Hokkaido - yukimatsuri

So... Here is my delayed write-up on Hokkaido and the yukimatsuri (I flew back to the States a day after getting back). All my photos are up on my Flickr account, but there will be some in the post too (as well as some photos taken by friends).

First day
We left for Haneda airport in the morning. I like Haneda, it's smaller (mostly just domestic flights, though also some to Korea and such) and so relaxed - they didn't even check our ID! We arrived just before getting dark, and headed to our hostel, which was a few minutes' walk from Sapporo station, right at the center of everything.
We grabbed some ramen for dinner (Hokkaido is known for its miso ramen) and headed out to see the ice sculptures all lit up at night. Unfortunately on the way, I realized my boots were not waterproof and in fact had holes in them - snow got stuck up the holes and then melted, and melted on the end of my boots and soon I had wet, freezing feet. We stopped at a convenience store to grab some plastic bags that I wrapped my feet in (and would the rest of the trip, sigh). The sculptures were *amazing* though. They had mostly snow sculptures (quite a few of them huuuge) at Odori Park, and ice sculptures down the entertainment district of Susukino. We mostly saw the ice sculptures that night.

Hokkaido from the plane


This sculpture had fish and various sea creatures frozen in the ice blocks.

Phoenix


Day 2
All 8 of us slept in one room (girls and guys - slightly awkward, and arrrgh a couple of the guys snored and kept me awake!) We woke up later than intended, and I went down to the basement to shower - but the showers were open only from 6-9:30 in the mornings, and I went down a few minutes before 9:30. A woman glared at me, pointed at the hours, and went "Nooooo! Cleaning! Nooooo!" Seriously, she had this long, drawn-out "nooo!" as though I was killing a puppy or something. I snuck down again a half hour later, she was gone, and showered quickly - but she came back as I was getting dressed and went "Noooooo!!" again. Yeesh. :p

We went out to see the snow sculptures in Odori Park. Some elementary school kids came up asking us to fill out some surveys for them, practicing their English - they were so cute! They gave us little laminated cards with their names and what they like on them. Aww.



Disney sculpture

Filling out the survey for the kids


Then we went to the Sapporo dome, which had snow slides and more snow sculptures - unfortunately it closed 15 minutes after we got there...
WALL-E~~ ♥


Day 3
The girls went to a Scandanavian (?) bread museum; the guys went to a beer museum. The bread museum was pretty boring (although we did buy some tasty bread) - the "museum" was a single room, only interesting thing about it was the huge longboat in the center with stuffed caribou on it. :p
We then went on to a chocolate museum/factory that was known for its shiroi koibito (literally "white lover"), which was a cookie with chocolate in the center. The factory was beautiful, but rather bizarre. It had exhibits of western tea cups, saucers, etc., as well as a large exhibit of old toys. It had a lovely view of the mountains though.
After we came back to Sapporo, we went to the Sapporo Factory, which was a huge mall (but full of only pricey stores). The center atrium was beautiful.

View from the chocolate factory

The chocolate factory itself



Final Day
Our last day, we headed out to Otaru - a fishing village about a 45 minute train ride from Sapporo. They have illuminations at night, with lights strung out along the canal and candles in little snow sculptures along the sidewalks.

Sea + snow!

Hokkaido's peculiar mascot........ It's called marimokkori, after a little ball of algae (marimo) that we saw being sold in a lot of souvenir shops, and the word mokkori (slang for "large crotch"). Soo, it's basically what you get if you cross the marimo algae with mokkori... Read more here.

Illuminations






We came back in the evening, failed to sleep (much to my annoyance, people were still packing at 2 am), and got up at 6 am to fly back to Tokyo. And there you have it. :)

Setsubun, Kichijouji & Inokashira Park, Onsen

Phew okay recapping. (Also, leaving for Hokkaido on Monday, one day back in Tokyo and then on to the US? Ahh! Major cleaning and packing today.)

