA system to broadcast an emergency message about the earthquake that had hit in Miyagi Prefecture, off the coast of Sendai. We were kind of like, "oh shit." The first place I turned to for information was the internet.
It's been so surreal the past few days as I've been watching the news, knowing that the northeastern part of Japan (roughly the size from NY to Washington, or so I'm told) was in utter chaos and had been partially annihilated. We've kind of been going about our normal lives down here. Okayama is blessedly far away from Tokyo (though the affected zones stretch down to Shizoka really). So I've been completely fine, and was somewhat amused when the first "OMG ARE YOU ALRIGHT?????" messages started coming in.
I was tempted to show them a map of Japan, but then I realized that many people, when they were watching the news, had it reported to them as the quake near tokyo since 98% of foreigners probably know where Miyagi prefecture is. So really, not people's fault I guess. Plus I could have been out traveling. I guess this is why they want you to tell your supervisor where you're going before you head out on long trips.
But this quake, unlike the other large ones that have hit, has hit a little bit closer to home. Literally. All of them, of course, have been tragic, sad, events. But this one in particular has hit the country I've come to call home for the past 7 months now. I could have been placed up there just as easily as I was placed in Okayama. I work with people who have relatives up there. My family members are in Tokyo, which, while not as bad, still got massive quakes.
So while Japan has been way better prepared and (hopefully) will result in fewer lives lost, I still can't help but worry. Entire towns got wiped out along the coast. Entire towns. Granted, some of these fishing villages can be quite small, but an entire town getting obliterated. That's crazy to think about.
It reminds me a lot about the global issues course I took a while back on The Scholar Ship. Prof. Gordon had talked about natural disasters, and how the worst ones in history weren't *actually* that bad as far as power and nature stuff goes. Most of it was location, and where humans had decided to build things. I suppose that's true, huh. But we can't really help where we build, since a lot of the places also are the most suitable for living, even if it means living near the river that's constantly flooding or living near the coast in a earthquake-prone (and thus, tsunami-prone) region.
I can't watch the news though any more. It just makes me too sad.
It was in the afternoon when it hit here; everyone was still at school, and I was killing time and correcting my brother's 12 page paper for his college writing course. Then, randomly, our school's PA system came to life, saying something in that calm, "I'm kind of panicking but my voice is completely calm because I've trained my whole life in Japanese society for this" Japanese crisis voice, all in Japanese, of course. There were a few things I could pick out. Evacuation center. Tokyo Dome. Several different prefecture names (including Tokyo). JISHIN, or earthquake. And the word for "emergency" (I had to look that one up).
It turns out that something basically hacked our PA system to broadcast an emergency message about the earthquake that had hit in Miyagi Prefecture, off the coast of Sendai. We were kind of like, "oh shit." The first place I turned to for information was the internet.
It's been so surreal the past few days as I've been watching the news, knowing that the northeastern part of Japan (roughly the size from NY to Washington, or so I'm told) was in utter chaos and had been partially annihilated. We've kind of been going about our normal lives down here. Okayama is blessedly far away from Tokyo (though the affected zones stretch down to Shizoka really). So I've been completely fine, and was somewhat amused when the first "OMG ARE YOU ALRIGHT?????" messages started coming in.
I was tempted to show them a map of Japan, but then I realized that many people, when they were watching the news, had it reported to them as the quake near tokyo since 98% of foreigners probably know where Miyagi prefecture is. So really, not people's fault I guess. Plus I could have been out traveling. I guess this is why they want you to tell your supervisor where you're going before you head out on long trips.
But this quake, unlike the other large ones that have hit, has hit a little bit closer to home. Literally. All of them, of course, have been tragic, sad, events. But this one in particular has hit the country I've come to call home for the past 7 months now. I could have been placed up there just as easily as I was placed in Okayama. I work with people who have relatives up there. My family members are in Tokyo, which, while not as bad, still got massive quakes.
So while Japan has been way better prepared and (hopefully) will result in fewer lives lost, I still can't help but worry. Entire towns got wiped out along the coast. Entire towns. Granted, some of these fishing villages can be quite small, but an entire town getting obliterated. That's crazy to think about.
