We begin here in SAPPORO, HOKKAIDO. It is located in the northern region of Japan. It was freezing. Well, in some of the photos you can see the snow! Here you go!
March 12 & 13, 2010
1st and 2nd Day of Travel
So as mentioned in my last blog update, I was able to do a long journey through Japan. It will go as follows: SAPPORO, HAKODATE, KYOTO, KOBE, TOKYO, KYOTO, NARA, OSAKA, TOKYO, OKAYAMA, HIROSHIMA, MIYAJIMA, and OSAKA. I understand that it is a confusing schedule, but trust me there is a reason for this rhyme. It mainly deals with picking up and dropping off people.
As for today (the 12th), I’m off to pick up my buddy at SAPPORO. It was a great start to the trip. I went to bed early the night before, after packing and checking all the paperwork for the trip. Waking up at 08:30 hours this morning, I made my final checks and made my way to the bus stop. I recommend to all exchange students that are coming to OKAYAMA, to take the bus to OSAKA!
Arriving at the bus stop about 1.5 hours early, I went and stopped off at: Mister Donuts. I ate three donuts and had four to five cups of coffee. I then got onto the bus and moved towards Osaka. The trip was smooth just like when I went to Korea. I fell asleep again, and made it all the way to KOBE before I woke up. I stayed awake until OSAKA.
Arriving at KANSAI International Airport, again I was amazed. I do have to say that I was surprised with the awaking methods of letting you know how fast you are going when you arrive at the airport with all the speed bumps. It is a weird thing to run into, but I have to say that the airport is worth seeing at least once!
The flight to SAPPORO, was smooth for the most part. When I was about 10 minutes out of CHITOSE airport, it began to get very bumpy. Actually, there was a little snowstorm brewing when I finally got out of the plan. Now, I noticed that I was two hours earlier than my buddy that I was meeting up. Because of that, I went looking around the place.
There was a game that you can play while at the airport. CHITOSE is an airport that has all sorts of crazy information about planes. I made my way around the airport, and the game was to collect stamps and information about the various different flying styles and invention. It had information from Davinci’s machines of the past to the space shuttles of modern day flight technology.
I collected almost all the stamps, before I decided to take a coffee break. After the coffee, I remembered that I needed maps of the surrounding areas. I went and asked for the maps of HAKODATE and SAPPORO.
Now, this was an interesting event that took place. It was a lot harder for me to get the maps than I thought it would be. The reason being there is a slight difference between the word: “Map” and “Cheese”. The difference between the two words being “CHIIZU” and “CHIZU”, the first word is “cheese” and the later being “map”.
(The building that Ben and I mistook for the SAPPORO Clock Tower)The girl that was at the desk just did not understand what I was saying. She went through all the different types of cheese that HOKKAIDO was known for! I kept saying, “No, I want a map.” She thought that I wanted a different type of cheese…
This went on for a good four to five minutes. I really didn’t know how to explain it to her, and as comedic as it was, I was getting annoyed, therefore I decided to write down the word. “地図”
(The real SAPPORO Clock Tower)
Looking around, I noticed that after walking up and down the airport and speaking with the thoroughly embarrassed information personnel, that it was almost time for my friend Benedict Yik (Check out his blog! Click HERE!) to land. I thought that it would then be a good idea to wait for him. Well, it just so happened that my buddy was going to walk out the doors, that were right next to the info lady.
Therefore, I waited patiently next to the embarrassed girl. Finally, 10 minutes late, my buddy emerged. We made our way to the restaurant area, being that I was starving to find that everything has closed for the night. Annoyed, we moved to the JR train area. We took the train to SHIN-SAPPORO and got out to eat.
We had some really good MISO RAMEN. It was delicious, and when we finished we made our way out the station. There I was confused. The maps that I had did not match the maps posted on the walls anywhere. Worried, I decided to take a taxi to our hotel destination.
When the driver of the taxi saw the address though, he told me that I was days away from the destination and that it would take a while. His advice was to get back onto the train and head for SAPPORO station and to get a taxi from there. I decided to follow it.
Arriving at the station; I noticed that the maps matched, and I made my way to the hotel. We arrived at the hotel at about 22:00 hours. It was snowing and freezing outside. I was so happy to make it into the hotel. Unfortunately, it was the wrong hotel. The one that I was looking for was about a kilometer away from this one.
Now, you maybe thinking: “why is it so far away? How did he get that lost?” My explanation is that there are three hotels with the name: CHISUN in it…
The names are as follows: CHISUN Inn, CHISUN Hotel, and CHISUN Grand Hotel. We were supposed to stay at the grand one, and I went to the non-grand hotel…
Well, I was not going to walk to the next hotel in the snow and opted for a taxi. ￥960 later we were at the correct hotel checking in.