So - Tuesday was Setsubun. The girls and I went to Asakusa, where I bought a bunch of gifts for people back home (there are a lot of market stalls in front of the temple - definitely a good place for souveneirs). There was no bean throwing, except a few by various people (monks? celebrities? I couldn't understand but they didn't look like monks!) to the people in the front of the crowd. There was a little parade. We mostly just wandered around the area and bought things. Oh, and I had an older man tell me I made his heart go "doki-doki" (beat faster, I think. I tell ya, these older Japanese men. I've never had things like this happen in the US!) and a Japanese lady asked me if she could snap a photo with her cell phone - the latter right after the three of us were taking inappropriate pictures with chocolate-covered bananas... Oops.

When we got back, two of the girls bought beans and attacked me when I went to meet them later in the evening. Then the three of us attacked Jess. And I called out another friend because we wanted someone else to throw beans at. (Technically I think you're not actually supposed to throw them people, but in your house/at someone with a demon mask in order to drive away bad luck/bad spirits - but ah well. You're also supposed to eat as many beans as your age for good luck.)





We bought chocolate-coated bananas and took inappropriate pictures with them (mostly not with my camera though, it's dying :(


ATTACKING FRIENDS WITH BEANS MEANS LOVE.


Wednesday we went to Kichijouji, a nice shopping area. I bought a bag to use as a second carry-on for going home/for schoolbooks next semester. We also went to Inokashira Park, which contains a shrine to Benzaiten - a vengeful goddess of love. It's said that couples who go boating on the lake will soon break up (we didn't see anyone boating since it's winter, but we still saw plenty of couples at the park, so I don't think that's really followed anymore :p).

Slightly blurry picture of the shrine...


Ducks and huuuge~ koi!



Thursday we went to the onsen at Urayasu. (I especially recommend it for people who want to go as a co-ed group: most onsen do not have co-ed sections, or if they do they are tiny. This one has a huuge outside complex of baths, including one that runs through a cave). Spent a lovely, lovely time relaxing and soaking. We decided we especially liked the collagen bath, which was a violent, almost opaque purple-pink-red but it makes the skin feel soooo soft. The yellowy-green jasmine bath was nice too. I love onsen. <3 I hope I get a chance to go again before the weather gets much warmer and you don't really feel like broiling in hot water.

Dressed in yukata at the onsen


So there's most of what I've been up to lately. It's a quiet weekend, which is good since I still have to finish cleaning my room and packing. Trying to bring home most of my winter stuff since it'll be warmer by the time I get back and it takes up so much room. I'm trying to avoid shipping things home since it's so expensive (I managed to come here with just 2 suitcases and 2 carry-ons).

God I hate finals.

And Eliza, who commented on a previous post - not sure if you enabled e-mail notification but yes, please feel free to email and ask me questions about Waseda/Japan! (And anyone else who comes across this blog). My email is bookwyrm13 [at] gmail dot com. :)

I'm gonna take you to the gay bar~

Ooh, there is one story I forgot to write about here.

A couple weekends ago, I went to a gay bar that a friend's friend (also an exchange student) worked at. And hey, we don't get hit on by sketchy guys! There are a lot of little specialty gay bars in Tokyo, particularly Kabukicho Nichome in Shinjuku - some for gay men, some for lesbians, some for foreigners while others are Japanese only, and different bars for different kinks. This one (Dragon Men in Shinjuku - a really, really nice bar actually) allowed foreigners and prided itself about being able to provide service in English.

Being gay in Japan is a fairly closeted thing (despite how very, very touchy-feely many Japanese boys get with each other when drunk...). It's not so bad in Tokyo, but it's still not exactly something talked about in polite society. Historically, Japan was more acceptable of homosexuality - like the Romans, relations between older men of middle or upper classes (such as samurai) and younger boys who were apprentices were accepted, and it was not banned by Buddhism. In the famous "Tale of Genji," Prince Genji uses a a lady's younger brother as a go-between - and decides to bed the boy who is "more attractive than his chilly sister." And gender lines have been fluid as well - in kabuki plays, women have been banned from the stage since the 1600s, so female parts have been played by men (called onnagata). More recently, the Visual Kei movement, bands such as Dir en Grey, Malice Mizer (particularly Mana, also in Mois dix Mois), and X Japan would sometimes dress up like (very convincing) women. The Westernization of Japan brought with it the stigma of homosecuality.