It reminds me a lot about the global issues course I took a while back on The Scholar Ship. Prof. Gordon had talked about natural disasters, and how the worst ones in history weren't *actually* that bad as far as power and nature stuff goes. Most of it was location, and where humans had decided to build things. I suppose that's true, huh. But we can't really help where we build, since a lot of the places also are the most suitable for living, even if it means living near the river that's constantly flooding or living near the coast in a earthquake-prone (and thus, tsunami-prone) region.
I can't watch the news though any more. It just makes me too sad.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Ah, nostalgic bittersweetness
And oh hey - a surprise almond!
Today was the graduation ceremony for my base school, Takahashi Senior High school. It was quite different than high school graduations in the states; for one, it's in March since that's when the school year starts and finishes. Everyone else is still taking exams (or grading exams, in my case). The entire school (which is only 3 grades) attends the ceremony, and it's given the proper respect due to any ceremony in Japan. Moreso, since there were even rehearsals for this yesterday (which it was "suggested" I go to by some teachers and not by others).
To be brief, since I have to leave for a year end party pretty soon, here's a summary of the major differences I found between American, public high school graduations and Japanese public school graduations (with n=1):
1. No cap and gown for Japanese school kids. They wore corsages with their uniforms. Then again, we don't have uniforms.
2. Holy decorum batman. Everything had a ceremonial sort of order to it.
3. Bowing. If you went up to speak, you bowed at least 4 times: to the official people from the prefecture/PTA, to the official school people (principal, VP), to the flag of Japan, and to the audience. This of course, meant that as an audience member you could NOT sleep your way through the ceremony, because it requiring constant bowing and standing.
4. No diploma awarding. Graduates' names were read off and then one representative (from the academic classes, and one from the home ec class) went up and got something from the principal. That was it. No one else had to walk up to the stage.
5. Everyone else (the other students) had to attend the ceremony as well, and participated in singing stuff.
6. Auld Lang Sang was sung. In addition to being the "we're closing" song for department stores and supermarkets, it's also the graduation song. It has lyrics in Japanese. You should wiki it if you want to find out more. It's called "Hotaru no Hikari" or the Firefly's light. I almost laughed so hard when I heard them playing it the first time.
7. The audience members also wore corsages.
Afterwards, the students milled about and stuff, and I went back to grade more papers (I'm bustin' through these things baby). But like, afterwards, as I was grading and stuff, a couple graduating students came up to me with their yearbooks and asked me to sign it. X) I was super touched by this, since I only had one class (3-1) and some of the students weren't from that class. Some were though, and I was still super pleased that they came around to say bye and ask me to sign their yearbook. ^_^ This made me ridiculously happy, and I'm not sure why. I even took a couple pictures with some of the students. There were two students whose name I remembered (lols) and I wrote extra long for theirs. :D
The most surprising though, I think, was this one boy who came up to ask me to sign his. So this kid right. Every time I ran into him at school, he was always kinda jokey and stuff. The last time I ran into him, he had his bike and he was like, "you want to ride?" and he motioned to the back of his bicycle (where the little rack thing is). I kind of lol'd and made some sort of excuse on why I couldn't (they weren't untrue, either, but yeaaaah lol, riding on the back of a student's bicycle... yeaaaaaaaah. No.) But yeah. That pretty much sums up the kind of interactions I've had with him. Mostly I just laugh it off, but he asked me to sign his yearbook still and I was like "aww :)"
It makes me kind of sad that I'm not planning on staying a third year, since then I'd get to see the first years I taught this year graduate. I will get to see them as third years though, I guess. But it still makes me a little sad inside knowing that I won't be able to see this group off. Three years is a little too long for me. Places to be, and all that. Like grad school. Hopefully.
Today was the graduation ceremony for my base school, Takahashi Senior High school. It was quite different than high school graduations in the states; for one, it's in March since that's when the school year starts and finishes. Everyone else is still taking exams (or grading exams, in my case). The entire school (which is only 3 grades) attends the ceremony, and it's given the proper respect due to any ceremony in Japan. Moreso, since there were even rehearsals for this yesterday (which it was "suggested" I go to by some teachers and not by others).
To be brief, since I have to leave for a year end party pretty soon, here's a summary of the major differences I found between American, public high school graduations and Japanese public school graduations (with n=1):
1. No cap and gown for Japanese school kids. They wore corsages with their uniforms. Then again, we don't have uniforms.
2. Holy decorum batman. Everything had a ceremonial sort of order to it.
3. Bowing. If you went up to speak, you bowed at least 4 times: to the official people from the prefecture/PTA, to the official school people (principal, VP), to the flag of Japan, and to the audience. This of course, meant that as an audience member you could NOT sleep your way through the ceremony, because it requiring constant bowing and standing.
