Sapporo!! We have arrived.

Aug. 16 Sunday

So today was the day I headed off to Sapporo. I got on the 9:20 train to get to Asahikawa at 10:15am. I ended up chatting with an old grandpa who had lost an arm at the train station as we waited for the train to come. He also helped kill the bee that was bothering me and wouldn't leave me alone. Such a nice old man.

I arrived at Asahikawa and decided to go to the coffee shop/cafe next to the station to sit and wait for Collin to arrive as we were going to go down to Sapporo together. And after 2-3 weeks of not seeing him, I was very glad when he showed up. Yay! We bought round-trip reserved seat tickets on the Limited Express Super Kamui from Asahikawa to Sapporo and back. It cost each of us $60. On the train, Collin and I whipped out our DS's and played Mario Party the entire time. hehe. Occasionally, I would look up to look out the windows to see greenness which slowly turned into cityscapes as we neared Sapporo. It's interesting to see so much more city life than what I've become used to. It tooks us 1 1/2 hours to get there. When we got to Sapporo I was just amazed!!! It's such a beautiful city! It's got the business and largeness and urbanization of Tokyo without being a sprawling metropolis. It's serene in some way even though there's so many people about and buildings and cars and technology, but there's something about this city that just makes me feel wonderful to be here. I think I might oddly enough prefer Sapporo to Kyoto after being here. It's such a wonderful seeming place! I don't know why, I just feel something here. The buildings are so beautiful and romantic unlike Tokyo's gaudy technology plastered buildings. I have to say, I already love Sapporo.

So anyways, we walked over to the Keio Plaza Hotel (which is like a super posh 5-star hotel for business people) to check in. I don't know how JET always seems to get these crazy expensive hotels for us for cheap rates, but maybe because we're gov't sponsored that we get to be in such nice places. Actually, I didn't have any reservations for tonight. I'm only staying in the rooms for two nights from the 17-19th. But I didn't want to come to Sapporo on the 5am train to get here by 9am on the 17th to make it on time for the registration/check in for the orientation. Because if I were to stay in the hotel, the money would be out of my own pocket instead of the money that the BOE gave me which was about 34,700yen to spend on the room and foods. The room costs about $60 a night and it's AMAZING!! I was originally thinking to save money I would just bite the dust and take the early morning train on the 17th. But Collin was sooo awesome and said that I could just stay with him in his room for the night of the 16th so that I wouldn't have to pay! YAY COLLIN!!! Seriously, much appreciated! I'm in his debt for that.

So this room is seriously amazing for one person. It's a little small but has everything a traveling businessperson would ever need and has the best in technology and everything!! IT"S AMAZINGLY CRAZY!! The TV is high tech and the bed is beautiful and apparently the guys' rooms all come with a massage chair whereas the womens' rooms come with a desk that has a secret mirror compartment for putting on makeup or hiding jewelry, stuff like that. It's kinda neat and each room is decorated differntly. The guys' rooms apparently are more plain looking whereas the girls' rooms are more artfully decorated and the bed is much more plush looking with extra accessory pillows just to look good. Heh, they know how to cater. But I would've liked the massage chair as well. That would've been nice. However, it does look tacky being in the room compared to the more artsy chair that's in its stead in my room.lol Oh Japan. Gender differences. =P The bathroom is also crazy nice with cool technology and an opaque window that seperated the bath from the bedroom. It may seem like people outside of the bathroom could see inside to the shower, but it actually doesn't show very much at all. It's just a nice addition for ambiance I suppose. Although I was a little iffy about the window at first, but it's fine.

So we put our stuff down and decided to go out to find a ramen-ya-san cuz we were starving. We walked around towards the botanical gardens area where there is like nothing because we walked down the wrong way. But we didn't know that so just kept walking. We passed a recycle shop that sold cheap-ass awesome things! Though i don't think I can haul that stuff back with me to Kenbuchi. I wish we had something like that. That would be nice. We finally found a small little broken down ramen-ya-san which was run by an old crazy lady who immigrated here from China when she was a kid. She talked about weird things and how she hated the Hokkaido Ham Fighters and was Osaka all the way....lol The miso ramen was sooo good! But so much noodles! I was ready to burst.

Afterwards, we decided to walk around the city and see some places. We ended up going to all the nearby dept. stores and playing games at the NAMCO arcade. We played Pachinko for a little bit and then spotted this wierd machine that was called Love Jungle: The jungle of spice. o.o that looked like the Jurassic Park game where you sit down and shoot the screens and stuff. It's like a game that measures your compatability with each other by how much things you kill...lol Then we played Taiko no Tatsujin and then wandered over to the Pokemon Center. We then played some of the crazy crane games and got some Haagen Daz ice cream from it! Well, Collin got it, but we shared! ^_^ Yay! It was cookies and cream! It's been so long since I've had that flavor. hehe.

We soon got hungry and decided to go get some food. We walked over to an outdoor food place that was temporarily set up for the summmer in front of the Sapporo Station. It was 3 types of meat: Lamb, Pork, and Beef Shabu Shabu 食べ放題/all you can eat! SOOO GOOD! SOOO MUCH FOOD! I was in love with this place, but it will only be open until the 21st. As we sat and ate Collin noticed these two girls who were sitting behind me kept looking over at us. We theorized that either they were checking out Collin or they were lesbian and checking out me. He thinks it's most likely the latter one. haha. That would be funny if it was. =P We decided to then walk some more to walk off the food we ate. And then finally came back to the hotel, whereupon we played more games on the DS before going to sleep. It was soo much fun today! I love this place and the way this week is starting off. I couldn't wait to see everyone the next day.

So I'll write more concerning today's events, which is the day that I'm writing yesterday's occurrences more tomorrow. I'm tired out today and I have to wake up early tomorrow for more orientations. 12am now. Good night!