Sitting in Sapporo Once Again

Hello,

Been a few days since our last post, but since we are up in Hokkaido and travelling here and forth in the countryside, it`s a bit hard to find internet.

Anyway, since out last post we`ve had the time to explore Sapporo quite a bit, been to southern Hokkaido to Toya-ko Onsen and also Noboribetsu Onsen (the latter was today even), and (apparently) experienced a rather massive earthquake. Once again terror lashes upon Japan and we don`t even notice it. Although this happened something like 40 km north of Tokyo, and we were something like 400 km north, so at least we have a good excuse. We didn`t even hear about it till our relatives called and asked if we were okay.

Well, enough about what we didn`t experience, and more about what we actually did experience.

After our last post we stayed in Sapporo for three nights, and had time to explore it more. We went to see the famed Sapporo TV-Tower (the eiffel-tower look-alike in the picture), where on the grounds beneath it was a Fairtrade-festival\gathering of sorts. They sold organic things and played traditonal Ainu-music amongst other things.

We also visited the American Phred and his Beer-Inn (the picture below is of him), where we gave him two beers from our homecountry The Aland Islands (in Finland). He was grateful and even bought us two (delicious) beers. It was nice to talk to someone who could speak english in it`s proper form for once. But we also talked to two of his friends for quite a bit, whom also were nice, and were then joined by yet another two people. They were two women working for the Sapporo City (if we understood it correctly. I`m sure at least the one nearest me did). They were really nice and we ended up talking to them until we had to go, since our curfew at the International Youth Hostel was early. Phred, by the way, had more than 5000 beers on display, and more than 300 for sale. I highly recommend the place.

Well, that`s about it for Sapporo, and since I`m in somewhat of a hurry (every 10 minutes costs me 100 Yen) and we want to go to sleep early, I going to make this post in a haste.

For your information we are now back in Sapporo for the night, since there weren`t any cheap place to stay in Noboribetsu Onsen, so we just took the train up here again and are travelling to Furano tomorrow morning. It`s nice to have a JR-pass.

Well, after Sapporo we went to Toya-ko, as mentioned. A really nice, really volcanic little town, which displays 400 fireworks every night from the huge craterlake besides the town (the town is on the south side). We went up in the volcanoes via ropeway and hiked along a mountaintrail for a few kilometers. It was really nice, but extremely tough, since the sun blazed and there were fumaroles everywhere (volcanic vents that release gas, sometimes poisonous, although not the ones we went by). I`ll post all the pictures at the end later.

After that we went, as said, to Noboribetsu Onsen. The most famous Onses Resort in Hokkaido apparently (onsen=hot spring). We went to a really luxurious Onsen-hotel and paid 2000 Yen there, where we stayed for three hours enjoying the more than 15 different, mineral-rich, onsens. And the 82 degrees celsius sauna with a freezing cold onsen right nest to, so it almost felt like Finland again. We didn`t take any pictures there, since it wouldn`t really be appreciated by all the naked people.

Anyhoo, I`m feeling extremely rushed right now, so I`ll just upload the pictures and maybe write a more fulfilling post when we acquire internet again.

Enjoy!

A few of the many beers on display at Phred`s place.

Our room at the Youth Hostel in Sapporo where we stayed a night (after that we stayed in a Capsule Hotel)

Sappory city itself.

A huge botanical garden we visited.

A beer-museum we visited in Sapporo, really nice.

One of the volcanoes in Toya-ko, which was apparently dangerous. Called Uzu-san I think.

A huge crater in Toya-ko with a huge fumarole. Very nice views.

Me with lake Toya at the left and Mount Uzu on the right. (Nice hat, eh. Had to keep the sun out..)

The mascot of Noboribetsu Onsen. This guy was everywhere.

Well, that`s it for now. Hope you liked it!

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!

Day 2, Thursday

Hello everyone, I'm sitting in our hostel and writing this at 18:38. And we still haven't gone outside.

That's because we didn't want to go to sleep so early yesterday, since we didn't want to mess with our awake/sleep routine (vad ar egentligen dygnsrytm pa svenska?). So we went out at around 21:30 and was planning to just walk around for an hour or so, but then we saw some cool stuff, and it wasn't so crowded, so went on for a while longer. Then, we found this massive arcade, with a scaring amount of awesome games. To name a few; Half-Life 2: Survivor, Silent Hill Arcade (which we played together, very scary and incredibly intense), Mario Kart and of course all the latest Tekken, Virtua Fighter and so on. It also had a massive screen (maybe 80'', although widescreenformat), which you could play some Gundam-game on. Looked really cool. The weirdest game though was a huge screen (maybe 160'') with maybe 25 chairs turned to it (all the chairs were like electronic loungesystems, TV-screens and everything), and it was a horseracing-simulator. Must be hugely popular in Japan since it took up almost an entire normal-siced room.

Anyhow, after we spent a couple hundred Yen there, we started going home, and since we got a bit lost it took us a while. So we ended up going to sleep just before 3:00.. And we woke up at 16:20! I accidentaly pressed "Stop" instead of "Snoose".. But we have a pretty good excuse I think. I mean; we had travelled half-around the world and walked quite a bit.

And it's not so bad, it's raining today, so we don't really want to walk around so much. We're planning to go out and eat something now, probably ramen. And then walk around windowshopping a bit I guess.

Oh, and I tried sending an e-mail from my phone with a picture, and it worked. Here it comes, see you!

Backpack

This is my backpack, jammed full o' goodies. It´s current weight is 15,7kg (that´s 34,6 pounds for you non-metric folks). I have two beers from our local brewery in it that we are going to bring to an American living in Osaka to whom my father is acquainted with. He owns a pub (I think), so he wants to sample different beers from around the world.

They have some weight to them, so I can´t wait to get rid of them honestly.

Anyhow, I will try and blog from my japanese cellphone when we get there, since it´s evidently available from this site. Can´t wait.

Welcome!

Welcome to our blog about Japan!
Our names are Christoffer and Jonas, we will write in english even though we are from Finland and talk swedish, and it´s mainly our own relatives and friends who are going to read it. But still, more people can read it if we write in english, hence the choice.

Anyhoo, we don´t know how often we will update this blog, but we will at least try as often as possible. I somehow think we will have other things on our minds (none of us have been to Japan before, and we are somewhat in love with the country, i.e. nerds).

And another thing; I (Christoffer) have never blogged before, or in fact written anything on a regular basis, so if you think anything´s badly written or that we could do better in any way; eh, we don´t really care. The only thing this blog really does is to show & tell about our (hopefully) awesome journey to Japan.
Please comment though, and if you want us to write about something special, or take a pic of anything; please just ask. We can probably do it. The only part of Japan we won´t go to is Okinawa, since it´s friggin' expensive.

Our flight is from Arlanda, Sweden on tuesday the 3rd, so I don´t think we will write anything more before we get to the country in question.

Have a good time, and we´ll be back!

/Christoffer (&Jonas)