4. No diploma awarding. Graduates' names were read off and then one representative (from the academic classes, and one from the home ec class) went up and got something from the principal. That was it. No one else had to walk up to the stage.
5. Everyone else (the other students) had to attend the ceremony as well, and participated in singing stuff.
6. Auld Lang Sang was sung. In addition to being the "we're closing" song for department stores and supermarkets, it's also the graduation song. It has lyrics in Japanese. You should wiki it if you want to find out more. It's called "Hotaru no Hikari" or the Firefly's light. I almost laughed so hard when I heard them playing it the first time.
7. The audience members also wore corsages.
Afterwards, the students milled about and stuff, and I went back to grade more papers (I'm bustin' through these things baby). But like, afterwards, as I was grading and stuff, a couple graduating students came up to me with their yearbooks and asked me to sign it. X) I was super touched by this, since I only had one class (3-1) and some of the students weren't from that class. Some were though, and I was still super pleased that they came around to say bye and ask me to sign their yearbook. ^_^ This made me ridiculously happy, and I'm not sure why. I even took a couple pictures with some of the students. There were two students whose name I remembered (lols) and I wrote extra long for theirs. :D
The most surprising though, I think, was this one boy who came up to ask me to sign his. So this kid right. Every time I ran into him at school, he was always kinda jokey and stuff. The last time I ran into him, he had his bike and he was like, "you want to ride?" and he motioned to the back of his bicycle (where the little rack thing is). I kind of lol'd and made some sort of excuse on why I couldn't (they weren't untrue, either, but yeaaaah lol, riding on the back of a student's bicycle... yeaaaaaaaah. No.) But yeah. That pretty much sums up the kind of interactions I've had with him. Mostly I just laugh it off, but he asked me to sign his yearbook still and I was like "aww :)"
It makes me kind of sad that I'm not planning on staying a third year, since then I'd get to see the first years I taught this year graduate. I will get to see them as third years though, I guess. But it still makes me a little sad inside knowing that I won't be able to see this group off. Three years is a little too long for me. Places to be, and all that. Like grad school. Hopefully.
Friday, February 25, 2011
PO-TA-TO
Among the many things that I've seen or had or experience for the first time since coming to Japan, potatoes, yes, potatoes are up there. Along with mushrooms, they seem to be the thing that makes you go, "holy crap, Japan has a crapton of different potatoes WHY ARE THERE SO MANY." Like seriously. So. Many. Types. And not the same ones that the states have. I've yet to see a russet or yukon or small red potato here. Though, apparently, they do exist (according to the blog thing below, linked). The red ones anyways.
In addition to your regular, small brown dirty potato, there are four families of potatoes, or -imo (Satoimo, satsuimo, jyagaimo, etc) in Japanese. Within each of these families, there are a billion different potatoes. Yes, a billion. A lot anyways. Japanese classifies taro as a type, yams as another, sweet potatoes as another, and potatoes as the final family. I suppose yams are similar to potatoes. They're a root too. but yeah. Potato heaven.
Side note, in the winter, the purple sweet potatoes (satsuimo) are super popular. People bake them or heat them in aluminum foil and then they double as handwarmers. You eat them plain, and there's even a truck that sells them that will come around occasionally. I blame this for my gradual acceptance of sweet potatoes in non-french-fry form.
Your guide to Japanese Potatoes since it's all written here, I'm going to redirect you to this site to learn more about fabulous Japanese potatoes. No sense in rewriting something so well written (with pictures!).
Mmm, this is making me hungry. I don't know why I do this to myself.
In addition to your regular, small brown dirty potato, there are four families of potatoes, or -imo (Satoimo, satsuimo, jyagaimo, etc) in Japanese. Within each of these families, there are a billion different potatoes. Yes, a billion. A lot anyways. Japanese classifies taro as a type, yams as another, sweet potatoes as another, and potatoes as the final family. I suppose yams are similar to potatoes. They're a root too. but yeah. Potato heaven.
Side note, in the winter, the purple sweet potatoes (satsuimo) are super popular. People bake them or heat them in aluminum foil and then they double as handwarmers. You eat them plain, and there's even a truck that sells them that will come around occasionally. I blame this for my gradual acceptance of sweet potatoes in non-french-fry form.