There are a lot of people on TV who are gay or transgender, and beautiful gay young men are popular in certain genres of manga, but the idea of normal people who are gay is not as accepted. These are a couple of interesting articles on the topic: http://www.starobserver.com.au/community/2008/11/05/sun-not-rising-on-gay-rights/2468 and http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20081223i1.html.

Anyway. We met a very nice young Irish guy at the bar, who's been living in Portland for the last 10 years and is taking a break from getting his PhD to teach English for a year in Japan - oh, and he's 21 now. And almost done with his PhD. He also spoke Irish Gaelic (his first language), Scottish Gaelic, another kind of Gaelic, Japanese quite well, Spanish very well, and French. ... Damn. (And obviously more interested in my friend's friend the bartender than us. Siiigh.) We had a few drinks, and then I experienced my first unisex bathroom. Where the toilet was beyond the urinals. I kept trying to wait for them to empty, but guys kept walking past me to go in so eventually I gave up. Just a little bit awkward!

As we got up to leave, a group of Japanese men at the next table starting talking to us. They asked us if we were lesbians (no), if we had boyfriends (yes for two of us), and they were shocked: "Your boyfriend is okay with you coming to a gay bar?" "Yeah, my boyfriend comes with me to gay bars in DC..." my friend said, haha. One was a 34 year old Waseda alum (though he looked as though he was a current student!). They were incredibly nice as well, and interesting to talk to. We're definitely planning to return to that bar, we met a lot of really interesting and friendly people.

Finals the next two weeks, not going to be a whole lot of interesting stuff going on.

Ugh. Hate finals.

But I am definitely going to Hokkaido in early February for the Yukimatsuri (snow festival). :) Should be fun! Just have to decide if I'm going to Beijing before that, too...

New Years trip part I! Even more image heavy...

Onwards to Shizuoka
- Leave in the morning for the 4-hour drive to Mari's grandparents' house in Shizuoka. It's a very, very old house and in quite bad shape - cluttered, falling apart a bit, old style toilet that drops into a pit rather than flushing. We all sit around a with our legs under a kotatsu (table with a heating mechanism underneath, blanket draped over to keep the heat in). Her family is incredibly, incredibly sweet though. Her grandparents were telling people they had a foreigner coming for New Years, and they were given a cell phone charm (waving cat with chilis) and handmade paper chopstick holders of girls in kimono made out of paper. Beautiful. Her grandfather makes tako - circular kites - and he let me make a little one. :) I painted a koi. Lots of fun.

- Dinner for New Years is soba noodles - something that is traditionally eaten on New Years. And something I can eat!! Thank goodness, because the other thing eaten on New Years is osechi, as seen here. Little boxes filled with various types of fish, octopus tentacles (with the suckers on!), pickled things... I really dislike the texture of traditional Japanese food. Sigh. Mostly avoided that except for renkon, a nifty-looking type of root.

- Couple hours to kill, then off to 2 Buddhist temples. The first one is huge - many booths selling food and trinkets lined up along the way, then a long hike up a hill to get to the temple. There's a huge line of people waiting in line to pray exactly at midnight. We left before then for a smaller temple that her grandfather works for. We rang the huge bell outside at midnight, and sat inside the temple listening to the monks pray before heading home. Mari and I stayed in a hotel (her grandparents didn't want me to stay in such an old house - I think they were a bit embarrassed about it.) Really nice evening though, pretty quiet. :)
Entrance of the temple


Line of people at the temple

Ringing the bell at midnight

Tako kites


- Lunch in Shizuoka (mmm, nabe!!) and wandered around the area a little bit. The area her grandparents live in is on the Tokaido - a route that connected Kyoto and Edo during the Edo period. There was a little building with information about the route, some maps and history and trinkets. Several older Japanese men were there (quite drunk, it was around noon) and invited us in. We had green tea and chatted for a while, mostly about the history of the road and the area - they were very nice, if difficult to understand because they slurred their words a bit.
The Tokaido house


- Finally, on to Nagoya. Here we stayed at Mari's late aunt's house (I thought we were staying at her grandmother's, but her grandmother lived elsewhere.) Her aunt was quite wealthy and had a really nice house. Heated floors!! Very nice when you're sleeping on the floor. We had dinner with her grandmother, who was also very sweet.

