Peanut Gallery, now open for business

So it seems that I forgot to open to privilidges for non-blogger members to comment. My bad. Any and all readers who've been dying to add their 2 cents, please feel free to do so now.

Hanami

So I finally experienced the Japanese phenomenon that is Hanami, or quite litterally "looking at flowers".. The flowers in question are the beautiful cherry blossoms that signal the start of spring. Of course, beautiful or not, it doesn't really matter. The blossoms themselves are completely incidental to the whole event, which is only about two things: BBQ meat, and drinking. All in all, not a bad tradition. Check out the pics, and see for yourselves. I through a couple a pics of the actual flowers in there just to prove that they do in fact exist, but even if they didn't, I doubt that would hinder the festivities.

Channeling Wen

I found an extra 50 yen in the coin return slot of a vending machine the other day.. Just thought that you`d like to know.

Just a wee bit late

Ok, so it looks like its been almost a month since my last post.. I've gotten some gentle and not so gentle prodding about how I should post some more pics, so I'll be doing that soon..

In the meantime, I've got a few here, with a rundown of some of what has been keeping me so busy.

First.. school..Its only 3.5 hours a day right now, but that of course doesn:t include all of the time it takes to do homework. The teachers are all supremely nice, and the pace is pretty quick. Really requires a fair bit of both preparation and review, but I guess that that is why I`m here. My classmates are pretty cool, and we`ve gotten a chance to hit the izakaya a couple of times.. (that`s kinda like a bar for all you Wen types, who need to have everything explained to you)

I also got a chance to check out my first ever live soccer game. The home team, Consodole Sapporo (10 points to whoever can tell me what a Consodole is), beat up the visiting Shonan Belmare (10 more points up for grabs) 4-1, so it was a pretty sweet game.. I think I may become a fan.

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"