Your guide to Japanese Potatoes since it's all written here, I'm going to redirect you to this site to learn more about fabulous Japanese potatoes. No sense in rewriting something so well written (with pictures!).
Mmm, this is making me hungry. I don't know why I do this to myself.
Friday, February 18, 2011
Sapporo, Day 2: What would YOU do for some chocolate?
Sapporo, Day 2: New Friends and Chocolate FactoriesApparently, it turns out that Sapporo has not only a beer factory, but a chocolate factory as well. We started off the day intending to go to a Salmon museum and then hit up the beer factory, but finding the Salmon museum proved to be rather... challenging despite having free access to a computer and an iPhone 4 (which, might I add, was not mine since I don't have one). Then again, I wasn't really the one who wanted to go to the museum in the first place, and I have since learned about myself, that if it isn't something I really want to do or are are invested in (like if I'm apathetic towards it) the chances of me doing the legwork to get it set up, found, and mapped out with directions or reservations or whatever drop drastically. Basically, if I'm not the one keen on going there, I probably won't try too hard to find it or make reservations for it.
So we ended up not going to the Salmon museum.
But, we learned instead of a chocolate factory that we could visit instead. And us girls decided, hell yes, we want to go to a chocolate factory (though it turns out it's more of a cookie factory, almost). The guy who told us about it, our Australian hostel friend, went with the one boy in our group to the beer factory early; they were going to have a little pre-party and drink a bit while we went to the chocolate factory, and our plan was to meet up with them in like, an hour or two.
The chocolate factory turned out to be more interesting than we thought. I think we spent three or four hours there. We also had to find it in a mini snowstorm-blizzard-thing. Being from California, I have no idea whether or not it was a blizzard. I just know that there was a HUGE amount of snow, we could barely see 50 feet in front of us, and I could hear the snow hitting my jacket. The fur lining was pretty much frozen by the time we got there, and I ended up pulling out my ski goggles/mask and wore that as we walked so that I could actually see/open my eyes.
Woo, ski mask came in handy! I had felt pretty silly about spending themoney on it before (I had bought it so that when I rode downhill to the train station at 7 am and it was below freezing or close to it, my eyeballs wouldn't freeze). Now, I feel like that purchase has been justified.
Oh, a picture of two of us after we finally found the chocolate factory.Yeah. We were pretty covered in snow. You can see my ski mask. I look like I'm going to trek up a mountain and through a snowstorm with a dogsled or something. That would have been sweet. But you can hardly tell it's me under all that hahahaha.
That being said, I was warm at least. Only my mouth/cheeks were kinda frozen. I felt rather well prepared. :D
Oh, the lovely lady on my left is Caroline, from the UK. She's also teaching in Okayama Prefecture with me. :)
If ice pants weren't so cold (and didn't melt) having jeans with the bottom part in ice would look super cool. Literally.
The chocolate factory was pretty awesome though. It was kinda random, this Victorian style house in the middle of Sapporo. Hokkaido, as a whole, has some pretty random European style buildings, including an aquarium that's in a Dutch castle (which we went to).
The chocolate factory also had a cafe. It was a hard decision: chocolate fondue, or chocolate parfait. I chose the parfait. Love those things so much. It had brownies in it.
The sad news though, is that we spent so long at the chocolate place that by the time we were ready to leave, the boys were sufficiently drunk from the beer place and had left to look at the snow sculptures at night (when they were all lit). So instead of heading to the beer place, we went to have lunch (pasta again) and then headed over to the sculptures to meet up with them.
I'm a little sad about not going to the Sapporo beer factory, but I'm told that there's a Kirin one somewhere here in Okayama. I'm not overly fond of Sapporo beer anyways (or Japanese beer, for that matter - it's okay, but I don't really prefer it especially if I have to pay 500 yen for it). The chocolate factory also had a really random gramaphone museum as well as a nostalgic toy/stuff section. They had stuff from when Kennedy was president, as well as a whole bunch of Nasa stuff and Star Wars figurines and pokemon things and Superman dolls. It was kind of amazing.
