Eleven Hours on a Train

Hello everyone,

As you might have expected from the title, we`ve travelled somewhere. We are now located in Sapporo, Hokkaido. We went from the last town that we were in, Urabandai (I`ll write more about that later), at about half past 2 p.m., and we arrived here this morning at 06:10. We switched trains a couple of times, so we had to wait at the station for maybe 10-20 minutes, and one time even 3 hours. However, the last train, the one from Aomori to Sapporo, took from about 22:50 to 06:10. That was rough, since we didn`t have proper sleeping-cars, just fully reclined chairs, and the noise it made could have vanquished demons. That wasn`t maybe so nice, but when we got here some 6 hours ago we "checked in" at a mangacafe and went to sleep (it`s from that cafe this post is coming to you folks). It`s a room with a small sofa, two japanese floor-chairs, a table, TV, PlayStation 2 and of course a computer with internet. It only took us back 2000 Yen each ( ca 14 euros) for 9 hours "accomodation", oh, and there`s thousands upon thousands of mangabooks to read, all in japanese of course. Though we`re leaving this place in a couple of hours, I`m a bit tempted to grab Kingdom Hearts II: Final Mix and just play it for the rest of the day, but I won`t.

Since we have only seen a few blocks of Sapporo yet, I won`t write about this place, except that it`s one of the newest citys in Japan, and therefore is built western-style (i.e. square-grid, like New York for example), which makes it a lot easier than Tokyo to navigate in, since that town was built entirely random.

The main reason we went here is to avoid the rain-season in the south right now, but also to drop of two bottles of Stallhagen-beer to a guy named Phred; an american running a beer-bar here. That will be nice since they do carry their weight.

Before we went here, we went out in the Japanese mountains for a couple of days. More exactly, we went to the town of Inawashiro, and from there took a bus to Urabandai (Bandai Plateau, Japans second largest national park). We went there to see the Goshiki-numa; the five-coloured lakes. They`re called so because they have different colours, logically, but the reason is more cool. In 1888 (gather round, children) there was a huge volcano that erupted, people say that it took of 600 m of it`s top and, as a result, the landscape was completely altered. Different minerals gathered in different places, and therefore coloured the lakes that formed there. The biggest, probably most famous lake is blue (coppar maybe?), and it really is blue. Not "The Beach"-blue-lagoon-paradise, no, this is Slushee-coloured-blue. You can see it in the picture above, though it looks better in real life. The other lakes weren`t as magnificent, there was the red lake, which was really greenish-yellowish with darkred edges, but I didn`t get a good photo of it, so you`ll have to make do with just the one.

The town itself of Urabandai (we think that`s its name) was really nice, it looked really Canadian. Jeeps everywhere, pinetrees, many log-houses and treehouses in general, and almost all signs were in english, oddly enough. They even had rangers instead of police. So, to me, it felt Canadian (look at the picture at the top of this post). Everyone there were really nice, and the hotelmanager at the place we stayed (also a log-cabinish place) picked us up from the busstop, and made us a huge breakfast (for some money true, but we`re pretty sure we got it cheaper, because we thought the price of lodging and breakfast woulkd be 5400 Yen, but it was only 5000, 32 euros). When we left the day after he even gave us a lift to Inawashiro where the trainstation is, which is a good half-hour away. He was really nice. So if you ever go see the Goshiki-numa (which you should, `cause it`s awesome), you should stay at the Pension Chalet. We briefly met this other gut at the pension, whom also was nive. He took this photo of us, and the next we took of him.

The Below picture is of our room there.

The big blue lake was, by the way, thick with carp. And they were fat; really, really fat. The biggest fish I`ve seen in real life (except sharks). And here`s a pic of one:

Another really cool thing we experienced (as we are nerds), was that we found the Final Fantasy VII 10th Anniversary Special Potion. It`s hadn`t passed it`s expiration date yet, so we could drink it, and it was good. It tasted like the swedish soda Tropicano. And; I regained 200 HP, so that was also nice. Here`s a picture, (of the many, many I took):

That`s it from the backroads of Japan, back to Tokyo for a bit.

The day before we started travelling north, we went to the Tokyo Tower. 333 m of metropolitan vistas. The first view-station was at 150 m, and the second (more expensive one) was at 250 m. It was really nice though, since you could se the worlds biggest city at your feet. There were also parts of the floor which was glass, so you could look directly down (not something for people with vertigo, which I have myself quite a bit). I took a photo there, as you can see.

And the last thing worth mentioning from Tokyo this time around is really just another picture, we found this temple-gate besides a large park. It was quite nice I must say.

That`s it for this post. We don`t really have any plans today since we`re so tired, only to find a hotel or hostel or something; somewhere to sleep for a few nights basically. We will probably go and vouyer the town for a bit and then go to sleep early.

Well, see you!