Sapporo

Went to Sapporo yesterday for the day to check out the ice festival and the Sapporo brewery. My first foray into the 'real' Japan.
Pretty cool place, despite being really cold. The ice festival is amazing. They have snow and ice sculptures that are 3 stories high, as well as hundreds of smaller ones. A food marketplace that had heaps of traditional Japanese and even traditional Hokkaido cuisine which is full of seafood thanks to all the fishing ports and towns around Sapporo. Absolutely delicious.




While we were cruising round all the ice sculptures we got approached by these Japanese people who wanted to interview us; where we were from, what we were up to in Sapporo, what we thought of the ice festival etc. Anyways it turned out to be an interview live on Japanese radio! One of the biggest stations in Sapporo.
They took us to their mobile radio studio and the presenter asked us questions in English and translated our answers to Japanese. Pretty random, but pretty cool!



The Sapporo Brewery was without doubt one of the best nights ever! All you can drink beer and sake, all you can eat asian style bbq lamb and vegies. We certainly got our moneys worth. So much so that my head was still pretty sore at lunch time today. Ask HB what he got up to after we left the brewery. Thats a story and a half!


While there we met these really cool Sapporo locals also enjoying the all you can eat/all you can drink extravaganza on the next table! We did our best to communicate with their limited english and our limited japanese, but with copious amounts of booze acting as the catalyst, we were best of friends by the end of the night. Nori and Shin.



Today, despite the sore head, I went up the mountain and had a really good day despite no new snow. Got lost today in waist deep snow off to the side of one of the lifts. Followed the wrong ridge line and ended up overshooting the lift. Spent about an hour walking out of the valley. But it was worth it. Got a sick line down the hill on untouched snow.


Only 3 more days left here. Don't want to go. Although we're moving on to Tokyo which will be Awesome!