Snow Festival

haha, I let my blog die again I suppose. Lots of stuff has happened so I'll summarize.

At the end of December, the mold in my dorm room started growing faster than ever, so I decided one night to just move out. A week later, I had a new apartment next to my friend. It's a lot nicer, hard wood floors, and my own kitchen and bathroom. But it costs over $600 a month instead of $200. So sadly I now have very little money left over in my scholarship each month.

A couple of weeks after I got my apartment, I started to get sick. The first week, it was just really bad headaches at night and some aching. I thought it would go away, but it just got worse. The next weekend I started getting fevers at night, and the headaches and pain just got worse. My throat starting hurting too. I skipped my Tuesday early morning class, but went to the later ones. Unfortunately I could barely talk at that point cause my throat hurt so bad. I got a fever later that night and asked my friend to take me to the doctor the next day.

Unfortunately the doctors here aren't very helpful. I went to two different doctors and all they did was look at my throat and tell me it was swollen and then give me antibiotics. I didn't go to school for a week and a half after that Tuesday. At my worst (which lasted about 5 days), I could barely swallow anything without severe pain, even water, and couldn't stand up for more than a few minutes at a time. I would get fevers at night and could barely sleep because of my throat. I stopped talking because it hurt and I could barely speak. My friend made me eggs and ran to the store for me. I finally started getting better after a week on the medicine. The doctors never actually did any tests, but I'm pretty sure I had tonsillitis.

A few weeks later, I went to the ATM to get my rent payment, and then my friend invited me to the travel agency where a group of my friends were planning to go to the Snow Festival in Hokkaido, the northernmost part of Japan. I'd wanted to go there forever, but I debated whether or not to do because it was expensive. Eventually I thought that I haven't seen any of Japan outside of Tokyo and Tsukuba, my university's city, since coming to Japan. I wasn't sure I'd ever get a chance to see the Snow Festival again, so I ended up using my rent payment to buy plane tickets and book a hotel for 3 nights.

A week and a half later, we were on a plane to Hokkaido. We left Friday morning since we have no classes on Friday. I went with two of my friends, and we were going to meet up with 4 of our other friends who left the night before. They were planning to stay longer than us three, so we weren't with them the whole time.

We got to our hotel around 3, and got really excited because the bathroom was really luxurious. Afterwards we headed to the station and took a bus to a part of the snow festival outside of town. This area had a bunch of ice slides you could ride down. Unfortunately it was freezing because we were essentially in the middle of an open field. We only lasted outside about 15min before having to duck inside to thaw. We went outside again and waited in line for the big slide, which was really fun, but we got so cold waiting we had to run inside again after. We headed back to town around 5, and walked around the main area of the snow festival. Which took place in a 12 block long park in town. The festival had tons of small and and a few huge snow sculptures. Which were amazingly detailed. We walked around for a couple hours looking the sculptures, while ducking inside somewhere whenever we got too cold.

The next day we slept in a little because we were all pretty tired from the long day the day before. We were going to leave at noon, but Home Alone came on tv, and seeing as I've never seen it, we decided to stay and watch it. So we finally left around 2, and stopped briefly at the underground mall so I could buy more socks and gloves, and then we got on a bus to the Sapporo Beer Museum. Sapporo is the name of the city we were in. It's the capital of the Hokkaido prefecture. And Sapporo is quite famous for its beer. It was a rather small museum, but you could try the beer for real cheap. It was really good.

After the beer museum we met up with the other 4 at the station, and we headed to the district of Sapporo with all the bars and restaurants. Another part of the snow festival was there. It was where they had all the ice sculptures. These were just as amazing as the snow sculptures. Pictures really don't do them justice. It started blizzarding while we were there, so we ducked inside a ramen shop for dinner. After dinner we headed home and watched The Bodyguard on tv before falling asleep.

The next day we had to check out of our hotel by 11 and change hotels, because the hotel we were in was booked that night. The next hotel was a lot farther out of the way, and not as nice. We dropped off our luggage and sat around for about an hour deciding what to do next. We looked through all the sightseeing books and eventually decided on a rather remote scenic mountain village where they had hot springs. The bus there took about an hour.

Our first stop in the mountain village was a small hot spring outside where you could bath your feet. Even with just my feet in that water I felt so much warmer. After the foot bath we walked around taking some pictures of hot spring waterfalls and the scenic river valley. Everywhere was covered in more snow than I've ever seen before. We eventually found our way to a shrine, which had a creepy underground tunnel with alcoves where they placed statues of the Buddhist goddess Kannon. After the shrine we wanted to go to this scenic suspension bridge overlooking the valley. Unfortunately the only path there was through the snow. Luckily people before us had carved a path already in the snow. The snow must've been 4-5ft deep. We made it up to the bridge finally, took some pictures, built a rather sad looking snowman, and heading back to the bus stop to head home.

We stopped at the hotel to rest and discovered our room was Japanese style, which made it a little more fun. After an hour we headed out for one last look at the snow festival.

The next day we were up by 630, and at the train station by 8 to catch the 30min train to the airport. The plane was a little over an hour, and then we had to wait another hour for the 1 hour bus ride home. We made it back 30min before our class started.

Kinda wish I'd chosen to go to Hokkaido University instead. It's in Sapporo. And Sapporo is a much more interesting city that Tsukuba. The trip was really fun, even though it was so cold. The temperature was about 5-10F. And a little colder outside of town. The whole time I was wearing earmuffs, a hat, two pairs of gloves, 3 pairs of socks and leg warmers, leggings, pants, boots, 4 undershirts, the warmest sweater I own, and my winter coat, and I was still cold. I would go back though. It was so much fun.