Freezing in Sapporo

I may or may not have emphasized this enough in my previous posts, but itsfriggen freezing over here. I didn't really bring too many winter clothes with me, but I'm supremely glad that I packed my toque. The day after I arrived in Sapporo it snowed 15 cm. That didn't stop many of the girls from donning their miniest skirts to brave the weather (sorry dudes, no pics). Well I had a couple of days to kill before school started to I spent them trying to get to know the city and meeting my classmates and whatnot, but before I getinto that, I'd like to introduce you to a good friend of mine. You've already met his little brother, so let me present to you, the smallest apartment ever. Ok, so from the bed, I can reach over into the "kitchen" and open the fridge to grab myself a cold one, which is not entirely a badthing. Actually the whole room is not entirely a bad thing. Yes, itssmall, but it is pretty well furnished, with lots of storage to get all my crapout of the way. The bathroom and shower are outside, and are supposed tobe shared, but since something like 60% of the rooms here have their ownbathrooms, there isn't much sharing to take place, which suits me justfine.

Ok, on with Sapporo. So I went shopping, and walking and a bunch ofother things that no one cares about, but I also went to the Sapporo BeerMuseum.. We first went for lunch at the Ghenkis Khan style (similar toKorean BBQ, but they have lamb) restaurant for lunch and hit the museum withhigh hopes of the famed free all you can drink beer for 20 minutes (check your Lonely Planets for this misinformation) only to find out that if such a thing did exist atone time, it doesn't any more. You can, however, get a small beer for about 200 yen, which is not too shabby, and it was the first time I tasted Sapporo Classic, which is only available in Hokkaido.

Ok, ok, so my next post will *finally* talk about school.

Hot Water

Well, according to the map for Nagureyama Onsen, it's a big and bustling place. Not so. It's actually quite small and doesn't even have a hotel or anything as far as I could tell. That being said, its pretty nice inside. The actual bath has an inside and an outside section. From the outside, there a nice view of the mountains if you sit in just the right spot. As I discovered, much to my chagrin, it's a 'Bring Your Own Towel' establishment, which I naturally forgot to do. Nice thing about steaming hot water, though, is that once you get the bulk of it off with your hand towel, the rest just kind of steams off you.

I also got a chance today to see the Onuma Quasi-National Park. I'm not sure if the "quasi" refers to the national-icity, or the park-ocity of the place, but I figure that it would be a beautiful place to visit in the summer. Of course, this isn't summer. (still it was nice). Apparently though, in the summer, the park is open for "Sightseeing Boat Clusing".

Dinner was on par with last night's, but didn't have as many of my favourites. Still, it was a feast.

Heaven

thy name is dinner an the Onuma Koen Youth Hostel.

I don't think I've ever eaten so quickly in my life. The food at thisplace is sooo good. Dinner consisted of miso soup (no surprises there), coldnoodle salad (also no biggie), but the salmon gratin shaped like a fish and thebattered chicken pieces were super awesome. Toss in some of those littlepickle-y side dishes and you've got a pretty good spread. This is a really goodthing, since the rest of the town is pretty deadthis time of year; too late to go skiing and too early to go canoeing, make theplace pretty dry. I'm actually the only guest at the YH, which is also a littledry, but at least I can hog all the hot water. Speaking of which, one more goodthing about here is that is about 2km from Nagareyama onsen, which is where I'll be heading tomorrow.

Now you can`t tell me that this doesn`t look like the set for "Corner Gas"

Sendai

Ok, so I expected it to be a little colder when I got north of Tokyo, but I never expected snow. Fortunately, it's tapered off and there's nothing on the ground in Sendai. That doesn't mean that it still isn't freezing though. Well Sendai's a pretty nice place. Most of the historical attractions are based around the Date family (Masamune, Tadamune, and.. some other mythical sword from Final Fantasy). So the first hotel that I stayed in was overrun by Japanese high-school kids. Man, they were everywhere, but generally relatively pleasant.
Of course I got a few stares, but nothing that I'm not used to by now. I had to share my room with a Japanese dude, who, apparently had been though about an hour of prepping with the hotel owner before showing up in my room, from knowing where I was from, to where I was going, to what I was doing in Japan (all things that I mentioned to the owner). He was a pretty friendly guy once he confirmed I was Canadian, and he even bought me a can of coffee. We didn't talk much though, and pretty much went straight to sleep.

My second hotel in Sendai is pretty sweet; nice 'big room', one of those funky low tables with hot was for tea and whatnot in a thermos. The picture describes it best. The staff was SUPER nice. They carried my bag up to my room and were mega polite. Definitely a nice feeling, even if
the price tag was about $55 for the night.

I thought this place would be an internet cafe or something, but when I got closer, I realized it was a flower shop

Heated Seats

As I'm riding the train from Tokyo to Sendai, I've noticed awarm felling from under my butt. I'm pretty sure that it's not gas, but I mayalso have inadvertently discovered the cause of Japan's declining birth rateover the last ten years

Tokyo Summary

I think that I would have to say that this was the best time that I've spent in Tokyo. Not that there was ant one supremely stupendous moment or anything, but it was nice to do some things that I hadn't done before in Tokyo, such as riding the tram, going to Yokohama with Joseph and Rina (check out Josheph's pics), chilling with Misaki and her guest house crew, finding some Engrish in Ameyoko market and just generally have a decent time, all without any major incident. All in all, not bad.