- Got up earlyish to hit the mall, in order to grab some fukubukuro - basically grab bags. I was a bit dubious, but picked up some accessory grab bags for 500 yen and 1000 yen ($5 and $10). And damn, they were really good value - got several earrings worth $15-20, plus hair stuff. Fun! We came across a mall pet store there that was... quite a shock! It had a sheep (in a little pen about twice its size, tucked away under some parrots); an odd badger/raccoon looking critter, no idea what it was; an American kestrel, I think; a tiny owl; monitor lizards; sugar gliders; a squirrel monkey... Not exactly pets I think would fit in well with tiny Japanese houses and apartments.
Owlie-burd!

Kestrel? The katakana says American kachuugenbou. No idea what that is.



Badger raccoon thing


- After securing ourselves some nice New Years deals, we head to nearby Nagoya castle. Very beautiful. I liked the kinshachi, or the golden dolphins (...translated as dolphins, but they're not actually according to Mari, they're just fish), on the roof of the castle. I don't have a whole lot to say about the castle, so here are some castle-ly pictures.
Nagoya Castle from a distance.

Whee high!

Cutaway of the original castle

Riding a replica of a the kinshachi!


Took the shinkansen back to Tokyo the next day, and there we go!

I don't want to write a Japanese essay and work on my two final class essays, boo... :(

New Years trip part I: Kyoto and Osaka

Back from the trip!

Kyoto
- Mari and I took an overnight bus that left around 11:45, and we arrived in Kyoto around 6 am. Didn't really sleep at all - the bus stopped every hour and a half for a 20 minute break, and it turned the lights on full every time. Our friend in Kyoto told us not to expect her to be able to wake up until about 8 or so. We got some breakfast, went to two temples near the station, and met up with Sakiko and her boyfriend around 9.
Purifying ourselves at a temple


- Back to Saki's place, quick shower, then went out onto teramachi - a fun shopping street within walking distance of her apartment. Had amaazing tonkatsu.
- Then Sanjusangendo Temple, a Buddhist temple with over 1,000 statues of Kannon, the Buddhist goddess of mercy, 28 statues of Japanese deities, and 2 statues of traditional Buddhist temple guardians (Raijin, the thunder god, and Fujin, the wind god).. It's also the longest wooden building in Japan, apparently. It's also well known for archery contests.

We could only take photos outside, not of the status inside. Pretty little garden though.

For some reason, it had bright orange walls

- After that, we went to Gion - place of the geisha and maiko. We didn't see any, too early for them, but wandered through some pretty little alleyways and looked in the far too expensive stores with beautiful geisha supplies.

Alleyway

Goldfish bowls on the sidewalk in the alleyway



Kyoto Day II
- Paninis for brunch, then we wandered more around teramachi, browsing the shops - I bought gifts for friends; Kyoto is definitely a good place for omiyage (presents). Mostly just goofing off and having a good time.

Japan is very into parfait ice cream - which I will get more into later

Oh, Engrish. :)

- Went to a cultural thingymajig, made some glass enamel keychains and browsed through the gift store of traditional items - more omiyage!
- Highlight of the day: going to a store specializing in parfait ice creams. Very popular in Japan, this place had almost 200 different types of parfaits. Plus huuuge party-sized parfaits running between $80-180. Hoo boy.

Paaaarty~


- And finally, we head to Osaka for dinner with Mari's family. Her parents are very sweet (although her dog is INCREDIBLY YAPPY. CONSTANTLY.), and after dinner the family quizzed me with kanji flashcards I brought while her sister practiced her English with me. In the morning, we left for her grandparents' house in Shizuoka, a four hour drive away.

Part II coming tomorrow!