Would you believe it, you wait for ages for an updated Blog & then 2 come along in quick succession!
Having waved goodbye to Pippa, we headed to the train station to catch the Shinkansen to Sapporo. Timing our train departure so that we encountered the Tokyo rush hour laden down with big bags, was certainly not our finest piece of planning. It was however an experience we won't forget in a hurry. Fortunately when we got to the Shinkansen section of Tokyo station things calmed down a little! This was my first experience of a truly fast and efficient train service. The countryside rockets by and the trains leave and arrive at the times they are supposed to. They are also extremely clean and the seats rotate so you just turn them around when the train heads in the opposite direction!
10 hours and 3 trains later, we arrived at our destination and headed for our hotel. Having read that there had been concern about the lack of snow this year, it was quite amazing to see more snow than we had in our lives. England would have totally ground to a halt!
After a pleasant sleep in a nice hotel room, with free wireless Internet (This has certainly helped with the update of the Blog) we headed out to see the sculptures. I will not go into too much description here, as there really are too many to describe. To say that some of them were quite staggering in scale, is something of an understatement. The sculpture called 'The Antarctic' took 3000 people, 1 month to create! Fortunately we have managed to get some photos up so give them a look.
The snow festival attracts people from all over the world, so you would think that they would produce at least one programme in English. Alas though, this is Japan and they seem to work a little differently. Trying to find out what was happening and where, was a little hit and miss to say the least. We did manage to catch the qualifying for the freestyle Snow boarding (really quite dull) and several bizarre Song & Dance numbers.
As we had planned to be at the festival for the closing ceremony, I would like to tell you that it was amazing, but if it actually happened, we didn't see it! Most people seemed to just pack up and go home. In their defence though, it was the coldest day and it had been snowing hard all day.
Away from the Festival, we found Sapporo to be a very pleasant city. Unlike many other Japanese cities, navigation is simple! The whole place is built on a grid network and everything was within walking distance of our hotel. We had a good time looking around the super heated Shopping Malls, stocking up on the latest J-POP and marvelling at the sheer amount of Anime(comic books) available.
Having waved goodbye to Pippa, we headed to the train station to catch the Shinkansen to Sapporo. Timing our train departure so that we encountered the Tokyo rush hour laden down with big bags, was certainly not our finest piece of planning. It was however an experience we won't forget in a hurry. Fortunately when we got to the Shinkansen section of Tokyo station things calmed down a little! This was my first experience of a truly fast and efficient train service. The countryside rockets by and the trains leave and arrive at the times they are supposed to. They are also extremely clean and the seats rotate so you just turn them around when the train heads in the opposite direction!
10 hours and 3 trains later, we arrived at our destination and headed for our hotel. Having read that there had been concern about the lack of snow this year, it was quite amazing to see more snow than we had in our lives. England would have totally ground to a halt!
After a pleasant sleep in a nice hotel room, with free wireless Internet (This has certainly helped with the update of the Blog) we headed out to see the sculptures. I will not go into too much description here, as there really are too many to describe. To say that some of them were quite staggering in scale, is something of an understatement. The sculpture called 'The Antarctic' took 3000 people, 1 month to create! Fortunately we have managed to get some photos up so give them a look.
The snow festival attracts people from all over the world, so you would think that they would produce at least one programme in English. Alas though, this is Japan and they seem to work a little differently. Trying to find out what was happening and where, was a little hit and miss to say the least. We did manage to catch the qualifying for the freestyle Snow boarding (really quite dull) and several bizarre Song & Dance numbers.
As we had planned to be at the festival for the closing ceremony, I would like to tell you that it was amazing, but if it actually happened, we didn't see it! Most people seemed to just pack up and go home. In their defence though, it was the coldest day and it had been snowing hard all day.
Away from the Festival, we found Sapporo to be a very pleasant city. Unlike many other Japanese cities, navigation is simple! The whole place is built on a grid network and everything was within walking distance of our hotel. We had a good time looking around the super heated Shopping Malls, stocking up on the latest J-POP and marvelling at the sheer amount of Anime(comic books) available.
If we got tired of the shopping, or cold from the snow there was always a nice warm Bar/Izakaya available to have a rest in. The meal we had at the Sapporo Bier Garten deserves special mention. You basically order a plate of meat & vegetables and then cook it on a kind of griddle that is mounted in the table. You then wash this down with plenty of big beers!
For anyone wondering what happens to the sculptures after the snow festival ends, they had already moved diggers & excavators in to dismantle them by the morning. Clearly they don't want them hanging around for ages making the place look untidy!
We had originally planned to go to Dewansan-zen to climb a volcano. However, we had a change of heart and instead returned to Tokyo to spend a few more days looking around. Using a hostel in Asakusa as our base, we headed back to Akihabara so I could have a longer look at all the gadgets. This ended up with Debs buying herself a Nintendo DS lite (So much fun that 1 day later I bought one as well, and have been losing against her at Mario minigames ever since: she is frighteningly good!). Being as it was Valentine's day we had a meal at a nearby Izakaya and rather a lot of beers.
The next day we headed back to Harajuku to have another look around Takeshita street. As it was a weekday, the shops were generally quieter than on our last visit, so we were able to have a better look around. Debs bought herself a new bag and I managed to find some 'Nightmare before Christmas' Chopsticks! The whole Jack Skellington thing has become a bit of an obsession with me, since I have been in Japan. I am also quite keen on Doraemon (a blue robot cat) key fob & phone charm characters. They have different ones relating to where you are in Japan. Debs on the other hand has gone the Hello Kitty route (We even managed to find one of Hello Kitty wearing the 'Harajuku girls' Gothic clothing).
From Harajuku, we headed back to Shibuya for another quick look around before heading back to the hostel for a rest. As we were back in Tokyo again, it would have been rude not to get in touch with Pippa. So we arranged to meet her for food & drinks. It was just a shame she was still hungover from the night before! Still, we had a good evening dining in an Italian restaurant and having a few drinks in a Sumo Bar. Tired from work and lack of sleep, Pippa headed home and we went on to the hostel's bar for a night cap or two. This was probably not the best idea that we have ever had, as we had planned to go to Hakone early the next day to try and see Mt Fuji. We did still go, just not quite as early as we had planned.
Hakone is a really pleasant area of national parkland about 90km from Tokyo and one of the best places to see Mt Fuji. On the day we chose to visit, we were fortunate enough to have a really good view of the 'Shy mountain'.
Starting from Odawara we took the train to Gora, where we got on the Sounzan cable car (really a funicular railway) to Sounzan. From here we transferred to the Hakone ropeway (really a cable car). Unfortunately we couldn't travel all the way along the cable car due to maintenance work. We did however get a great view of Mt Fuji, although a slightly smelly one as we passed over a sulphur mine. Still suffering from the beer the night before, I declined the offer to eat an egg cooked in sulphur! Arriving in Owakudani we took the shuttle bus to Togendai. Here we boarded a sightseeing boat for the 20min cruise through Lake Ashi to Hakonemachi. We then had a pleasant stroll through a several hundred year old, Cedar tree lined walkway. These trees were planted along the old Tokaido street as protection against the elements during the start of the Edo period (1618).
With the light starting to fade, we stopped for a last look at Mt Fuji across Lake Ashi and then caught the bus back to Hakone Yumoto station. A short train ride back to Odawara and the Shinkansen was waiting to whisk us back to Tokyo. Never having been much of a train spotter, I have to say that the speed of the trains through the stations is quite staggering, especially as you get no warning of one approaching. Arriving back in Tokyo, it was time to pack ready for the journey to Kyoto in the morning.
Next blog Kyoto and beyond