It was AWESOME! The hotel room was gigantic. There were two couches in it! The bathroom was huge, and so were the two beds, which were a little too soft in my opinion. All in all, it was a nice place. Being that my friend was tired, we decided to call it a night here.
March 13, 2010 – 札幌
At this time let me point out, that the photos that you have been seeing throughout the paragraphs will start to match up from this point onwards.
This morning started off early. I wanted to make sure that we were able to get everything that we needed to see in the main part of SAPPORO out of the way. We set off to see the thing that was closest to us, but not before stopping by a STARBUCKS coffee house and starting off the day with a Cup-o-Joe.
After the coffee, we made our way back towards the station. Along the way we ran past the SAPPORO tower. It was awesome, but we actually had to send a suitcase ahead back to my place in OKAYAMA. I actually sent it to a friend, so that she can watch over it while we are traveling around. THANKS Cat!
After completing that task, we made a move to cash out some money from the money orders that we had, but it ended up not working out correctly. What I mean by that is: my buddy landed on a Friday, and we went directly to the hotel then to sleep. Thus, today is Saturday… There is a problem here; the post office does not do money exchanges on the weekends, only on the weekdays…
OK, no problem! I will just pull some money out of my account to use around town. Let that be a notice to travelers to Japan. Money Orders are the best way to travel with money in Japan, unless you are with a bank that has a 0% charge, they cost about $4.00 and lose only about 1% in the exchange. The only down side is that you need to go to a large enough post office to get them exchanged, and it needs to be a Monday through Friday time frame.
Finishing pulling money out, we went to JR Tower in SAPPORO. Made sense, because it is in SAPPORO station. After walking around there for a little while, we decided to leave and make our way to the old SAPPORO Gov’t building. It was the next closest thing.
This building is amazing looking. Also, it looks like a bunch of westerners built it. Most of the building was closed off to public as well, because of the weather. It was still snowing/hailing/raining. So it was a quick once over and then we made our way to the “Clock Tower”.
Now, once you say “Clock Tower”, the thing that comes to mind is a massive tower that stands above all else with a clock in it. Either that or Big Ben in England… Anyhow, to my surprise, it was actually a little building with a clock on the front of it… I can’t really say that I was disappointed, but then I wasn’t really impressed either… OK! On to the next thing.
It just so happens that the next attraction is SAPPORO TV Tower, and that is awesome! We went to the top and took a good look around SAPPORO. This is a must see in the area. Great views, and was a fun thing to look around. Reminded me of TOKYO Tower and the Eiffel Tower.
Next came the NIJO Fish Market. I had to say that I was expecting something along the lines of the Jalgachi Fish Market in Busan, or TSUKIJI Fish Market in TOKYO. This really wasn’t anything like that. It was cool, but not as cool as the others mentioned. It was a neat line of street vendors that were selling fresh fish.
My buddy Ben wanted to eat here; so we decided to find a place to sit down. He had some UNI (Sea Urchin) and I had a SUSHI set. It was delicious and a bit pricey, but the people who ran the place were really nice and spoke as much English as they could to my friend and me.
Finishing up with our respective meals, we made a move towards the SAPPORO beer factory. Along the way we stopped off at the SAPPORO Factory. This was an old factory that was closed down and turned into a mall. This is a really interesting place, and if you like to shop, then SAPPORO Factory is a must see!
After spending a good hour shopping around, we finished making our way to the beer factory. Might I add that it was a weird experience getting to the factory, because it took us a round about way to get there.
We actually had to go through a mall in order to get to the factory. The only benefit of walking through the mall is that I needed to write some letters while I was here, and was able to get paper and envelopes.
The factory was an interesting take on how to make SAPPORO beer and where it began at. After walking around and finding out how it was made, there came a funny part of the tour. It was kind of like a little Disney sing-a-long with dolls on how the beer was made from seed to bottling.
Then my favorite part came, the beer tasting. I have to admit that I’m not a big beer fan, so I had my doubts. The lighter beers, I was not too fond of, but the dark beer was awesome! Satisfied with the tour now, we made our way back towards SUSUKINO to go have dinner.
This is where I noticed something disturbing. We were running low on funds, and tomorrow we are planning on going to the NOBORIBETSU Hot Springs. So we had to find something that was not too expensive to eat.
At SUSUKINO we found a cheap TONKATSU place. I was able to enjoy MISO TONKATSU, whereas my buddy just had the regular. This was a delicious and cheap meal. Since we saw that we were running low on funds, we decided to end the night here, walking back towards the hotel.
Stay tuned for our trip to the ONSEN and to see if we can make it with dwindling funds!
For more photos click HERE! Or click on the title! More days coming soon!
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