Hokkaido Part 1

My trip to Hokkaido was a blast. I went with about 70 other ALTs from my prefecture and two neighboring prefectures. We took an overnight ferry up to Hokkaido from Sendai. It was about a 14 hour trip on a big cruise ship. There were lots of things to do on the boat, but of course we ended up drinking and getting loud. Some middle-aged Japanese man in a lime green jumpsuit came out to take pictures of us like animals in a zoo, but I think he was drunk because he kept hitting Steph and Bobs on their heads. In Japan, friends seem to do this to each other, well, the guys anyway, and no one seems to get offended. BUT, he was hitting two girls. We told him to get away, and he finally went to a different group of ALTs. I stayed up entirely too late that night, so I had to take a nap when we finally got to our inn in Sapporo. On the first night in Sapporo, we all boarded the party buses bound for the Sapporo Beer Factory for a nomi/tabehodai (all you can drink/eat) with Sapporo beer and grilled lamb and veggies. The place was thick with smoke from the grills and everyone got a paper apron to wear so we weren't completely covered with lamb juice. After that, we all splintered off into smaller groups for the second party. I ended up with Bobbie, Stephanie and Lopez at a 500 yen bar. Twas a good night. The next day, Helen and I went to an old village circa late 1800's, early 1900's with some Miyagi kids, Rika, Louise, G, and Lisa. It was very touristy, but it was fun. There was about 5 feet of snow in some places there. In the old buildings, there were motion sensors so that when we stepped inside some of them, a soundtrack would start. That itself would have been ok, but there were also these manequins that just looked like dead people because they were in strange positions. I got some pictures, so check em out. There was also a small hill where we could sled on these old fashioned sleds. It was great, but I ended up getting a huge bruise on the back of my knee when I ran into a huge pile of snow at the bottom. Worth it! After that, Helen and I headed off on our own to a hot spring town called Jozankei. It just happened to be a blizzard at the time, so I was a little worried that we would get stranded somewhere, but we made it there in about an hour and a half. There was so much snow everywhere! The town was very cute with cobbled streets and old fashioned lamp posts. We decided to go to the first hot spring we could find, so we went to Hotel Jozankei. We traded our shoes for slippers, then went to put on yukata before entering the bath area. The bath we went into wasn't very impressive. It was a dated, tiled affair with about eight shower spots, 4 or 5 different indoor hot tubs, a sauna, and a small outdoor tub. We stayed in their for about 45 minutes then went to the massage chairs. Now that was nice. Japanese massage chairs are genius. A woman who worked at the hotel told us that we had to leave the bath because the women's bath and men's bath were being swapped. After about 15 minutes of waiting for everyone to get out of both of them, we were allowed into the "Grand Bath." Now this bath was impressive! The room was huge and steamy, so I couldn't see all of it at once. There were at least 6 swimming pool sized hot baths and one had a slide! I went down that slide at least 15 times in the 30 minutes we had left in the bath. The outdoor tub was very nice as well. It was much bigger and nicer than the first one. Unfortunately, we had to catch a bus back to Sapporo, so we couldn't stay there very long. I slept so well that night!