There was also a kind of entrance hall with this amazing double sided staircase that had a red carpet lining to it. Oh man. It was like something out of a fairy tale. I would pay moneys to be able to walk down the staircase in a formal evening ballgown (and I would pay more if, in the center, a good looking gentleman in a suit or other formal wear met me and took my arm and continued the walk down with me). :) Hahaha. Maybe I've watched too many Disney movies and read too many books. But think about it. That'd be so super sweet.
So basically, if you ever go to Sapporo, the chocolate factory is definitely worth a visit. :)
Oh yeah. The sculptures. We met back up with the boys and took pictures of the sculptures during the nighttime. And this time, I remembered my camera.
At night, they were all lit up and it was pretty sweet. This one was one of my favorites. The owl was AMAZING. There was a theme going on about relationship with China, or as the festival people put it "Traveling the world/China without having to leave Sapporo."
Actually, I like the owl so much that I'll put up a close up picture of the owl. It had the coolest eyes. The owl and foxes are supposed to be symbols or mascots of Sapporo, I think. Also, Sapporo is known for their salmon, which, I am very sad to say, I never tried. The downside to having vegetarian friends and eating with them, bless their souls.
There was also a giant jump platform and we got to see some snowboarders do some sweet tricks on it (though we kinda froze in the process). A lot of my pictures also ended up being of butts, since that's just the way the snowboarders happened to face while they jumped. A lot of my shots turned out really blurry (stupid moving things) but a couple turned out a little clearer. I was pleased.
There were a lot of sculptures of Chopper (from One Piece) and of rabbits (since it's the year of the bunny after all) in addition to the loads of Chinese things. All in all, it was pretty amazing to go to. There were also random dinosaur large ice/snow sculptures too that were all lit up, as well as an international snow sculpture competition. We got to see them as they were being built. That was pretty sweet.
Sapporo
Sunday, 6 February 2011: 6:00am
This is the time that we left for the airport. Actually, I think we left some time before this, since we got to the airport before 6 am, since it was still closed when we got there. That was... fun. But, that being said, I'd rather be there really really early than really close to being late.
So our flight from Kobe left sometime around 8 am and got in sometime around noon. Despite California being a little bit larger than Japan, strangely enough, it still took longer to get from Kobe to Hokkaido than it does to get from San Diego to San Francisco. To be fair, it also takes longer by car I believe, but who knows if that's because of terrain or speed limit or what.
But either way, we reached Sapporo safe and sound, and set off on a train to our hostel. And reach... SNOWPOCALYPSE. Seriously. So. Much. Snow.
I will summarize the rest of our day in a few sentences.
1. The only kind of snow that is awesome is powder; everything else sucks.
2. Especially when you have to walk on it and you keep slipping despite there being tread on your boots.
3. Finding food to eat with vegetarians in Japan is kind of tiresome after a bit, bless their hearts.
4. Snow can be built into huge, giant things of awesome.
We found our way, after dropping off our stuff and checking in to our hostel, to where the yuki matsuri, or snow festival, had been set up. Of course, I forgot my camera in my backpack at the hostel (I brought my purse instead). Wow. Stupid me. Stupid stupid stupid. I took pictures on my phone instead. Eventually those will get uploaded. Eventually.
It was cool though, because there weren't as many people at the festival since it didn't officially start until Monday. (Oh man, the difference between the two days was AMAZING. There were SO MANY PEOPLE. O_O )
Wooooooooow snow sculptures are amazing. I kind of wish I lived in a place with more snow so that I could try doing this. Because those things were absolutely amazing. There were sculptures of all different sizes, though the smallest ones were around person size (mounted on a large block) and the large ones were.... large. Huge. Building size. There was one of the Lion King, which was pretty freaking awesome. I practically was jumping with joy. IT WAS SO AWESOME. It was for the Lion King musical, which is currently showing in Japan (I really want to see it).
I could go on and on and on and on about how amazing the snow festival was, but it's getting late and it's already ten past eight. I haven't eaten yet. Again. Oops. That's the bad thing about winter; I tend to get sucked into the warmth that is my kotatsu and then I don't move for a long time and neglect everything else. Sigh.
Since we had gotten up so early, we ended up retiring back to our hostel a little earlier than we would have normally. We were so tired, but we still managed to find the energy to play Bang! (a western, mafia style cowboy card game I brought with me). Also met some of the other people in the hostel, including a Brit dude and an Australian dude who happened to be sharing our dorm style room with us.
Hooray for new friends!
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